Random Notes

Chester Gould, the author of Dick Tracy, was something else. The ideal comic-stripper would have the novelist’s mastery of plot, the playwright’s mastery of dialogue, and the artist’s mastery of drawing. Gould had none of these, but he was a smart sociologist: he knew what Americans in 1931 wanted. This was the Depression, made even more depressing by the prevalence of crime syndicates, in which matter Chicago, where the action was laid, was anything but the Second City. To meet Depression needs, the hero had to be the detective as common man; honest as the day, night, year are long; clean as a whistle; and, though pitted against the world’s most vicious and clever criminals, invincible.

Always in mortal danger from his adversaries, our stalwart, smart as all getout, would get out of any predicament and, finally, get them. But because even the crudest clientele can’t take nonstop invincibility, the cartoonist had to devise ways of letting the bad guys gain control at times, either by saddling his hero with a secondary, less powerful identity (as in Superman and Batman), or by creating a large enough number of colorful scoundrels so that they could temporarily usurp center stage. Thus Tracy came by its rogue’s gallery of funny-repellent, grisly-ludicrous caricatures: Flattop, Lips Manlis, the Rodent, the Brow, Pruneface, Little Face, No Face (i.e., the Blank), and whatever permutations face and its lack can undergo. Not every beloved monster of the strip could make it to the Strip: Hollywood’s version is bereft of, for instance, that unholy family, B. O. Plenty, Gravel Gertie, and Sparkle Plenty.

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Chester Gould, the author of Dick Tracy, was something else. The ideal comic-stripper would have the novelist’s mastery of plot, the playwright’s mastery of dialogue, and the artist’s mastery of drawing. Gould had none of these, but he was a smart sociologist: he knew what Americans in 1931 wanted. This was the Depression, made even more depressing by the prevalence of crime syndicates, in which matter Chicago, where the action was laid, was anything but the Second City. To meet Depression needs, the hero had to be the detective as common man; honest as the day, night, year are long; clean as a whistle; and, though pitted against the world’s most vicious and clever criminals, invincible.

Always in mortal danger from his adversaries, our stalwart, smart as all getout, would get out of any predicament and, finally, get them. But because even the crudest clientele can’t take nonstop invincibility, the cartoonist had to devise ways of letting the bad guys gain control at times, either by saddling his hero with a secondary, less powerful identity (as in Superman and Batman), or by creating a large enough number of colorful scoundrels so that they could temporarily usurp center stage. Thus Tracy came by its rogue’s gallery of funny-repellent, grisly-ludicrous caricatures: Flattop, Lips Manlis, the Rodent, the Brow, Pruneface, Little Face, No Face (i.e., the Blank), and whatever permutations face and its lack can undergo. Not every beloved monster of the strip could make it to the Strip: Hollywood’s version is bereft of, for instance, that unholy family, B. O. Plenty, Gravel Gertie, and Sparkle Plenty.