Uncategorized

Chester Gould’s Birthday

83 Comments

Today is the birthday of a guy with one weird imagination – the cartoonist Chester Gould, creator of the character Dick Tracy. Gould was born on this day in the year 1900.

I remember reading this comic strip as a kid and losing my way in the complicated parade of eccentric characters (Flattop, The Mole, Diet Smith, Mr. Intro) and strange plot twists. The relentless pressure of producing a daily comic strip for over four decades does not promote careful storytelling.

The part I remember best about Dick Tracy was how Chester Gould introduced unusual gadgets and devices into the strip, giving us the Two-Way Wrist Radio in 1946, which he upgraded to the Two-Way Wrist TV in 1964. Preposterous! Until five years ago, I was certain people would never be able to carry TV’s around in their pockets.

If we accept the idea that Chester Gould’s “space period” Dick Tracy was way out in front of our development of technology, expect to see magnetic levitation as a common method of travel across wide distances (Air Cars) and easy commuting to the moon (Space Coupe)! In fact, the story line had Dick Tracy’s adopted son (Dick Tracy Jr.) marrying a lunar resident (Moon Maid).

I admit I always liked the idea of magnet-powered travel. If it works for metal shavings on Wooly Willy, why not the rest of us?

Of course if Gould was a 100% correct predictor in everything he drew, men would have embraced the bright yellow trench coat long ago.

What’s your favorite comic strip?

83 thoughts on “Chester Gould’s Birthday”

    1. Hobbes: “A new decade is coming up.”
      Calvin: “Yeah, big deal! Where are the flying cars? Where are the moon colonies? Where are the personal robots and the zero-gravity boots, huh? You call this a new decade?! You call this the future?? HA! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the disintegration rays? Where are the floating cities?”
      Hobbes: “Frankly, I’m not sure people have the brains to manage the technology they’ve got.”
      Calvin: “I mean look at this! We still have weather?! Give me a break!”

      Like

      Reply

    2. There was a Calvin and Hobbes strip that I had on my fridge for a number of years that, alas, got lost in a move, in which Hobbes explains why being a fierce tiger requires a good liberal arts education. Wish I could find it again. Maybe it’s in one of the books and I just haven’t found it yet…

      Like

      Reply

    3. My six year old grandson is almost a perfect Calvin. He lives in several imaginative worlds. (For Christmas he asked for a tuxedo for when he plays a spy.) Hates school, fights doing homework, uses a vocabulary several years over his age, sometimes terrorized by imagined fears. Has a stuffed penguin with which he has to sleep, although he is slowing giving that up, along with the blanket, which is only rarely brought out except to sleep. Acts like Calvin about food, bath time, and being bored.
      My favorite C & H trivia: his teacher, Ms Wormwood, is named for the demon in “The Screwtape Letters.”

      Like

      Reply

      1. I know a guy who loved Calvin and Hobbes and is an adult version of Calvin. He is a fun guy to be around, but he will wear you out by keeping things stired up all the time.

        Like

        Reply

    4. Pure coincidence: I am using a C & H cartoon as the centerpiece of my sermon tomorrow, for Christ the King Sunday no less. I think it is the only C & H strip, a Sunday color one too, in which neither Calvin nor Hobbs appears.

      Like

      Reply

  2. Good morning to all. The first cartoon strip that comes to mind as a favorite is Doonesbury. It was better in it’s earlier days. I think it is still good. I do also very much like Calvin and Hobbes. Pogo is another old favorite

    Like

    Reply

  3. Rise and shine baboons!

    I am a long term Doonesbury fan. I neverget tired of Trudeau’s humor. Every day I get The Flying McCoys, Doonesbury, and Close to HOME from go comics. The rest just repeat themselves.
    Happy Saturday! I will see you bookish baboons tomorrow.

    Like

    Reply

    1. It appears that there’s a whole universe out there that I know nothing about! Is go comics an on-line service? Never heard of The Flying McCoys or Close to HOME.

      Like

      Reply

  4. I still miss the Far Side. Every once in awhile, there would be one that I had no clue as to the reference, and I always thought, “somewhere, someone is laughing there head off over this, I wish I knew why”.

