History Main / DickTracy

* AnyoneCanDie - Moon Maid, Groovy Grove, Model Jones

** Since 2006, IDW has been publishing the "Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy". Eleven volumes (covering the start of the strip in 1931 to September 1948) have been released.

** And Junior married a space alien, but well, [[DisContinuity we don't talk about that.]] Alas, [[DroppedABridgeOnHim poor Moon Maid...]]

* ContractOnTheHitman - Fearing the police's eventual retaliation when Big Boy Caprice offered a one million dollar open contract on Tracy's life, [[BigBadEnsemble other criminals]] offered a similar contract on the life of whoever claims the prize on Tracy's life.

* BeautyEqualsoodness

* MeaningfulName - Pretty much everybody. However, a few minor characters who got promoted to series regulars wound up permanently stuck with names that only related to the plotline which introduced them. Poor Vitamin Flintheart!

* TheBusCameBack - The new creative team brought back Pat Patton, as well as several villains who hadn't been seen in decades.

* TheBusCameBack - The new creative team brought back Pat Patton, as well as several villains who hadn't been seen in decades.

** Gould himself said that the worst death of all went to The Brow, who [[{{Squick}} got impaled on a flagpole]] so hard that he went [[NightmareFuel ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE GROUND]].

The strip has been depicted with numerous media adaptations: movie serials, TV shows (in the 1950s), cartoons, and a full-length 1990 [[Film/DickTracy theatrical film]] starring Warren Beatty, whose specific tropes are discussed here.

The strip would be more famous for its strange looking villains, whose villainy was marked with a RedRightHand. Imagine characters with names like Flattop, Pruneface and The Brow and you'll know what they look like.

Furthermore, the strip's violence pulled no punches with an intensity of bloody violence for its time that would impress SamPeckinpah and QuentinTarantino. For instance, Tracy would often shoot for the head, but the villains often had a KarmicDeath; the fate of Gargles being chopped to pieces in a glass factory by falling broken pieces of sheet glass shattered in a gun battle is a good example.

In 2011 Locher retired and a new team headed by writer Mike Curtis and DC/Marvel artist Joe Staton took over the strip. The restart already has fans talking of a [[GrowingTheBeard|renaissance]].

In 2011 Locher retired and a new team headed by writer Mike Curtis and DC/Marvel artist Joe Staton took over the strip. The restart already has fans talking of a [[GrowingTheBeard}renaissance]].

Now, as of 2011, the strip looks to be able to improve with the new team of Mike Curtis of ''ShandaThePanda'' fame writing and DC/Marvel mainstay Joe Staton drawing.

** Judging by the decline of the strip's artwork quality since 2006, some fans consider Dick Locher to have suffered one of these, most likely because he's experienced both the death of both his son (John Locher, who was co-artist in the mid-80s) and one of his closest friends (Mike Kilian, who was the writer between 1992 and 2006) while working on the strip.

* OffModel - The strip's artwork tended to veer into this in Gould's later years, although given that he was prone to experimentation in this period, some of it may have been a conscious choice on his part. Played ''very'' straight with the current art team Dick Locher and Jim Brozman, to the point where fans have openly questioned whether Locher or Brozman themselves actually know what would be considered '''on'''-model for the characters.
** Note that Locher's art has only gone in this direction in recent years. Locher has been doing the art on the strip since the early 80's, including a good chunk of the time Collins was writing it.

Finally, Gould retired in 1977 and mystery writer Max Allan Collins took over writing and did his best to restore the best of the strip's past. Silly characters like Moon Maid and the above mentioned hippie sidekick were KilledOffForReal, legacy versions of popular (and deceased) villains were introduced (and in the cases of some, like Pruneface, flashback stories were written to bring them back) and the gadgets were scaled back to a more reasonable level. In addition, he also had Tracy get his complaints about reforms to due process out of his system when he temporarily resigned from the force to become a private detective. Sadly, Collins was forced off the strip in the 1990s, leading to the series going through various hands as it went ''completely and totally insane'', as [[http://joshreads.com/?cat=54 some have observed]].

[[caption-width:300:Dick Tracy, contemplating the violence that he will no doubt be inflicting.]]

* {{Anvilicious}} - Most of the storylines about crime, most especially "harmless" crime

* CompleteMonster - Quite a few of the villains.

* DorkAge - Arguably from the start of the "Space Era" in the 1960s until Max Allan Collins took over as writer, and ''definitely'' since Dick Locher became the writer in 2006.
* EnsembleDarkhorse: The Blank; though he only appeared in one story, he's largely one of the more memorable villains Tracy fought.
** Toss in Flattop; originally a one-shot character, he proved to be so popular that not only did Gould keep bringing him back, but once he killed him off, introduced his family to continue his legacy.
** And Mumbles. Popular enough to [[NotQuiteDead be brought back from the dead TWICE]].
* EthnicScrappy - Joe-Jitsu and Go-Go Gomez in one of the animated series. Think about the worst way you could animate an Asian and a Mexican while still having them be good guys. That's about it.

* GoddamnedBats[=/=]DemonicSpiders - The snipers in the NES game.

* NightmareFuel: The Blank's real face.
** Also the general freakish nature of most of Tracy's rogue gallery.
** The Brow had a ColdBloodedTorture device consisting of a small mechanical iron maiden that closed around the victim's leg. [[spoiler:Eventually the villain gets caught in it ''by the head''.]]

* TheWesley - Moon Maid

** Since 2006, IDW has been publishing the "Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy". Ten volumes (covering the start of the strip in 1931 to March 1947) have been released, with Volume 11 (which will print up to September 1948) is scheduled to come out early 2011.