Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Dick Tracy America's Most Famous Detective by Bill Crouch Jr. Dick Tracy: America's Most Famous Detective by Bill Crouch Jr. Notes: Master in Arts in Journalism. Memberships: National Cartoonist Society Type : member Notes: Associate member. Non Comics Works: Publication Title : Dick Tracy: America's Most Famous Detective (book) - Role: editor - Year: 1987 Employer Name : Citadel Press Notes: A history volume about Dick Tracy, edited by Couch. ISBN: 0806510595. Publication Title : Dick Tracy: America's Most Famous Detective (book) - Role: editor - Year: 1990 Employer Name : Virgin Books Notes: Reprint of 1987 Citadel Press book, released to coincide with the 1990 Dick Tracy movie. A history volume about Dick Tracy, edited by Couch. ISBN: 0863694063. Publication Title : Dick Tracy: The Art of Chester Gould (magazine) - Role: editor - Year: 1978 Employer Name : Museum of Cartoon Art Notes: Souvenir booklet for a 1978 exhibition of Chester Gould's art held at the Museum of Cartoon Art. Publication Title : The Authorized Guide to Dick Tracy Collectibles (book) - Role: editor - Year: 1990 Employer Name : Krause Publications Notes: Co-edited with Larry Doucet. Guide to Dick Tracy collectibles released to coincide wth the Dick Tracy movie. Dick Tracy America's Most Famous Detective by Crouch Jr Bill Editor. DICK TRACY: AMERICA'S MOST FAMOUS DETECTIVE. Bill Crouch Jr. (editor) Published by Plexus (1990) From: Sugen & Co. (Kirkby Fleetham, United Kingdom) About this Item: Paperback. Condition: Very Good-. (edge wear on top corner of cover - contents unaffected) ("The Life & Times of Chester Gould's Immortal Sleuth") (In-depth study of the history of the Dick Tracy comic strip and its' creator) [Large pb. ]. Seller Inventory # 002498. Dick Tracy: America's Most Famous Detective - Revised and Updated. Crouch, Bill Jr. (Editor) Published by Citadel Press, New York, New York, USA (1990) From: Bay Used Books (Sudbury, ON, Canada) About this Item: Soft cover. Condition: Good. Good condition. Minor to Moderate wear to edges and corners. Binding tight, pages clean. Pictures available upon request. Seller Inventory # 042176. Dick Tracy; America's Most Famous Detective. Bill Crouch, Jr., Editor. Published by The Citadel Press Group, New York, NY (1990) About this Item: Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. Revised Edition. The Citadel Press Group, New York. 1990. softcover/Trade Wraps. Stated Revised and Updated. First Printing by Line Number. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Very Good; light foxing to verso of wraps; light tip and edge wear. No DJ. Pictorial card stock wraps. Wraps are not bent or folded; spine has slight opening crease; text is secure in binding. 256 pp 4to. Dick Tracy is America's most famous detective and after Sherlock Holmes, the second most in the world. However, until now, an overview of this landmark comic strip has never been published. Full of history, old comic strips, Chester Gould interviews and sections of the most famous Dick Tracy strips. A clean very presentable copy. Seller Inventory # 006973. What Dick Tracy 2 Would Have Been. The 1990 movie never generated a sequel, but we now know what the story of Dick Tracy 2 would have been. The character of Dick Tracy has been around since 1931, appearing daily in newspaper comic strips almost continuously since his debut, and achieving a level of popularity during his heyday that few other characters could aspire to. In just his first 20 years of existence, there were four Dick Tracy movie serials, four feature films, a TV series, and countless items of merchandise. But many modern fans know the character best thanks to his portrayal by Warren Beatty in 1990’s big budget summer blockbuster movie. That film attempted to kick off a wave of Tracymania unseen since the 1940s. It never quite took hold. Despite being one of the highest grossing movies of 1990, and garnering a slew of Oscar nominations, Dick Tracy was a victim of expectations. The film that had once been envisioned as a gritty ode to 1930s gangster movies became a giant blockbuster with a merchandising bonanza meant to rival the previous summer’s Batman . Despite that onslaught of publicity, the movie didn’t instill enough faith in Disney executives to move forward with a franchise. But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t plans for a sequel at one point. Dick Tracy screenwriters Jack Epps, Jr. and Jim Cash did have ideas for what Dick Tracy 2 could have been. While no script was written, Epps had some ideas, and he recently told us all about them. Ad – content continues below. “I met with Warren,” Epps says. “I had an