    Like

    Reply

  5. Does The Oatmeal count?…XKCD (another online comic) can also be quite funny – but online comics seem a different critter than the syndicated offerings in the paper. Besides the long-standing Doonesbury, I find a certain quirky charm in the Edison Lee strip. And Heart of the City’s Dean amuses me to no end (I know many “Deans”…many of them masquerading as grown-ups). Mark Trail is one that I never understood as a kid, and it is about as exciting as buttered Wonder bread, but I find myself reading every day none-the-less (frankly, I don’t understand why Cherry puts up with Mark gallivanting off all the time – but maybe she has a little something on the down low to keep her amused while he is off being manly…)

    Like

    Reply

  6. I was raised on a steady diet of Pogo, and it changed my life. I still say things that strike most people as ungrammatical or silly, when I am just speaking Pogo talk. I just loved that strip.

    I later fell in love with The Far Side, and my cabin still has a Far Side compilation or two in the biffy.

    Then–and this was inevitable–I became a huge fan of Calvin and Hobbes. They’re in the biffy, too.

    Now I don’t even open the comics pages.

    Like

    Reply

  7. R. Crumb. Well, I guess he is know for his comic books and might not really be consider as a producer of cartoon strips. I think he fits because his comics can be thought of as very long cartoon strips. I found his crazed hippy characters very fascinating. .

    Like

    Reply

  8. Roz Chast
    Dick Guindon
    B. Kliban “Love to eat them mousies. mousie’s what i loves to eat. bite they little heads off. nibble on they little feet.”

    busy here – breeding season and everyone wants a piece of Mr. T right now!
    good day to you All!

    Like

    Reply

  9. Calvin and Hobbes, definitely. We have some books around which the kids wore to shreds.Now if I find one cheap at a thrift store, I buy it and hide it, even though most of the kids are out of the house now. I just want some that still have their front and back covers.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Yep, there you go. I knew someone would mention it before I got the end of the trail here.
      I have a few Opus Sunday comics taped to my office wall.

      Like

      Reply

  13. This will sound weird I know, but I can still remember plot lines from Steve Canyon in the 70’s. I couldn’t watch the soaps, but I could read Steve Canyon and remember when he married Summer Olson, much to the sorrow of Poteet Canyon.

    But what is my cell phone number, I cannot tell you.

    Like

    Reply

    2. For several years I had a post-it note w/ my cell phone number stuck on the inside of the phone itself…. I didn’t even know how to look the number up!

      Like

      Reply

      1. I have been asked for my cell phone number in three places where they make you turn off your cell phones (library, clinic, hospital). they thought I was weird becauseI did not know it. But how does anyone memorize a phone number they never use, especially over the age of 50?

        Like

        Reply

  14. Afternoon all — just got back from a funeral — in Norwood/Young America. Not the best place to be driving to/from today. LOTS of accidents, emergency vehicles, etc.

    I also love most of the strips above. Marmaduke was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. Also Wizard of Id. These days I’m fond of Stone Soup, Zits, The Norm. I also have Doonesbury bookmarked and for awful puns and witty wordplay, I rely on Pearls Before Swine!

    Like

    Reply

  15. “Bloom County” is supreme for me: so many characters, so many subplots, such with, drawing style, I love is cartooning in the Movie “Secondhand Lions.” Makes me want to see the cartoon that supposedly was drawn by that character.
    Then Pogo.
    Then C & H.
    I remember with clear recall of details Blondie, Little Iodine, Gasoline Alley, Nancy, Dennis the Menace, others.
    But Dick Tracy made me aware of color as expression, that reality did not have to be true color, just that color could be manipulated. He did not draw very well, so he compensated with color. The movie was poor, but they got the use of color right.

    Like

    Reply

      3. plainjane–prepared to be simply charmed. Few movies today seek to charm, and I know of no other that pulls it off since the late 40’s. But Caine and Duvall together reveling in their skills are build to do that.

        Like

        Reply

      4. I can’t wait. Love both of those actors. Watching good actors ply their trade well is such a pleasure.

        Like

        Reply

  16. Evening–

    I grew up reading Dennis the Menace comic books and the ‘Pocket Full of Fun’ books of Dennis. I had an autographed picture of Dennis by Hank Ketchum (the artist) but I haven’t been able to find it for years. Not sure what became of it. (I have also lost my autographed picture of Flip Wilson I got in 4th grade. Bummer) I think I had a couple Archie comics too but I never thought they were ‘cool’ so I won’t talk about them.
    We have collections of Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes. My brother had the B.C. collections and those were always fun.

