{PDF EPUB} Dick Tracy the Thirties Tommy Guns and Hard Times by Chester Gould Chester Gould
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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Dick Tracy the Thirties Tommy Guns and Hard Times by Chester Gould Chester Gould. Chester Gould is the creator of 'Dick Tracy' (1931), the world's most famous detective since 'Sherlock Holmes'. For 46 years, Gould captivated newspaper readers with his clever mix of suspense, grotesque villains, explicit violence, melodrama and well-documented use of scientific research methods. 'Dick Tracy' was the first newspaper comic strip with a more realistic approach. Its hard-boiled portrayal of violence and well- documented depiction of actual crime-investigating methods made it one of the most popular and influential comics of all time. Gould managed to capture the zeitgeist of the 1930s and 1940s and inspired many film noir stories set in the same time period. He was also a memorable caricaturist, particularly when creating his unforgettable ugly gangsters. Gould proved that comics could tell more mature stories with cliffhangers that kept readers looking out for the next episode. Countless daily, weekly and monthly serialized comics series have followed his path since. Early life and career Gould wasn't destined to become a newspaper cartoonist, though. He was born in 1900 in Pawnee, Oklahoma. His family was descended from original 19th century settlers in Oklahoma. His father was in the printing business, but didn't support his son's artistic ambitions. Among Chet's earliest art jobs were sign and window painting. The magazine The American Boy published his first cartoon during World War I, and he subsequently made editorial cartoons for the Tulsa Democrat and sports cartoons for the Daily Oklahoman. Gould headed for Chicago, Illinois, in late 1921. He applied at the art departments of several newspapers, and eventually landed a job as a commercial artist with the Chicago Tribune. In 1923, he earned a degree in Commerce and Marketing from Northwestern University. He joined the Chicago Evening American of William Randolph Hearst in 1923 and stayed there for six years. Besides sports and editorial cartoons and column illustrations, he also had his first try at comic strips. 'The Radio Cats' (1924) was a comedy feature, while 'Fillum Fables' (1924) spoofed movies, largely inspired by Edgar Wheelan's 'Minute Movies'. He also had a topical cartoon feature about the big shots and show people of Chicago, called 'Why It's A Windy City'. He continued to develop more personal comic strip projects, but all were rejected. In 1931 he had a short-lived strip called 'The Girl Friends' in the Chicago Daily News. Dick Tracy In October 1931, Chester Gould's career got a boost when he sold his comic strip idea about a hard-nosed detective to Captain Joseph Patterson of the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News. Initially called 'Plain Clothes Tracy', Patterson advised Gould to name the comic 'Dick Tracy'. It was under this title that the daily strip made its debut in the Detroit Sunday Mirror on 4 October 1931. It soon appeared in The New York Daily News and The Chicago Tribune, and has since then been distributed through the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate (now Tribune Media Services). From then on, Chester Gould devoted his life to writing and drawing the daily and Sunday 'Dick Tracy' comic. The Sunday feature had a companion strip about a sexy cigarette vendor called 'Cigarette Sadie' in the early 1930s, and a funny animal topper called 'The Gravies' between 1956 and 1964. Chester Gould's 'Dick Tracy' was groundbreaking in more ways than one. It was not the first newspaper serial with a continuing storyline, but the first in the realistic genre. Earlier adventure serials had a more romantic or fantastic approach, such as Harold Gray's 'Little Orphan Annie', Hal Foster's 'Tarzan' and Dick Calkins' 'Buck Rogers'. But Gould's action and violence was downright in-your-face. There was no shortage of inspiration when Gould started his feature. The Prohibition era (1920-1933) was a booming period for urban crime organizations in Chicago, and the author just had to look in the paper to get ideas. Tracy himself was for instance largely inspired by real-time crimefighter Eliot Ness. Another source of inspiration were the popular Hollywood gangster and film noir films starring Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney and/or Humphrey Bogart. Scientific research during the Miss Egghead storyline (5 June 1958). Besides actual police cases, Gould also studied the scientific methods for law enforcement. He regulary worked with the Chicago police force to obtain documentation on weapons and scientific procedures. As his reputation grew, he also visited J. Edgar Hoover's FBI headquarters and Scotland Yard. This makes 'Dick Tracy' also the first comic strip to depict