"There was then a dramatic change in the strip's setting, leaving behind the strip's origins as an urban crime drama for science fiction plot elements and regular visits to the moon. An increasingly fantastic procession of enemies and stories ensued. The ""Apollo 11"" moon landing prompted Gould to abandon this phase. Finally, ""Dick Tracy"" was beset by the overall trend in newspaper comics away from strips with continuing storylines and toward those whose stories are largely resolved within one series of panels. Gould, his characters, and improbable plots were satirized in Al Capp's comic strip ""Li'l Abner"" with the ""Fearless"
"comic books and strips since their inception, books and strips actually devoted to criminals and criminal activity are relatively rare. The comic strip ""Dick Tracy"" was perhaps the first to focus on the character and plots of a vast array of gangsters. Chester Gould's strip, begun in 1931, made effective use of grotesque villains, actual police methods, and shocking depictions of violence. ""Dick Tracy"" inspired many features starring a variety of police, detectives, and lawyers but the most memorable devices of the strip would not be featured as prominently until the publication of ""Crime Does Not Pay"" in 1942. As"
"and extraterrestrial contacts, mitigated somewhat against the strip's being recognized for its early use of realistic police procedure, but any examination of the ""Tracy"" strip from its beginnings in 1931 through the 1950s makes Gould's status as a pioneer in the police procedural subgenre clear. The success of ""Tracy"" led to many more police strips. While some, like Norman Marsh's ""Dan Dunn"" were unabashedly slavish imitations of ""Tracy"", others, like Dashiell Hammett's and Alex Raymond's ""Secret Agent X-9"", took a more original approach. Still others, like Eddie Sullivan's and Charlie Schmidt's ""Radio Patrol"" and Will Gould's ""Red Barry"", steered a"
"October 4, 1931. The original comic was based on a New York detective Gould was interested in. The comic then branched to the fictional character that became famous. He drew the comic strip for the next 46 years from his home in Woodstock, Illinois. In order to keep informed of police methods, Gould took courses in forensics and investigative procedures. He was later proud of having introduced in 1946, the two-way wrist radio for Tracy, and in 1947, the closed-circuit television, both of which were later invented, though in somewhat different forms. Gould's stories were rarely pre-planned, since he preferred"
"to California in 1930, he freelanced to several syndicates before creating ""Red Barry"", which he wrote and drew from 1934 to 1938. Gould drew ""Red Barry"" in a crisp, clean line style. His assistant on the strip was Walter Frehm. Contract disputes between Gould and King Features brought ""Red Barry"" to an end in 1939. Will Gould Will Gould (1911–1984) was an American cartoonist best known for his comic strip ""Red Barry"". Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Gould's strip about two-fisted undercover cop Red Barry began Monday, March 19, 1934, as one of several strips introduced to compete with ""Dick"
"the police to help unravel difficult cases. He should combine both brains and brawn, be able to think quickly and reason cleverly and able as well to slam bang his way out of a bar room brawl or mob attack. Take every opportunity to show him in a torn shirt with swelling biceps and powerful torso ala Flash Gordon. The pages are to run the same size as ""New Comics"" but to contain eight panels a page instead of six"". The character first appeared as one of several ongoing features, in the debut issue of ""Detective Comics"", originally an anthology"
"ideas, and ""Dick Tracy"" was first published on October 4, 1931. The strip was instantly popular, and was soon appearing in newspapers across the United States. The strip's popularity also resulted in the creation of numerous ""Dick Tracy"" merchandise, including novelisations, toys, and games. In April 1937, a poll of adult comic strip readers in ""Fortune"" magazine voted ""Dick Tracy"" their third favourite comic strip (after ""Little Orphan Annie"" and ""Popeye""). However,""Dick Tracy"" was also attacked by some journalists as being too violent, a criticism that would dog Gould throughout his time on the strip. Tracy uses forensic science, advanced"