    Was busy doing random home things today. You’ve never seen anything go wrong so quickly as me doing caulk around windows…

    Snowing here too but just a dusting.

    Like

    Reply

      1. Or Alberta, our kitten, chewing through the electrical cord power adaptor to my Macbook Air. Had to replace it today, to the tune of $80.00!

        Like

        Reply

  17. My new favorite comic is Cul-de-sac.
    My old favorites are the ones you all mentioned.
    There was one short-lived one that I liked called Wildwood. It had 2 ministers in it: Pastor Bobo who was a bear and Pastor Carol (Carolyn?) who was a fox. The janitor was an alcoholic rabbit and the secretary was an OCD penguin. I still have one of those on my basement door.

    Like

    Reply

  18. If you listened to PHC tonite, you heard Gus Connelly in the choir. Remembering back to the day he was born I felt as proud as a doddering aunt (and I dodder fairly well if I do say so myself).

    Like

    Reply

    2. Thanks for the shout-out for Gus, Beth-Ann. We were there in the audience and it was a fine show – fun to watch AND hear.

      Like

      Reply

  19. It interests me that nobody has commented on the dark, misogynistic side of Chester Gould. There were two cartoonists in the 1940s who sometimes revealed a frightening, ugly attitude toward their fellow man. Al Capp was the other.

    Chester Gould got involved with the FBI’s hatred for famous criminals. There were some mighty vile villains in Dick Tracy. The series also presented violence in a way I found shocking as a child. When characters shot each other with machine guns they shot out disks from each other’s bodies, and then the character would go about walking and talking with these holes his body.

    It isn’t smart to get all worked up about the neuroses of cartoonists, but I’ve always figured that Chester Gould and Al Capp were borderline mentally ill.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I never liked Lil Abner and disliked it more after seeing Al Capp as a guest on TV. I once ended up directing the musical after the original director got sick. It was the funnest cast I ever directed, not best but most fun, but I so hated the whole superior tone behind Al Capp’s point of view.
      I also dislike Bye, Bye Birdie and ended up directing that, too.

      Like

      Reply

    2. If you read about Bill Watterson (C&H), you will be convinced he would not pass the MMPI.
      “History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction.”

      Like

      Reply

      1. I’m not, and never have been, an avid reader of cartoons, so I make no claim to expertise on the subject. I’m familiar with most of the cartoons mentioned in today’s blog only through very intermittent and casual perusal. Some of the comments made about the various cartoonists have prompted me to do a little investigation on line so I’d have some understanding for the basis for those comments. I’m puzzled, Clyde, by your comment that Bill Watterson would not pass the MMPI. I haven’t seen anything to indicate that Watterson has some sort of personality disorder. He seems like a very private, but thoughtful, man. What am I missing? Same thing with Steve’s comment about Chester Gould, and Clyde’s comment about Al Capp.

        Like

        Reply

      2. Al Capp–make Bachman male, foul-mouthed, more arrogant, more judgmental and spiteful, and willing to say in public what she really feels. He was a regular guest for awhile on different talk shows from Buckley to Carson and he wore out his welcome on all of them. But he was funny, intelligent and had a worthy counterpoint to popular points of view, but so so harsh. He spoke on college campuses, for large fees, and then spent much of his time insulting the students. He would say things that insulted and then go on profane rants. He was the Limbaugh of his day with much less power.
        Watterson has a book in which he comments about his cartoons and tells his story. You can buy it cheap at B&N a lot. It looks like one of his other collections. I am not home to look up the title. Controlling and intense are the words.
        He is very private and picked fights with his publishers over things like size and shape of cartoons and he and fights intensely to keep his material from use, any use. You never see his cartoons used in books or places, which is my non-contact contact with him. He will not give permission, if you can get to him to ask, which you cannot. But he is nothing like Capp. I admire his refusal to market Calvin. He has never authorized anything like that. All those Calvins on pickup windows are unauthorized. Breathed cashed in big time and Watterson thought it was beneath his point of view to market etc. But as a former teacher of gifted and talented, I love his cartoons. I raised a Calvin and have one in the next generation now.

