History ComicStrip / DickTracy

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 descending to being SoOkayItsAverage under succeeding writer Mike Kilian, and then going ''completely and totally insane'' when Kilian died and longtime artist Dick Locher took over the writing duties, as [[http://joshreads.com/?cat=54 some have observed]].

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]].

** And there's the classic [[LooneyTunes Daffy Duck]] cartoon "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery," in which Daffy dreams he's [[DisneyAcidSequence "Duck Twacy."]]

* AuthorExistenceFailure - Three times. Rick Fletcher, who replaced Chester Gould as artist, died in 1983, and writer Mike Kilian died in 2005. Probably the most tragic instance came in 1986 with the premature death of John Locher, who was in the process of taking over the strip's art duties from his father,

* BookSafe: Flattop is hiding out in a boarding house and decides keeping his loot on his person is too risky. So, when he sees an old thick photo album under a table that looks rarely used, he decides to cut out the inner pages and hide his money in it. As it happens, the kid blackmailing Flattop has drowned while ice skating on expensive skates bought with the shakedown money. Those skates led Tracy to the boarding house where he requests the boy's mother to get a photo for the newspaper and so they go to the photo album and the money is discovered. When Tracy asks where this money came from, the mother guesses it must be from her boarder and Tracy proceeds to Flattop's room while the crook is frantically trying to escape.

* CloningBlues - After faking his death (for the second time!), Mumbles returns years later with a shady biologist in tow, claiming to be a clone of the original Mumbles. It's all an elaborate scheme to swindle research money from Diet Smith. Tracy exposes it and Mumbles goes to jail, naturally.

* CreatorBreakdown - Gould actually thought turning a strip about an urban cop into a science fiction series on the moon was a good idea. Then again, given the sheer volume of contempt Gould had towards various 1960s Supreme Court rulings regarding due process rights all criminals have, Gould probably thought turning the book into a sci-fi strip would be better for his mental health.

* [[{{Fiction500}} Fiction 500]] - Diet Smith

* HesBack - Pat Patton, who had been written out of the strip by Dick Locher, made his return within days of Mike Curtis and Joe Staton taking over.

* InTheBlood - Flattop's big extended family, though some of them reform.

* 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!
* MoneyDearBoy - Whenever the intros to the Dick Tracy books and articles regarding Tracy talk about Chester Gould, they tend to point out that Chet did not see himself as an artist creating a fictional narrative to entertain audiences, but rather as a businessman creating a product designed to sell newspapers.

* TechMarchesOn - While some of the extreme examples like the Space Coupe with its magnetic propulsion system are straight examples, Tracy's various wrist communicators have always felt reasonably in line with the times with occasional upgrades over the years.

* TrainEscape - Shakey does it to lose the pursuing Tracy in his climatic attempt to escape.

* UglyGuyHotWife - Subverted with Pruneface and Mrs. Pruneface.

* TheVamp - Breathless Mahoney.

* HotAmazon - Lizz

* RoguesGallery - Flattop, the Brow, Shaky, Itchy, Mumbles, BB Eyes, Pruneface, Little Face, the Mole, Stooge Viller, Steve the Tramp, Big Frost, Influence, Measles, Gargles, Wormy, Blowtop, TV Wiggles, the Blank, Breathless Mahoney, Crewy Lou, and many, many more.

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath - People regularly die in perverse (and graphic) ways, such as getting run over by a steamroller, or having [[EyeScream their eyes gouged out]]. And this is all printed on the comics page. However, unless you're looking for collections aimed at adult readers, don't expect to see these endings --''Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy, I'm looking squarely at you!!'' because many of them were cut in recent years by MoralGuardians concerned that the deaths were a bit TOO graphic... though [[FridgeHorror it did leave the impression that baddies like the psycho killer Flattop, the vile spy The Brow and others are still around and doing, um, what they do best...]]

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath - People regularly die in perverse (and graphic) ways, such as getting run over by a steamroller, or having [[EyeScream their eyes gouged out]]. And this is all printed on the comics page.

* HeartwarmingOrphan - Junior
* [[AmericanAccents Hillbilly Accent]] - B.O. Plenty

However, the strip [[DorkAge went awry]] starting the 1960s with Tracy getting a spaceship called the Space Coupe and eventually going to the moon to meet the Moon People. When the series returned to Earth, with futuristic Moon people technology like ray guns and air cars that look like flying trash cans, Gould struggled to adapt the strip to modern times. Concessions included introducing a hippie sidekick for Tracy and briefly having Tracy grow a moustache; the former stuck around for nearly a decade before being killed off, the latter was forcibly shaven off within several months of it being grown. But most notably, the strip became bitter and cynical, as Gould used Tracy to condemn Supreme Court rulings that gave protection to criminals, which Gould (via Tracy) condemned as handcuffing police officers from beating the shit out of criminals and suspected criminals in order to force them to confess.

* PragmaticVillainy - When Big Boy puts out a million dollar open contract to kill Tracy, the organized crime ruling committee, The Apparatus, confront the old dying gangster to tell him that it must be cancelled because not only is killing police officer nowadays more trouble than it's worth, but that Tracy is gearing up to retaliate with the police department's Organized Crime Unit.

** Since 2006, IDW has been publishing the "Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy". Twelve volumes (covering the start of the strip in 1931 to March 1950) have been released.

However, the strip [[DorkAge went awry]] starting the 1960s with Tracy getting a spaceship called the Space Coupe and eventually going to the moon to meet the Moon People. When the series returned to Earth, with futuristic Moon people technology like ray guns and air cars that look like flying trash cans, Gould struggled to adapt the strip to modern times. Concessions included introducing a hippie sidekick for Tracy and briefly having Tracy grow a moustache; the former stuck around for nearly a decade before being killed off, the latter was forcibly shaven off within several months of it being grown. But most notably, the strip became bitter and cynical, as Gould used Tracy to condemn recent Supreme Court rulings that gave protection to criminals, which Gould (via Tracy) condemned as handcuffing police officers from beating the shit out of criminals and suspected criminals in order to force them to confess.

* KarmicDeath: The main villain of most recent storylines suffer one, usually of the [[CruelAndUnusualDeath "Cruel & Unusual"]] variety.

* ScareCampaign - The story arc about music/movie piracy as not only [[{{Anvilicious}} ham-handed]], [[DidNotDoTheResearch factually incorrect/out of touch]] on most counts, and like much of the strip in recent years [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} utterly bugnuts]], it also included dire warnings about downloading, comparing it to buying drugs, and had [=PSAs=] warning parents they could suffer the consequences for their children downloading [=MP3s=], complete with an image of police car with sirens blaring zooming at top speed toward a suburban home.

* [[MixedMarriage Mixed Couple]] - Dick's daughter Bonnie's boyfriend is Detective Joe Sampson, who is Native American (Yakima, specifically). Dick's younger son Joe is named after him, incidentally.
** And Junior married a space alien, but well, [[CanonDisContinuity we don't talk about that.]] Alas, [[DroppedABridgeOnHim poor Moon Maid...]]

* BeautyEqualsGoodness

* 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, further discouraging people taking the contract by making it a ''bigger'' one.