Recently, and quite unexpectedly, I found myself bidding on 10 different Dick Tracy books on eBay. Lo and behold, when push came to shove (and I shoved quite a bit), I ended up scoring 8 out of the 10. I've eagerly devoured them all. I now only need 4 of the 24 books in the series, #11, 18, 19 and 24.
It's the height of World War II in most of these volumes, and slowly but surely the war makes its presence known. Starting with the tire-bootlegger, BB Eyes and working into the introduction of Pruneface (who was an out-and-out enemy agent) and Mrs. Pruneface, Tracy's war at home consists of a lot of references to gas rationing. A young woman named Frizzletop is introduced and she's missing her left arm, a direct reference to the war in the Pacific. She was a nurse in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded and lost her arm as a direct result. In 1944 or so, after these books end (the run ends with #24, featuring Flattop), Tracy battles another enemy agent, The Brow.
Chester Gould moves from one bizarre storyline to another and one can almost see AND hear the gears grinding as he ends one story and starts the next. Gould had a sense of the bizarre, and the war years seemed to heighten it. Maybe the crazy headlines in the papers spurred him on to be even more outrageous. After all, how bad can the comics strips be when the daily news was all war-related?
But in the midst of it all, we don't know if he was being merely tongue-in-cheek when he wrote and drew THIS panel or if it's just the innocence of a bygone era. It's part of the 88 Keyes storyline. That's 88 and little Nellie, who loves him madly. Yes, Nellie, we think your secret is safe. We know that duct tape was either A. not invented yet, or B. unavailable due to rationing during the war. And even though 88 Keyes seems to be staring ELSEWHERE, as long as we look at your cute little boy-like face, Nellie, we're safe. NO ONE WOULD EVER GUESS YOU'RE A GIRL.
I've seen that panel before but never noticed what a dog 88 Keys was.
Gould was a twisted genius. I saw on another post that you have not explored the 60's and 70's. That is where I was introduced to the story and there are some gem stories hidden within the wreckage. Bribary, Ugly Christine, Haf and Haf, Posie, The Pouch, The Brain, Weltz, Hairy and the exploding mountain drug-ordering head (followed by helicopter machine-gun fire), the feminist bank-robbers led by Lispy and her mouth-gun assassin Pucker Puss (a favorite and the last arch-villian, although like Flattop Jr., they were like Liz villians rather than Dick Tracy). The strip in the mid-70's went to Liz the most, leaving Dick a secondary character but allowing some serious grrl power to kick Disfigured Evil butt (at the expense of being nearly decapitated, knifed, burned alive, eaten by wild dogs, fed to sharks and then burned alive again, within 2 years). Liz was awesome. She should have married Groovie (he made me hippie).
Also, the 60s-70s emphasized the minimal black-and-white deco abstraction Gould perfected.
The immediate post-Gould era was a mixed blessing for a pre-teen. 1977 sucked(!) like I later saw 70 and 72 did (71, 73-76 are overlooked classics). In 78 suddenly we had coherent plots, returning villians, new arch-villians, more death traps, great plotting and hidden clues, but without that great Gould abstraction. Then it was over.
The war years are grand, the following years spotty, but it seemed to always be that way. Don't overlook a head shrinking Nay Tay because of Moon Maid, or the random twistedness of the final days (73-76) because of the fascist monologues. Bribary, Ugly Christine and Nay Tay had the best lines, psychosis, and deaths of the later years; alas, still only available in original newsprint.
Posted by: ctroyc | January 19, 2007 at 06:39 PM