Review: Dick Tracy: The Collins Casefiles Volumes 1, 2, and 3

Dick Tracy really is the man. I don't mean was the man, I mean he is the man. I realize that might not be a name that many of you have heard in a long time, some of you have never heard his name at all.

Dick Tracy is a famous crimefighter who was a superhero before there were superheroes. Created by Chester Gould in 1931, this era of the nation's history saw a rise of real organized crime such as Capone and other mobsters. Gould's famed title character really won the heart of Depression era audiences, as Tracy would take on mobsters whose evil seemed to always be matched by their ugliness. Villains such as Pruneface, Flattop, Mumbles were members of the Tracy rouges gallery, and Tracy's devotion to the law always took them down.

Chester Gould died in 1985, but he relinquished the strip to Max Allan Collins. Collins is one of greatest graphic novel writers, and wrote The Road to Perdition, which was later adapted into a movie starring Tom Hanks and Jude Law.

Checker Book Publishing has recently compiled Max's work with the yellow hat detective in Dick Tracy: The Collins Casefiles Volumes 1-3. They are a collection of daily strips that appeared in the late seventies, early eighties. For some reason, the color Sundays don't seem to appear. I have to admit that some of Tracy's cases seem laughable. After all, Tracy's villains are really more allegorical figure types than they are people with motivations.

One of the most laughable is Z.Z. Rowe, otherwise known as "The Computer Killer". Apparently, Mr. Rowe's computer records kept getting screwed up with another Z. Rowe, so he took it out on the computers at certain businesses in a hare-brained attempt at revenge.

In one case, Tracy meets a man named Tulza Tucson, otherwise known as Haf and Haf. This man's origin is similar to Two-face from Batman, as one side of him was disfigured with acid. In the story, Haf and Haf gets his face fixed with plastic surgery, but everyone doubts that his morality has been equally healed. The story is quite similar to one that appeared in the first issue of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, written by now comic legend Frank Miller. There is a clear influence of Dick Tracy in Miller's later works of Sin City.

After all, Dick Tracy was able to be quite dark and serious. On one story, Tracy's great villain Big Boy is dying, and his last wish is a million-dollar hit on Tracy. One of the attempted killers sets a car-bomb, but it is sadly detonated by Moon Maid, the wife of Dick Tracy Junior. The strip gets very noir, especially after Junior goes after the killers to kill them himself. Fortunately, he cannot bring himself to do it, and Tracy doesn't choose to press charges against him.

To be honest, I am surprised that Dick Tracy isn't appearing in the papers anymore. That is, not the ones that carry in my neighborhood. I would think that in a Post 911 world, Dick Tracy would be a contemporary hero waging the war on terror against organized crime.