Chester Gould

Chester Gould (/ɡuːld/; November 20, 1900 – May 11, 1985)[1][2] was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip, which he wrote and drew from 1931 to 1977, incorporating numerous colorful and monstrous villains.

[3] While still a senior in high school, he was discovered by the yearbook staff at Oklahoma A&M University and was hired to make line drawings for the 1918 and 1919 editions.

[8] For the next ten years, Gould submitted many ideas for comic strips to Joseph Patterson, publisher of the Tribune, but none were accepted.

In 1928, he joined the Chicago Daily News and launched his third comic strip, called The Girl Friends, while continuing to send ideas to Patterson.

In June 1931, by Gould's account, he was listening to a radio series based on Sherlock Holmes stories and reading a newspaper account of Chicago's most powerful mobster, Al Capone; he was inspired to create a strip about a heroic detective fighting organized crime and corruption in the city.

While fans praised this approach as producing exciting stories, it sometimes created awkward plot developments that were difficult to resolve.

[14] Later in the strip's Gould period, Dick Tracy was widely criticized for being too right-wing in character and as excessively supportive of the police.

However, the 1960s introduction of crooked lawyer Flyface and his relatives, surrounded by swarming flies, created a negative reader reaction strong enough for papers to drop the strip in large numbers.

Finally, Dick Tracy was beset by the overall trend in newspaper comics away from strips with continuing storylines and toward those whose stories are largely resolved within one series of panels.

The strip continued with Gould's longtime assistant artist, Rick Fletcher, producing the artwork and Max Allan Collins as writer.

The exhibition was curated by Bill Crouch, Jr. From 1991 until 2008, the art and artifacts of Gould's career were displayed in the Chester Gould-Dick Tracy Museum that operated from the Woodstock, Illinois, Old Courthouse on the Square.

[22] Visitors to the Museum saw original comic strips, correspondence, photographs, and much memorabilia, including Gould's drawing board and chair.