1900-1985
Comic-Strip Creator

A Unique Comic Strip.

Introduced on 12 October 1931, Dick Tracy quickly became one of the most popular comic strips of the 1930s and beyond. Its creator, Chester Gould, tapped into a contemporary fascination with crime and gangsters through the popular medium of the comic pages to invent one of the most durable characters in American culture. While other comic-strip creators dealt with crime or detectives, none did so with the visual flair for the urban violence and grotesque villains.

Inspiration.

Gould was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma, in 1900. His father published a weekly newspaper, and although Gould studied business administration in Chicago, where he moved in 1921, he went from college to a job drawing for newspapers. An avid fan of comic strips in his youth, he drew his own strips during the 1920s while working for newspaper art departments. In creating Fillum Fables he became...