"partner in order to publish ""Detective Comics"" #1 through the newly formed Detective Comics, Inc., with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack S. Liebowitz, Donenfeld's accountant, listed as owners. Wheeler-Nicholson was forced out a year later. Originally an anthology comic, in the manner of the times, ""Detective Comics"" #1 (March 1937) featured stories in the ""hard-boiled detective"" genre, with such stars as Ching Lung (a Fu Manchu-style ""Yellow Peril"" villain); Slam Bradley (created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster before their character ""Superman"" saw print two years later); and Speed Saunders, among others. Its first editor, Vin Sullivan, also drew the debut issue's"
"than star-driven. Some typical examples are ""The Cat Creeps"" (1930), a remake of ""The Cat and the Canary"", ""The Monster Walks"" (1932), ""Night of Terror"" (1933) with Bela Lugosi, and ""One Frightened Night"" (1935). The 1930s was the era of the elegant gentleman detective who solved drawing-room whodunit murders using his wits rather than his fists. Most were well-to-do amateur sleuths who solved crimes for their own amusement, carried no weapons, and often had quirky or eccentric personality traits. This type of crime-fighter fell out of fashion in the 1940s as a new breed of tough, hardboiled professional private detectives"
"Siegel (script) and Joe Shuster (Art) in New Fun Comics # 6, where he confronts Vampire Master. In Detective Comics # 31-32, Batman fights a vampire. By the mid-1940s, some detective and crime comics had incorporated horror motifs such as spiders and eyeballs into their graphics, and occasionally featured stories adapted from the literary horror tales of Edgar Allan Poe or other writers, or stories from the pulps and radio programs. The single-issue Harvey Comics anthologies ""Front Page Comic Book"" (1945), bearing a cover with a knife-wielding, skeletal ghoul, and ""Strange Story"" (July 1946), introduced writer-artist Bob Powell's character the"
"the comic strips. Just as in the contemporary James Bond films, the cars featured were an integral part of the character image conveyed by the stories. Modesty Blaise Modesty Blaise is a British comic strip featuring a fictional character of the same name, created by author Peter O'Donnell and illustrator Jim Holdaway in 1963. The strip follows Modesty Blaise, an exceptional young woman with many talents and a criminal past, and her trusty sidekick Willie Garvin. It was adapted into films in 1966, 1982, and 2003, and from 1965 onwards eleven novels and two short story collections were written. In"
"mentored Nebel as he published his work. Over the next 12 years, Nebel published at a fast pace, writing up to 5000 words a day, while publishing in ""Black Mask"" and numerous other pulp magazines, including ""Action Stories"", ""Danger Trail"", ""Dime Detective"" and ""Sea Stories"". Shaw encouraged his authors to develop series characters, and Nebel created the detective duo of Captain Steve MacBride and newspaper reporter Kennedy of fictional “Richmond City”. MacBride was a hardboiled homicide detective while drunken, wisecracking Kennedy provided comic relief. The pair was featured in 36 of Nebel’s stories spanning 8 years.[6] In the 1930s, Nebel"
"Police Comics Police Comics was a comic book anthology title published by Quality Comics (under its imprint ""Comic Magazines"") from 1941 until 1953. It featured short stories in the superhero, crime and humor genres. The first issue of ""Police Comics"" featured the debuts of Plastic Man, Phantom Lady, Human Bomb, Firebrand, and Mouthpiece, all of which, except the latter, are characters that continued to be published decades later by DC Comics after it acquired Quality's properties. Firebrand, the initial lead feature, was soon eclipsed by Jack Cole's popular Plastic Man, who took the cover and the lead from issues #5-102."
