Dick Tracy, Volume 15
1953-1954
Hardcover
Stories and Art by Chester Gould
IDW Publishing
Release Date: July 9, 2013
Cover Price: $39.99

Launching in the pages of the October 4, 1931 Detroit Mirror, Chester Gould‘s hard-boiled detective comic strip Dick Tracy has ran in both daily and Sunday newspapers for over eighty years under the stewardship of several talented writers and artists. The tough cop with the yellow trenchcoat, 2-way wrist radio, and a nose and chin of the same sharp shape has taken on villainous underworld grotesques who were deformed both inside and out. The comic strip has inspired a radio series, movie serials, live-action and animated television shows, and feature films spanning from the late 1940s to the summer of 1990 when Warren Beatty directed the big-budget adventure Dick Tracy for Disney and starred as Gould’s iconic crime-fighter.

Tracy may not have had the impact on popular culture as his four-color contemporaries from DC and Marvel Comics, but his exploits in the funny papers have demonstrated a remarkable staying power that shows no signs of letting up. As evidence of this IDW Publishing has been releasing hardcover volumes collecting each and every one of the Dick Tracy comic strips in fully restored reprints. The latest volume finds us in the early years of the baby boomer era in The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy Volume 15: 1953-1954.