        Like

        Reply

      3. Thanks, Clyde. Like I said, I knew absolutely nothing about either Al Capp or Watterson until I looked them up.

        Like

        Reply

  20. I love Calvin and Hobbes. I recently saw a complete collection of the Far Side in Barnes and Noble that I may hint at as a nice Christmas gift. The New Adventures of Queen Victoria is pretty funny. I also have been following 9 Chickweed Lane. We subscribe to the New Yorker mainly for the cartoons.

    Like

    Reply

  22. man doonsbury dude like zonker is the man.
    i was a sunday morning comics n the couch kid as a little guy. my dad would grab the sunday paper when we got back form church and ask us to point out which one to read next. blondie and dagwood charlie brown beetle baily dondi lil abner dennis the menace popeye mark trail who was the family with the next door neighbor oh hi and lois, then came andy capp bc doonsbury calvin and hobbs the far side and a whole new angle on comics. it was great. i cant get my kids to care at all. new yorker has always been fantastic and the old playboy cartoons were tastefully wicked in the 60’s and 70’s. the fabulous furry freak brothers was a fun hippy comic book

    Like

    Reply

    1. When I was a kid, comic books, in Danish translation, of Hi & Lois, Blondie and Dagwood, and Popeye, as well as several comics books with Disney characters were favorite Christmas presents every year. The whole week between Christmas and New Year’s would be spent reading them by the whole family. Seems like certain Christmas presents were a tradition, you knew who would get what, with an occasional surprise thrown in.

      Like

      Reply

  23. Many of mine have been mentioned, but C & H is hands down favorite – I also raised a Calvin. Also loved For Better of For Worse, thought Elly was my alter ego. And I enjoyed The Wizard of Id and Shoe. I still like Garfield enough to cut them out and send them to my nephew. I like the single frame things like Close to Home, Ballard Street, loved Guindon back in the day.
    Oh, and I love Arlo and Janis’ offbeat style, speaking of aging hippies.

    Like

    Reply

  25. Today in church they read the gospel of the sheep separated from the goats. Once again, the goats did not do well. Barb how do goat people deal with this scripture passage?

    Like

    Reply

    1. they do not acknowledge the humans’ bible. they have their own, and in it, the goats always win. they don’t believe in sin, guilt, or shame. they are not Lutheran, in other words. (i don’t mean to offend – i am only saying what the goats have told me)
      their Eden is MeadowWild farm, i think.

      Like

      Reply

  26. My favorites are C & H, Bloom County and Peanuts. I have two C & H books, The Days are Just Packed and the Tenth Anniversary Book. In the Tenth Anniversary, Bill W. explains his views on the changing world of comics, licensing and syndication, formatting and his process of character development. Clyde is correct, he was possessive about his characters. He worked on them and developed them over time and he wanted them to be understood the way he understood them, fully, which he felt was too complex for t-shirts, coffee mugs or window decals. I think of that every time I see one of those decals in the rear window of a big, loud Chevy or Ford.

    I liked the original Peanuts and I used to have many of the original comic books. Lately the writers have been stealing from C & H (armies of snowmen) and I really dislike that. It amazes me that they’re getting away with it.

    Have fun at BBC, readers!

    Like

    Reply

  27. Impossible for me to have one favorite.
    Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon is stunning sci-fi at it’s best. And Raymond was a head and shoulders better artist than Dick Calkins who did Buck Rogers. (Raymond is head and shoulders better than most folks who’ve ever put pen to paper!)
    I have a great self-help book that uses Schulz’s Peanuts strips as examples of how to deal with issues in your life. There’s a lot more to Peanuts than just what’s on the surface.
    Scott Adams’s Dilbert is a modern classic.
    So is Calvin & Hobbes.
    Modesty Blaise was a great action/adventure series.
    Pogo had such an influence on social commentary.
    Hal Foster’s Tarzan brought E.R Burroughs’ creations to life long before movies.
    Archie Goodwin & Al Williamson’s Secret Agent Corrigan was another great, great strip (the compilation books are just coming out now!)
    Geez, just too many to name… Too much great work by great artists.

    Check this out if you’re into Chester Gould specifically:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bM0V8JbOhU

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to Dale Connelly Cancel reply