Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 22 Hardcover – June 27, 2017

NOTE: this review is for Volume #22...don't blame me, Amazon puts it up on the page for Volume 24.After hearing so many people complain about the "moon era" in Dick Tracy, I almost didn't get volume 21, and this volume; #22. I am glad that I got this book and judged for myself. I think the Moon maid is a brilliant and enchanting addition to Dick Tracy. I just don't really get all the complaints; I mean crime and action is really never very far away, and often interlaced with the Moon Maid story, with the Moon Maid herself having many crime-fighting tricks up her sleeves. The art is great, humor is in abundance. You can tell that Gould really enjoyed himself during this period.I was kind of stuck on the 30's and 40's era Tracy, but I am starting to really appreciate how things change over the years. I think If I drew a comic every day for 30 plus years, I would, at some point, want to throw something truly different into the mix...like Gould does with the Moon Maid.

I've been awaiting this volume since IDW started this series in 2005; it represents a watershed moment for us Tracy fans who had the rug pulled out from under us in 1989 when Blackthorne Publishing went belly-up. Blackthorne's DICK TRACY WEEKLY was canceled after #99, just as the Moon Maid saga was getting good. Tracy, upset over Junior's running off to the moon with Moon Maid, resigned (!) on 4/26/64, his forlorn figure walking away from Chief Patton, Liz, and Sam...then nothing! Now, nearly thirty years later, we get to see what transpired next: the Skeleton in the Elm Tree, Junior and Moon Maid's wedding, the Disappearance of Lita Flite, the introduction of Matty Square and his gang, and, of course, Mr. Bribery and Ugly Christine. I don't believe any of the strips from this era have ever been reprinted before? Can't wait for future volumes that will contain the last twelve years of Mr. Gould's iconic run...Fellow Blackthorne mourners...OUR TIME HAS COME!!!

It's great that these classic comic strips are being reprinted - for those of us who fondly remember them and for a new generation to discover and appreciate!

The print quality is good. Glad the publisher made it this far with the reprinting

I can't quite figure out those who want Chester Gould to only do hard-boiled detective. Love between those from different planets is fairly daring for newspaper strips. Is it to much for the detective fans? I enjoy the hard-boiled Tracy as much as the next person - I have the entire collection up to this book. But Gould does a lot of other new things here. Moon Maid has super-hero powers - she generates heat and fires electric blasts from her fingers that can kill. She is totally vigilante, taking the law into her own hands. Tracy approves, but I guess that's not hard-boiled enough for many. Even Max Allan Collins, who writes all the introductions to these collections, weighs in on Tracy's controversial departing from his norm - everything from portrayal of the moon's cultural benefits to the hot-tempered governor. So suddenly we want realism from Tracy? In the meantime, the crooks here are straight-out caricature, hilarious and one of the ways Gould keeps me entertained. Matty Square may be one of the most incapable crooks ever. In his bumbling, he kills his own gang and even loses his cigar smoking cat to Mr. Bribery, whose clients by the way seem to lose all ability to detect Mr.Bribery blatantly picking money from their pockets. The only criminal success Marry Square has had is accumulating stacks of appliances and groceries, and we don't know how he did that. These wacky criminals are the things I like Tracy for as he had to keep pushing his own crazed envelope. Moon Maid was in many ways more original than his peculiar rogue's gallery. Tracy's winking at her crimes - well she is his daughter-in-law - is in keeping with his character and views. The "scientific" things such as magnetism being the key to interstellar travel, were things readers took as seriously as believing that criminals looked and acted like Mr. Larceny, who spends much of his time babbling to a rose and has a sister whose eyes are always covered by her hair named Ugly Christine. It is all a part of Chester Gould's mad universe, which he got away with in the then straight-laced world of newspaper strips. A moon person, a murderer with little electric horns and super blasts coming from her hands, marries and has a baby with a man who physically seems to be a different species. These were my favorite Tracy adventures so far. My complaint is that the reproduction of the artwork, always fantastic in the books in the early volumes, is again spotty here.

These are the best compilations. Very well bound.

Another fine entry in the Dick Tracy series from IDW.

great

Another great collection of stories from Dick Tracy. I have all 24 books.