"in 1941 (reissued as ""Dick Tracy vs. the Phantom Empire"" in 1952). The sequels were produced under an interpretation of the contract for the first ""Dick Tracy"" serial, which gave license for ""a series or serial"". As a result, Chester Gould received no further money for the sequel serials. In these serials, Dick Tracy is portrayed as an FBI agent, or ""G-Man"", based in California rather than as a detective in the police force of a Midwestern city resembling Chicago, and, aside from himself and Junior, no characters from the strip appear in any of the four films. However, comic"
"by John Dillinger, Charles ""Pretty Boy"" Floyd, and Kate ""Ma"" Barker. More to the point, Gould was making a genuine attempt to portray police work realistically. Once ""Tracy"" was sold to the ""Chicago Tribune"" syndicate, Gould enrolled in a criminology class at Northwestern University, met with members of the Chicago Police Department, and did research at the Department's crime lab, to make his depiction of law enforcement more authentic. Ultimately, he hired retired Chicago policeman Al Valanis, a pioneering forensic sketch artist, as both an artistic assistant and police technical advisor. Later stories, in which Gould veered into space opera"
"De Haven praised Gould's ""Dick Tracy"" as a ""A weird, demented, and (no kidding) outrageously funny American Gothic"", while comics historian Brian Walker described ""Dick Tracy"" as a ""ghoulishly entertaining creation"" which had ""gripping stories filled with violence and pathos"". Gould drafted an idea for a detective named ""Plainclothes Tracy"" and sent it to Joseph Medill Patterson of the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. Patterson suggested changing the hero's name to Dick Tracy, and also put forward an opening story line in which Tracy joined the police after his girlfriend's father was murdered by robbers. Gould agreed to these"
"Roy Carson Roy Carson was a British hard-boiled detective created in 1948 by Denis McLoughlin and his brother Colin and first published by Boardman Books in their series of rotogravure comic books (1948–1954). Roy, with his plucky girl companion Silk, faced all manner of underworld adventures with an odd combination of American and British elements. Boardman Books also used Roy Carson in text stories published in their children's annuals in the 1950s. In the late-1950s and early 1960s, Roy Carson stories were reprinted in a number of British albums and annuals. In 1999, the comic fanzine ""Best of British"" #1"
"20th century. Physically, Li Shoon is a ""tall and stout"" man with ""a round, moon-like yellow face"" with ""bulging eyebrows"" above ""sunken eyes"". Personally, Li Shoon is ""an amazing compound of evil"" and intellect, which makes him ""a wonder at everything wicked"" and ""a marvel of satanic cunning."" In 1937, the publisher DC Comics featured ""Ching Lung"" on the cover and in the first issue of ""Detective Comics"" (March 1937). ""Yellow Peril: The Adventures of Sir John Weymouth–Smythe"", by Richard Jaccoma (1978) is a pastiche of the Fu Manchu novels by Sax Rohmer. Set in the 1930s, the novel is"
"called ""Dick Tracy's Crimestoppers."" This feature ended when Gould retired from the strip in 1977, but Max Allan Collins reinstated it, and it is still part of the comic strip. After Gould's retirement, Collins initially replaced the Textbook with ""Dick Tracy's Rogues Gallery,"" a salute to memorable ""Tracy"" villains of the past. Chester Gould retired from comics in 1977; his last ""Dick Tracy"" strip appeared in print on Sunday, December 25 (Christmas Day) of that same year. The following Monday, ""Dick Tracy"" was taken over by Max Allan Collins and longtime Gould's assistant Rick Fletcher. Gould's name remained in the"
"period were Fredric Brown, Paul Chadwick and, to a certain extent, Cornell Woolrich, although these writers tended to rarely use the Private Eye protagonists that many associate with pulp fiction. Quite a few comic book impossible crimes seem to draw on the ""weird menace"" tradition of the pulps. However, celebrated writers such as G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Clayton Rawson, and Sax Rohmer have had their works adapted to comic book form. In 1934, Dashiell Hammett created the comic strip ""Secret Agent X9"", illustrated by Alex Raymond, which contained a locked-room episode, albeit a rather feeble one. One American"
