‘Dick Tracy Vol. 1’ TPB (review)

Written by Alex Segura and Michael Moreci
Art by Geraldo Borges and Mark Englert
Published by Mad Cave Studios

Chester Gould’s tough cop, Dick Tracy, made his newspaper debut in 1931, but not in our local papers. Somewhere over the next few years, though, he did turn up here, where he became a particular favorite of my father.

I didn’t come along until about 25 years later but I was quickly introduced to Tracy via the silly TV cartoon series, as well as our Sunday paper.

By the 1960s, a lot of the gruesome violence the strip had been known for had been toned down, replaced by science-fiction, of all things, as Tracy spent much of the decade and beyond dealing with moon people.

I liked it, but most longtime fans didn’t.

When Gould retired and Max Allan Collins took over the writing, he ditched the sci-fi backdrop and made the strip into a modern version of its old self, complete with numerous new additions to his well-known bizarre rogues gallery.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, there were numerous Dick Tracy reprint projects, ranging from hardcover books to Shel Dorf’s weekly comic book reprints from Blackthorne. There were also all-new paperback novels and anthologies! My dad and I bonded over all these publications and I became as big a Tracy fan as he ever was!

At least until Warren Beatty came along.

Don’t get me wrong. I liked the Beatty film as a campy pastiche of the REAL Dick Tracy. I like Kyle Baker, too, but expecting his extremely stylized art on the tie-in Dick Tracy comic books of the time to make fans forget Gould’s OWN very differently stylized art was ridiculous. The team of Mike Curtis and Joe Staton took over the strip about 15 years back and made it fun again—well drawn, with new enemies, and long runs with guest stars from other old strips including Orphan Annie, Friday Foster, and the Spirit!

It’s not Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy…but it’s still Dick Tracy!

The problem with the current Dick Tracy series, of which we have here the first collection, is that it is NOT Dick Tracy! It’s a pretty good book, actually…but at no point did it feel like a Dick Tracy story.

Alex Segura and Michael Moreci are credited as co-writers and the story, collected from the first few issues of the current series, acts as a kind of origin story.

Wisely set in the past, 1947, we’re told that Dick Tracy has just returned from the war. In the service, he had a reputation as a rule-breaker and he’s already developing a similar rep on the force. Other familiar characters are a completely unrecognizable Chief Brandon, an out of character Pat Patton, Tess Trueheart (acting here more like Lois Lane), and policewoman Lizz, whom I wouldn’t have picked up on at all if Tracy hadn’t called her by name.

But WAS that Tracy?

Visually, the only thing this broken-nosed cop has in common with the classic version is his tendency to wear banana-colored coats and hats.

Storywise, he goes rogue, teaming with Tess and Pat (who isn’t even on the Force) to try to bring down a couple conglomerations of villains with names familiar to the strip’s aficionados, names like Flattop, Pruneface, Itchy, Shoulders, Big Boy, and Lips Manlis. In the grand Gould tradition, there is a LOT of gory violence and action throughout the story.

The story is actually quite good and well-told—a kind of comic book film noir.

The text and dialogue are particularly well-written and the story flows quite nicely. The art, by Geraldo Borges in what seems almost an early Howard Chaykin style, is not bad. If the characters looked more familiar or had been called by any other names, I think I might have enjoyed it all a lot more.

As it is, I asked myself what my dad would have thought of the new Dick Tracy and I just can’t bring myself to recommend it.

False advertising. It just ain’t Dick Tracy.