procedural detective work. Facial composition, fingerprint authentication, ballistics, lie detector tests and fabric analysis were among the many modern law enforcement techniques that Gould showed in his comic. After Gould introduced the technological genius Diet Smith and his son Brilliant in 1946, innovative anti-criminal aids like security cameras, the teletype and handheld video cameras became more prominent. The most notable inventions were the two-way wrist radio and the subsequent two-way wrist video camera, through which Tracy could communicate with his colleagues at any time. Gould was inspired by his friend Al Gross - the inventor of the walkie-talkie and the telephone pager - who was actually developing such a device in his workshop. Tess Trueheart's father has the questionable honour of being the first character to be gunned down in a comic strip (16 October 1931). Grotesque villains The first storyline literally started with a bang: The father of Tracy's fiancee, Tess Trueheart, was shot and Tracy had to find the murderer. The first villain was Big Boy, a criminal who was based on real-life gangster Al Capone. It was the first in a long line of rogues, whose names and physical appearances became stranger and more grotesque with every continuity. This was, according to the author, to compete with the real-time criminals on the front page (including Hitler and Mussolini in the 1940s). The Mole, from Dick Tracy's 21 November 1941 episode. Most of Gould's villains got (nick)names based on their looks, quirks or other traits. Among the many iconic thugs were Stooge Viller, the king of pickpockets (1933), the counterfeiter The Mole (1941), the Nazi saboteur Pruneface (1942), the contract killer Flattop (1943), Shaky the con man (1944), a Nazi spy called The Brow (1944), the drug trafficker Measles (1945), the stealing singer Mumbles (1947), the cockfight organizer Miss Egghead (1958), the lawyer Flyface (1959) and the disfigured criminal Haf-and-haf (1966). Despite their unique characterizations, Gould's antagonists were all equally cruel, ruthless and violent. They did not hesitate to use the most extreme methods for torture and install the most ingenious death traps. While most storylines started with a clever plot or criminal scheme, they usually ended in an exciting cat-and-mouse game between Tracy and his enemy. Most of Tracy's enemies don't make it to prison (16 May 1944). Other characters In addition to the many criminals, Gould added other memorable characters to his comic. At the home front, there was aforementioned Tess Trueheart, who later became Tracy's wife and the mother of his child, Bonnie Braids. In one of the early storylines, Tracy saved an orphan boy called Junior, whom he and Tess later adopt. Both his wife and adoptive son encountered the consequences of Tracy's job, as they have been subjected to either kidnapping or torture on more than one occasion. This didn't stop Junior from forming the Crimestoppers with a couple of friends in the late 1940s. Gould introduced this gang of crime-fighting kids to raise awareness among youngsters how to recognize suspicious situations. The Crimefighers disappeared from the storylines in the early 1950s, but the Sunday page kept a weekly frame devoted to the Crimestoppers' Textbook, a series of handy illustrated hints for the amateur crime-fighter. Being a crime fighter is not without risk (17 May 1947). In the early years, Tracy's regular sidekick was Pat Patton. Pat became police chief after the original chief, Brandon, resigned in shame after being fooled by a thug called Big Frost in 1948. Tracy's new help was Sam Catchem, and the team was later also reinforced by the female police officer Lizz (1955). Some of the more likeable characters with a dubious trackrecord were kept in future storylines for comic relief, such as retired ham actor Vitamin Flintheart (1944) and the hillbilly Plenty family (1944-1945). The public's sentiment for Gould's characters was thus, that when B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie got a baby girl called Sparkle on 30 May 1947, it caused wide media coverage and related merchandising. Unlike in most newspaper comics, Gould's child characters grew older as the years passed. B.O. Plenty celebrates his fathership in 1 June 1947. Dick Tracy in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s In the 1940s, Gould was at the top of his game. Around this time the somewhat naive drawing style of the early years had evolved into his trademark stylized angular designs. He also developed his most memorable storylines and villains around the same time. Gould's successful run continued throughout the 1950s, but by the 1960s one could say that 'Dick Tracy' "jumped the shark". The space age had inspired a storyline in which the detective went to the moon. Moon technology became a fixture in the comic, and a humanoid called Moon Maid became part of the regular cast in 1964.