"(See below.) When Chester Gould retired from writing and drawing the ""Dick Tracy"" newspaper strip in late 1977, it fell to crime writer Max Allan Collins to take up the writing reins (with Gould's assistant Rick Fletcher on art until his death in 1983, when Dick Locher took over) until 1993. CheckerBPG released their first ""of several"" volume of Collins' ""Tracy"" works in November 2003 as ""Dick Tracy: The Collins Casefiles Volume 1"", and a second and third volume followed within a year. Reprinted in the 'regular' trade paperback format, Checker's volumes print three daily strips per page, with the"
"ended in December 1897. After ""Hogan's Alley"", the ""World"" published a number of comic strips from the late 1890s until the paper's 1931 demise. The prolific cartoonist C. W. Kahles was responsible for numerous comic strips for the ""World"". He is credited as the pioneer of daily comic strip continuity with his ""Clarence the Cop"", which he drew for the ""World"" beginning in the latter 1890s. It introduced to newspapers the innovation of continuing a comic strip story in a day-to-day serial format, and is also considered to be the first police strip. Kahles' ""Sandy Highflyer, the Airship Man"" (1902–1904)"
"33 (Western Publishing). In 1969 the US cartoonist, Al Williamson, arranged for Pitt to ghost an eleven-week sequence of his daily strip, ""Secret Agent Corrigan"", which was followed by a further four weeks in 1972. Pitt also provided poster illustrations for his childhood hero, ""Flash Gordon"". In 2001 a limited edition of ""Gully Foyle"" was finally published and released. Pitt died on 2 April 2002, at the age of 77. Stan Pitt Stanley John Joseph Pitt (2 March 1925 – 2 April 2002) was an Australian cartoonist and commercial artist. Pitt was the first Australian comic artist to have original"
"initially involves Rorschach's suspicion of a plot to kill costumed heroes (""masks""); his continuing investigation into Blake's murder leads to a much larger, more horrifying secret. The Comedian appearances in ""Watchmen"" consist of flashbacks of the other characters, as well mentions in ""Under The Hood"", the fictional autobiography of Hollis Mason (Nite Owl I) that appears in ""Watchmen"" issues 1-3. The Comedian was a cigar-chomping, gun-toting vigilante-turned-paramilitary agent. When he first became a costumed adventurer in 1939, he dressed in a clown-like costume with a simple domino mask. A brutal vigilante, Blake manages to expunge most organized crime from the"
"Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy"", no less an authority than Ellery Queen suggested that Tracy, predating Webb, Treat, Creasey, and McBain, was the first ""truly"" procedural policeman in any fictional medium. Certainly ""Tracy"" creator Chester Gould seemed to be trying to reflect the real world. Tracy himself, conceived by Gould as a ""modern-day Sherlock Holmes"", was partly modeled on real-life law enforcer Eliot Ness, and his first, and most frequently recurring, antagonist, the Big Boy, was based on Ness's real-life nemesis Al Capone. Other members of Tracy's Rogues Gallery, like Boris Arson, Flattop Jones, and Maw Famon, were inspired, respectively,"
"Crimebuster (Boy Comics) Crimebuster (Chuck Chandler) is a fictional boy hero, appearing as the lead feature in ""Boy Comics"" in the 1940s and 1950s. Dressed in a hockey uniform and cape, and accompanied by a performing monkey named Squeeks, he fights crime to avenge his parents' deaths. He is described by Joe Brancetelli in ""The World Encyclopedia of Comics"" as ""a hero, yes, but first a boy... arguably the best-handled boy's adventure feature ever to appear in comics."" Some sources credit the character solely to Charles Biro; others co-credit Bob Wood, co-credited on the first cover of the new ""Boy"