idea of of how to do Dick Tracy 2 , which was a big jump in time like the strip. What [Dick Tracy creator] Chester Gould did as you read through it, he has big jumps in time and he mirrors the culture, he deals with the war, he deals with the ‘50s, he deals with the ‘60s.” The sequel would have seen a roughly ten year jump in time, featured an older Junior, and put Tracy in the midst of World War II. “The sequel [would have been] something around munitions and war secrets,” Epps says “I probably would have gone to factories, because I was always amazed at how America turned into this armament industry. We had no weapons manufacturers before the war began, and by the end, we were a juggernaut, turning out planes in two, three days and things like that.” To be clear, there were no plans to put Warren Beatty in uniform and send Tracy overseas to join the war effort on the frontlines. Dick Tracy 2 would have been strictly a domestic wartime affair. “We probably would have dealt with some of that imagery of [manufacturing] plants, the size of [the war effort], and airplanes,” he says. “Not going over to Europe or anything like that, but trying to do it at home, more spy and espionage.” Unfortunately, the villain who would have best fit the bill for Dick Tracy 2 was killed in the first few moments of the original movie. Ad – content continues below. “We blew a lot of the villains in the opening scene of Dick Tracy ,” Epps acknowledges. “I know the Brow was in there, otherwise, it would have been the Brow. We just would’ve gone to Gould, because his work was so good.” Read more. Dick Tracy: The Long Journey of the 1990 Blockbuster. In the original Dick Tracy comic strip, the Brow was a Nazi spy operating in the United States by the name of Alfred Brau. The Brow first appeared in the June 13, 1944 strip, at the height of the US involvement in World War II. He aided and abetted the enemy via spying and sabotage for the next three months of the series before meeting his end on Sept. 24, 1944…by being impaled on an American flagpole. Putting Tracy in a wartime setting and defending the homefront was exactly what Max Allan Collins did when he wrote one of two sequel novels to the film: Dick Tracy Goes to War , in 1991. But that was merely a coincidence. “We’d never had any conversations with [Collins],” Epps says. “I did have a conversation with Chester Gould at one time, but no. When you’re doing a project, we’re hired to do it, so we’re not going to reach out to other people…you get all sorts of issues with ideas and rights and all that sort of stuff, so you’ve got to be very careful about that. But Chester Gould wrote Dick Tracy as dealing with spies, and the Brow was the big spy guy in the series. So my interest in that as a potential sequel was based on the series, which I had read.” Not only was there no sequel, but Tracy has since been strangely absent from screen adaptations of any kind. Among other things, a live action TV series with none other than Bruce Campbell in the title role was vetoed as rights issues to the character between Warren Beatty and Tribune remain murky. But inevitably, the most famous cop in all of fiction will find his way to the screen again. The question is how would he be received in our current moment as American society reevaluates communities’ relationship with policing. It’s a challenge that anyone hoping to revive Tracy for a modern audience will have to face. Ad – content continues below. Read more. Why Dick Tracy 2 Never Happened. “There’s a lot of issues raised about how police are being depicted and not looking at a nuanced picture of them. Police in the movies are always right and never wrong.” Epps says. “So I think an evolution of the character that reflects the times we’re in, the times that we’re hopefully moving forward to. It’s just a matter of how is Tracy part of our world today? We have to take a new view of him in terms of culturally how we’re going to deal with him. That becomes a problem maybe in terms of doing a detective story from the past right now, unless you’re going to actually put it in historical context.” Epps does offer this advice to anyone trying to tell new stories with the character. “I think the biggest question is who is he now? What does he do? And what does he represent in this day and age? Who is Dick Tracy of these times right now? And what does that mean? So much of Tracy was just his relationships and also it was cutting edge, because that was part of what Chester Gould was dealing with. So is that still part of Dick Tracy today? It asks a lot of questions that have to be answered.” As far as we know, there are no live action Dick Tracy projects in development, but hopefully the