Dick Tracy comics

Started by Cobblepot4Mayor, Thu, 23 Jan 2014, 21:58

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Currently interested in reading some of the Dick Tracy comic strips. Their quite hard to find in my local comic store. Always been a big fan of the 1990 Warren Beatty film. No idea how faithful or not it was to the source material. I know a few slight details.

I hear Max Allan Collins work is most recommended. Most of the strip appears to be in black and white. Reading the 1990 movies trivia it states it was photographed in something like five specific colours that were all used in the original comic to capture it's look and feel. So are there Dick Tracy strips printed in colour that are fairly close to the movie? If so these are the ones I'd like to check out.

Most of the reprints I've found are either black and white or the have done a more naturalistic color palette (The initial Gladstone "Original Dick Tracy" run or the oversized DC showcase that reprinted the Flattop story). I did find some old Sunday comics pages from around '45 and '46 that shows Gould mainly used the three primary colors and then green. unfortunately these are now lost in the black hole that is my house.

I suggest you pick up the Dick Tracy Volumes from Amazon. They cover around two years per edition and are the most comprehensible collections. Also look for the Authorized Dick Tracy Biography by Jay Maeder which covers practically everything from '31 to '90.

The film is a pretty good if romanticized version of the strip, the violence in the film is pretty tame compared to what goes on in Gould's world.

Why is there always someone who bring eggs and tomatoes to a speech?

I love those old crime/pulp characters like the Shadow (HUGE fan here). I've read a bit of Doc Savage and that character is cool too. Never read Dick Tracy but maybe I'll give it a shot.