"Nancy Drew: Girl Detective Nancy Drew: Girl Detective replaced the long-running Nancy Drew mysteries series, which began in 1930. This new series is written in first person narration, from Nancy's point of view, and features updated and overhauled versions of the main Nancy Drew characters. Nancy Drew in this version is a less than perfect teenage girl prone to forgetfulness, an object of jokes, and interested in other subjects over mysteries. Bess Marvin has gained skills in mechanics and computers and is no longer slightly overweight, and described as fashionable and trendy. George Fayne has become moody and sloppily dressed"
"was concurrently illustrating ""Secret Agent X-9"", which premiered January 22, 1934, two weeks after the two other strips. It was ""Flash Gordon"" that would outlast the others, quickly ""develop[ing] an audience far surpassing"" that of ""Buck Rogers"". ""Flash Gordon"", wrote Stephen Becker, ""was wittier and moved faster,"" so ""Buck's position as America's favorite sci-fi hero"", wrote historian Bill Crouch, Jr., ""went down in flames to the artistic lash and spectacle of Alex Raymond's virtuoso artwork."" Alex Raymond has stated, ""I decided honestly that comic art is an art form in itself. It reflects the life and times more accurately and"
"Fish Police Fish Police is a comic book series by the cartoonist Steve Moncuse. The plot centers on law and crime in a fictional underwater metropolis with the protagonist, Inspector Gill, trying to solve various crimes, often Mafia-related, while avoiding being seduced by the buxom Angel Jones. The comic featured several marine species as its characters, while the plots and dialogue were reminiscent of film noir. Original ""Fish Police"" stories were published from 1985 to 1991. Sam Kieth (""The Maxx"") inked ""a single panel and drew a 'Next Issue' pin-up"". The story centers on Inspector Gill, a fish detective who"
"1930 as the collection ""Enter the Saint"" (which is where most readers were first exposed to Teal), though the earliest stories in the series would not be published in book form until they were rewritten and included in a later collection, ""Featuring the Saint"". At some point, Teal received a promotion to Chief Inspector and he is identified with this rank for the first time in the short story collection ""The Brighter Buccaneer"". Teal is described as a heavy set, blue-eyed, perpetually weary policeman who, instead of smoking (a common behaviour during the era), chews gum incessantly. Little if any"
"one on Daisy Mae in 1934. ""Li'l Abner"" also features a comic strip-within-the-strip: ""Fearless Fosdick"" is a parody of Chester Gould's ""Dick Tracy"". It first appeared in 1942, and proved so popular that it ran intermittently over the next 35 years. Gould was personally parodied in the series as cartoonist ""Lester Gooch""—the diminutive, much-harassed and occasionally deranged ""creator"" of Fosdick. The style of the ""Fosdick"" sequences closely mimicks ""Tracy"", including the urban setting, the outrageous villains, the galloping mortality rate, the crosshatched shadows, and even the lettering style. In 1952, Fosdick was the star of his own short-lived puppet show"
"character quickly faded away and has made only a handful of comics appearances since the mid-1930s. Brick Boulder (original Italian name 'Rock Sassi', which is a pleonasm as ""sassi"" means ""rocks"") is a plainclothes police officer who usually works together with Detective Casey. He first appeared in the story ""La lunga notte del commissario Manetta"" (English title: Casey's Longest Night) in 1997, written by Tito Faraci and drawn by Giorgio Cavazzano . Like Casey, Rock Sassi is a bumbling and incompetent policeman. Curiously though, his intelligence seems to vary, even between stories by the same writer. He is physically more"
"Alex Raymond Alexander Gillespie Raymond (October 2, 1909 – September 6, 1956) was an American cartoonist, best known for creating ""Flash Gordon"" for King Features in 1934. The strip was subsequently adapted into many other media, from a series of movie serials (1936–1940) to a 1970s television series and the 1980 feature film. Raymond's father encouraged his love of drawing from an early age, leading him to become an assistant illustrator in the early 1930s on strips such as ""Tillie the Toiler"" and ""Tim Tyler's Luck"". Towards the end of 1933, Raymond created the epic ""Flash Gordon"" science-fiction comic strip"