This is the significant panel that features Tracy's vow to avenge the death of Mr. Trueheart by joining the Plainclothesmen.

One of the most fascinating aspects of advanced collecting is studying the tie-in between certain characters and the historical events that coincided with their popularity. But did you know that one such character, whose creation was a direct response to the tumultuous climate of Chicago in the '30s, was Dick Tracy?

Born in Pawnee, Oklahoma in 1900, Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould first became interested in art at the encouragement of a high school teacher. He went on to study at both Oklahoma State and Northwestern University, however, before seriously studying art through courses he took at night after graduation. He was now in Chicago, and he began drawing comics for the Chicago Tribune. Being so closely involved with the newspaper, he couldn't help but notice the constant stream of unsavory headlines. It was the early '30s, and crime was at its height - with gangsters from the North and South sides of the city making news on an almost daily basis.

To counteract all the violence that surrounded him, he decided to create a crime-fighting character - and he named him Plainclothes Tracy. He created a troupe of villains - the first of whom to appear in the strip's debut was called Big Boy and was directly patterned after Al Capone.

He presented his idea to the Chicago Tribune in 1931, where Joseph Patterson, head of the paper, suggested he change the character's name to Dick Tracy (as policemen at the time were often called Dick). This first sequence showed kidnapping of Tracy's beloved Tess Trueheart and the killing of her father, both at the hands of the gang of Big Boy. This horrifying act (shown rather graphically in the strip) prompted Tracy to join the Plainclothesmen Squad and begin his lifelong quest to uphold justice. The daily strip debuted on October 12, and sure enough, within a few years the name Dick Tracy was the most recognized name in America. A little while later, Gould also created a younger sidekick for Tracy - an adopted son named Junior (keep in mind, this was before the days of Batman and Robin) - so the good-guy mentality he was trying to promote would appeal to a broader age group.

One of the reasons Dick Tracy found such astounding popularity was because of its real, hard-hitting tone. There was no fantasy involved in the early stories; they were all directly related to what was actually going on in the world at the time - making them unique relics of American history.

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This is the significant panel that features Tracy's vow to avenge the death of Mr. Trueheart by joining the Plainclothesmen.		1a. The events leading up to the murder of Tess Trueheart's father begin in this panel...		2a. Mrs. Trueheart begs her husband to comply...
3a. ...but to no avail. Crutch has already decided to shoot him.		4a. Gould captured the horrifying reality of Chicago's gang scene perfectly in this panel.		1b. In this first panel, Tracy "walks into a shower of bullets" in his quest for the killer. Notice the blood on his face - he's been grazed by a bullet - and the policeman in the car has been killed.
2b. Other Plainclothesmen rush to the scene, with their guns drawn.		3b. The gangsters are getting hit from all sides - Crutch, the one who killed Tess' father, is now killed.		4b. It's a good Thanksgiving when justice is served...
A 1952 Dick Tracy Police Station		This car came with the police station
This early Dick Tracy target set came with a rubber dart gun set, a tin target and two darts		The original art from the Dick Tracy comic book #102