Chester Gould

Chester Gould (November 20,1900 – May 11, 1985) was the creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip, which he wrote and drew from 1931 to 1977. Gould was best known for his colorful, often monstrous, villains.

Related Topics:
November 20 - 1900 - May 11 - 1985 - Dick Tracy - Comic strip - 1931 - 1977 - Villain

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Chester Gould was born and raised in Pawnee, Oklahoma. In 1919, his family moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma where he attended Oklahoma A & M (now Oklahoma State University) until 1921. That year, he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he transferred to Northwestern University, and graduated in 1923. In 1931, Gould was hired as a cartoonist with the Chicago Tribune and introduced the Dick Tracy cartoon. He drew the comic strip for the next for 46 years from his home in Woodstock, Illinois.

Related Topics:
Pawnee, Oklahoma - 1919 - Stillwater, Oklahoma - Oklahoma State University - 1921 - Chicago, Illinois - Northwestern University - 1931 - Chicago Tribune - Woodstock, Illinois

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Gould's stories were rarely extensively preplanned as he preferred to improvise his stories as he drew them. While fans praised this style as creating exciting stories, it sometimes created awkward plot developments that were difficult to resolve. A notorious case was when Gould had Tracy trapped in a inescapable deathtrap in a caisson. Gould decided to have a fantastic solution of Tracy address Gould personally and having him magically extract him. It was a move that his publisher, Joseph Patterson, personally vetoed and ordered a redraw of the sequence.

Related Topics:
Deathtrap - Joseph Patterson

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Late in the period of Gould's control of it, the Tracy strip became somewhat controversial in some markets. Tracy was considered to be too right-wing and the strip generally too worshipful of the police, with some saying that Gould was using the strip to push his own right-wing agenda such as attacking the rights of the accused to the expense of storytelling.

Related Topics:
Right-wing - Police - Rights of the accused

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Others noted that there also factors like the changing newspaper readership by the late 1950s that Gould failed to realize was less tolerant of his grotesque style. This became as when he introduced a crooked lawyer named "Flyface" and his relatives who were all swarmed by flies at all time and created a negative reader reaction strong enough for paper to drop the strip in large numbers. There was the dramatic change in the stip's premise to a science fiction setting with regular visits to the moon. This led to a rapidly excalating scale of enemies and stories that largely abandoned the pretense of being urban crime drama until the Apollo 11 moon landing prompted Gould to abandon this phase. Finally, there was the overall trend away from strips with continuing story lines toward those whose stories are largely resolved within one series of panels.

Related Topics:
Lawyer - Science fiction - Apollo 11

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~