next time the detective hits the screen, some of these questions will be addressed. Dick Tracy: America's Most Famous Detective by Bill Crouch Jr. "Dick Tracy The Art of Chester Gould" was an exhibition at the Museum of Cartoon Art from October 4 through November 30, 1978. Coordinated by Bill Crouch, Jr., the exhibit at the Museum in Port Chester, NY encompassed not just the newspaper comic strip, but the popular phenomenon, the artistic style of the strip, controversial violence, and Chester Gould himself. Above: 3 of the 200 DICK TRACY characters . It's the gallery of 200 characters from DICK TRACY 1931-1977, put together by Matt Masterson in the back of the exhibition catalog, that's a standout. Here is his introduction, followed by the scans of his amazing compilation: "I completed this compilation of 200 DICK TRACY characters [in] October 1977 as a tribute to Chester Gould when he reached his 46 th anniversary of drawing the strip. The original paste-up hangs in Chet's conference room at home and he tells me he refers to it quite often. His first reaction to it was that he had no idea he had created that many! "To make this paste-up of 200 characters, I went through every strip in my TRACY collection from Oct. 1931 thru Oct. 1977, approximately 17,000 daily and Sunday strips, and picked out the one panel I thought best represented that character. A reduced stat was then made of each one, and then mounted on a large piece of gray matte board along with each character's name and year each appeared. It was a labor of love. "Some of Chet's early characters from the 30's are easily recognized as popular movie stars of that era; James Cagney (Jimmy White), Claudette Colbert (Jean Penfield ), Marlene Dietrich ( Marro ), Wallace Beery (Stud Bronzen ). In the late 90's, some characters names were invented by spelling words backwards, such as Nuremoh , Kroywen , Natnus , Wolley , and Prof. Emirc . "In the 1940's, characters were to spill from Gould's prolific imagination an an unparalleled rate. Characters such as the Mole, B-B Eyes, Pruneface , Flattop, Brow, Shaky, Gravel Gertie, B.O. Plenty, Vitamin Flintheart and Mumbles were to be household names and are remembered vividly by all who read DICK TRACY in those years. If a poll were taken, Flattop would probably garner the most votes as the most famous villain. At a time when most villains expired from the strip in 12 weeks, Flattop ran TRACY ragged for 5 months. ". When I asked Chet Gould where he got the names for some of his characters, he told me he used to ride the train from his home in Woodstock, Illinois to his studio in Chicago and sketch various people he observed on the train. He would exaggerate upon certain features or characteristics. The name would follow, with he one exception being Flattop, whose name came from the popular aircraft carrier of World War II. Imagine an hour train ride with the likes of Itchy, Flyface or B.O. Plenty! "In 1975, Max Allan Collins, current writer of the DICK TRACY strip, was to become the inspiration for the villain, Bulky, and in 1977, I popped up as Leyden Aigg . In answer to the question, 'Has Chet Gould ever put himself in the strip?' Yes! He IS DICK TRACY." Dick Tracy. Dick Tracy has been called America's most famous detective, but his fame does not stop in this country. With his chiseled countenance and tough- guy morality, Tracy has become recognizable throughout the world. When Chester "Chet" Gould created the character—the first Dick Tracy comic strip ran on October 4, 1931—he could not have foreseen the influence of his tough but honest police detective. In fact, the influence extends well beyond the comics, into film, radio, and television. The timing of the comic strip's release was perfect. The Depression paved the way for a character who upheld traditional values even as he fell hard on the sordid underworld—he was just a regular guy fighting to make the world a better place. Moreover, prohibition, though nearing its demise, had established heretofore unknown levels of underground criminal activity. The strip also suggested better times with its presentation of new inventions, tools to continue the war against crime, and more importantly, inspiring signs of progress to come. Dick Tracy was created as a reflection of his times, and Gould's genius is reflected in the fact that the comic strip has survived for so long. Gould always regarded himself as a cartoonist and he had done quite a number of odd illustration jobs before showing a strip called Plainclothes Tracy to Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, co-founder and director of the New York Daily News. Patterson was himself something of a powerhouse in the world of