Broken Frontier

Finally, the story that changed how readers perceived the “funny pages” is brought together in a manner worthy of the deep admiration felt by fans the world over. IDW Publishing is proud to present a deluxe hardcover series collecting Chester Gould's timeless comic strip, Dick Tracy.

When Gould began Tracy, he saw his strip as a place where morality, headlines and the family could come together for the sake of entertainment. And now, 75 years after the first Tracy strips, IDW re-presents Gould’s massive body of work in its entirety.

The first volume of this multi-year project, due in stores on October 25, 2006, will include the five sample strips that Gould used to sell his groundbreaking strip, as well as over 500 comic strips, encompassing the series' beginning, from October 1931-May 1933. Among these strips are the first appearance of many long-time Dick Tracy characters, such as Tess Trueheart, Junior, and Chief Brandon. This special first volume features an overview and introduction from Consulting Editor and longtime Tracy writer Max Allan Collins, as well as an interview between Collins and creator Chester Gould. Each volume will feature book design from award-winning designer/artist Ashley Wood.

“The Dick Tracy strip was one of the most popular, influential comics of the 20th Century. Young boys in particular were attracted to Chester Gould’s crafty mix of violence, humor and melodrama. I know, because I was one of them,” said Max Allan Collins, Tracy strip writer from 1977 to 1993, and author of Road to Perdition. “Chester Gould—unaware that he was changing America’s popular culture forever—was simply doing his best to make Mom, Dad and the kids fight over who got to see the paper first... and to make sure that whoever did turned to Tracy first.”

About the new collection, award-winning creator art spiegelman (In The Shadow Of No Towers) provided a cover blurb, an excerpt of which states that “a complete reprinting of all five decades of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy is a project as mad and quirky as the strip itself! This black and white morality play of Good vs. Evil was famously haunted by its gallery of grotesque and aptly named villains like Mumbles, the Brow and Flattop. Each of their faces was literally a "map," a map of hell, indicated by the most peculiar configuration of lines the artist could manage. What great cartooning… it's time to build new bookshelves to welcome one of America's singular artistic achievements.”