Hermes Press announced the creation of a new noir Dick Tracy adventure. The story will take place during the 1940s and will be in the mold of classic years of the feature. It is being written and drawn by Dick Tracy veteran artist and writer Richard Pietrzyk, who consulted with Chester Gould during the years Pietrzyk worked on the daily comic strip.

The original Dick Tracy strip premiered a little over a year after the beginning of the Great Depression, on October 4, 1931. It was a groundbreaking strip which would be the benchmark for hardboiled detectives moving forward. Created by cartoonist Chester Gould, who had unsuccessfully tried for ten years to launch a nationally syndicated strip, Dick Tracy was Gould’s reaction to the crime and criminals which held Chicago captive during the late 1920s and 1930s. 

This reboot of the series will remain true to the origins of the character, and some of the ideas behind it stem from conversations Pietrzyk had with Gould. 

With Dick Tracy, Gould created a tough and highly stylized world developing characterizations and concepts which influenced popular culture for years to come. Gould flattened the look of his characters, inked with a bold line, and embraced the surreal possibilities of urban violence by creating characters and storylines that were both memorable as they were bizarre.

Tracy had an unmistakable profile and fought villains who were models for a legion of comic book and comic strip villains to follow. Over 80 years after the creation of villains the like of Flattop, Pruneface, Big Boy, and Mumbles, these characters still resonate as influential archetypes. Gould depicted Tracy’s Chicago as a dark, flattened, menacing Gotham City, besieged by evil, a concept still popular in todays comic books and movies. 

Richard Pietrzyk’s Dick Tracy graphic novel is arriving late Summer 2019.