Good collection ( )

From editors Max Allan Collins and Dick Locher (who worked on the comic strip in the 1980s) comes The Dick Tracy Casebook, released in 1990 to coincide with Warren Beatty's film based on the comic. Locher and Collins select a story from each decade beginning in the 1930s, with two stories for the 1950s, to demonstrate the character's growth and series creator Chester Gould's evolution as a writer and artist. The stories are fun and both Gould and his successors show a remarkable aptitude for writing a lengthy story over the course of several months in the serialized comic strip format. For those unfamiliar with Gould's work or the original Dick Tracy strip, this volume serves as an excellent introduction, demonstrating both how Gould reflected the time in which he wrote the Brow as a Nazi spy, and how he anticipated modern detection technology, in the form of advanced forensics. The editors' introductions help to explain any missing continuity, such as when Junior suddenly ages during the 1950s, and explains why they chose certain stories. ( )

A collection of Dick Tracy's favorite adventures (chosen by Max Collins and Dick Locher) from 1931 to 1990. Each adventure is preceded by an annotative page expanding upon the story and its connection with the times. "Dick Tracy" has received more prestige and respect than it is really entitled to, but it is a pretty entertaining cop strip. ( )