comics. He was the editorial force behind the development of such strips as Little Orphan Annie, Moon Mullins, and Gasoline Alley. Patterson saw promise in "Plainclothes Tracy" and set up a meeting with Gould. It was Patterson who was responsible for the name change. The name "Dick" was slang for a detective, and complemented "Tracy," Gould's play on the word "tracing." Patterson also suggested a basic outline for the first story, in which the father of Tess Trueheart, Tracy's sweetheart, was robbed and murdered and, consequently, Tracy went into the crime fighting business. Dick Tracy made his premier in the Detroit Sunday Mirror and about a week later, on October 12, 1931, began as a daily. Dick Tracy quickly became not only Gould's claim to fame, but also Patterson's greatest success in the field. For readers, Dick Tracy was something completely different. Moral tales in the comics, nearly half of which at the time were serial strips like Dick Tracy, were not uncommon. But Dick Tracy presented a rough kind of morality. Tracy was always good, the villains always evil, and the confrontations always flamboyant. The level of violence was new to the comics, and Gould was not above bringing his villains to the cruelest of all possible ends. Audiences were also fascinated by the details of police procedure. Fisticuffs and gunfire were there, but Gould always remembered that Dick Tracy was first and foremost a detective. The strip also gained notoriety for its take on technology and its pageant of some of the most bizarre villains to appear anywhere. Of the inventions, the most famous was the two-way wrist radio which later became a television and, finally, a computer. Gould believed that technology was the key to the future. Because of this, he was always experimenting with new fictional inventions that would range from items that would eventually find equivalents in the real world, like the Voice-O-Graph voice print recorder, to the absurd. His placement of an antennaed race of humanoids and giant snails on the moon is, however, regarded by many as the low point of the strip. At any rate, Gould lent the strip a gruesome edge with the villains whose corrupted morals were reflected by their physical deformities. The names of the criminals are evocative in and of themselves: The Blank, Flyface, The Mole, Pruneface, and B-B Eyes. When Chester Gould retired from Dick Tracy in December of 1977, its artistic responsibilities were taken over by Gould's longtime assistant Rick Fletcher while the writing became the responsibility of Max Allan Collins. Collins was a young mystery novelist who would also go on to script comic books like Batman along with his own detective creation, Ms. Tree. Fletcher was eventually replaced by Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist Dick Locher in 1983 and Collins was later replaced by Mike Killian. Although Gould himself did not give it much consideration, Dick Tracy refused to be simply confined to the comics page. He would appear on radio and television, in books and movies—serial and feature—and in animated cartoons. He has been personified by the likes of Ralph Byrd, Morgan Conway, Ray MacDonnell, and, in a 1990 motion picture, Warren Beatty. In addition, Dick Tracy has been the basis for a great multitude of licensed products, from toys to clothing, and, of course, watches. Clearly, the influence of Dick Tracy can be seen across a spectrum of media. Although the serial strip has lost much of its foothold in American newspaper comics, comic books owe much to Dick Tracy. Though perhaps not the greatest draftsman to work in comics, Gould was, without a doubt, original. His use of shadows opened doors for comics to explore darker visuals. One might even see Gould's work as a precursor of sorts to the techniques of film noir, and the police procedure of Dick Tracy became a staple of detective stories in virtually all narrative media. Dick Tracy also served as the model for yet another icon of American culture. Bob Kane credited Dick Tracy as the inspiration for his own creation, the Batman, and Gould's menagerie of grotesque villains found reflection in the likes of the Joker and Two-Face, a virtual duplicate of Gould's Haf- and-Haf. It could be argued that Dick Tracy invented the look that would come to be associated with both an era and a type of character. When we hear the words "hard-boiled" we can't help but think of the trenchcoat and fedora pioneered by the famed Dick Tracy. Further Reading: Crouch, Bill Jr. Dick Tracy: America's Most Famous Detective. New York, Citadel Press, 1987. Roberts, Garyn G. Dick Tracy and American Culture: Morality and Mythology, Text and Context. Jefferson, McFarland, 1993.