Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy Volume 23 Hardcover – 9 January 2018

A good story in the long running series of Dick Tracy. I have collected the whole set of books and look forward to the next book.

Best one yet, I loved the space stories growing up in the sixties!

With Volume 23 we continue with the Moon Phase of Dick Tracy, which I believe will continue to be heavy into the next volume, when it was de-emphasized. This volume we continue with Mr. Bribery, plus introducing another grotesque, Haf-and-Haf (real name Tulza Tuzon).As in the prior volume, we also have the ongoing story of Moon Maid, Junior, and Honeymoon. We see Diet Smith build a fleet of Space Coupes which fly regularly between the Earth and the Moon. He also setup a bunch of emergency shelters across the moon in case any "rocket men" from NASA crash and need help. And supposedly, when the Sun hits the Moon, there is a light atmosphere. Riight.Anyway, Mr. Bribery sees Nah Tay as a liability, and has a Space Coupe pilot under his control grab Nah Tay and dump him in space. But we've seen this again back in Volume 21. But Tracy and friends are turning up the heat on Mr. Bribery and Ugly Christine. Mr. Bribery gets a set of twin scientist to figure out how to pilot a Space Coupe. The four steal a Coupe, and Mr. Bribery is hoping to dump both scientists after learning how to pilot the Coupe. But they turn the tables on Bribery and UC. But in the struggle, the $100,000 payoff to the scientists gets dumped in space and there is no way of getting it.The scientists return to Earth with Mr. Bribery and UC as their prisoners in their hideout, hoping to get a replacement for their payoff. But Bribery & UC get the upper hand and kill them and leave. Bribery is trying to figure out a way to capture the lost money. But Tracy has spotted the stolen Space Coupe and is watching it in hopes of capturing Mr. Bribery and Ugly Christine.Things don't quite work out, but Tracy is able to follow Mr. Bribery and Ugly Christine to their headquarters. Tracy finds Mr. Bribery's hidden cameras which he uses to capture film he uses for blackmail. Tracy takes the tapes, but is soon discovered. In the struggle Mr. Bribery and his secretary escape but Ugly Christine is captured. But things go awry for Ugly Christine and she gets what's coming to her.The police are able to trace Bribery's secretary to their new hideout and capture Mr. Bribery. Oh, and that cigar smoking cat is added to the police menangure that includes the painting monkey from a few volumes ago.And now we get into the story of Haf-and-Haf, which starts out with stabbing in a park. This leads to crows that steal and we learn that Haf-and-Haf is training crows to steal purses in partnership with his wife. But things go awry (like they always do). His wife learns H&H has been meeting his old circus flame, and destroys his setup and he machine guns her! The police are closing in on him and he runs to Zelda, his old girlfriend from his circus days.But the police get a picture out of him and a circus manager comes to the police to reveal who Haf-and-Haf was. He is Tulza Tuzon who had been driving trucks. But an accident when he was driving a truck with acid, and half his face was "melted" by the acid. Not finding any other job he joined the circus as part of the freak show. At the same time Zelda is figuring out that H&H's "divorce" from his wife was he shot her. H&H takes her prisoner as the police again close in on him. They rescue her, but he dies in a flaming plane crash.Or did he? Tracy figures he didn't die, but used his circus knowledge to fake and escape. And suspects he returned home. Which he did, hiding out with the blind widow Steele as her butler. Things closing in, H&H tries to marry the widow to get access to her money, but Tracy and company stops it in time and takes him prisoner.But before we close out the volume, we return to Mr. Bribery, now in jail, who is trying to figure out how to get the $100,000 still in orbit. He works out a design he makes up in the prison shop (claiming its a bird cage). Aided be a pair of Space Coupe pilots, he is broken out with his device. They use it to grab the money, but Mr. Bribery is betrayed. The pilots, who are our next set of grotesques, Mr and Mrs Chin Chillar, drop Mr. Bribery back at the prison (is he dead or alive?? unknown) and take off with the money, being pursued by Tracy & Diet Smith in another Space Coupe.But as they are the cover featured villains for next volume, am sure this will go for awhile. I believe the next volume will continue to be heavy with Moon Age stuff, but think it ends before v25, or is only in that one a little bit.

"I know it might be interesting to try out my new .45 up here on the moon," says Dick Tracey in this collection. This is mild next to other mayhem such as Mr. Bribery and his sister shooting one of the twins in the eye from close range through his glasses. I never could figure out how Mr. Bribery was considered a powerful threat. After many other failures, he failed at cutting his own throat with a sardine tin. On Sunday, October 30, 1966, Gould's striking drawing of an electric chair greeted his readers. Gould's views were contradictory to popular views as he goes on and on about why trees need to be cut down in Chicago to prevent crime. "We all love trees, but we know now that most 'causes' hide treachery." At the same time there is wild satire. When Moon Maid zaps and paralyzes a killer grabbing and about to stab a woman, a news photographer raises his camera and says, "HOLD IT, MISS!" Well, Moon Maid has played the vigilante and killed with her zap. The moon is explored further, Diet Smith proclaiming, "Existence is where you find it! The moon is Earth-man's new world." Police fly around in long buckets controlled by magnetism. Maybe in his way Gould was trying to keep pace with the 1960's. The old-time Tracy fans seemed to hate the space stuff, especially bothered by the constant "He who controls magnetism will control the universe" labels on the strips. I found it imaginative and entertaining. The language of cartoons has always been the language of extremes. It is fun to see Gould let his imagination fly free in the 1960's as he neared the end of his career.

First off, I'm going to assume that if you're making it to Vol 23, you're likely a completist, so don't take this review as telling you to stop reading the series.I've always looked forward to reading Tracy's rightfully-maligned 'moon period', due to the rarity of reprints. The whole subtext is utterly ridiculous, as you can imagine, but still fascinating, from a fan perspective.What made me want to write a review for this volume (my first for the series) is just that for the first 2/3s of the book, you're well aware of Gould really not being at the top of his game, anymore. Often, the storyline goes off the rails in to ridiculous tangents that have nothing to do with the story, often under the guise of really outdated (some, in the case of the "Sawdust" strips, I suspect were dated even for 1966) humor. More than once, I found my attention wandering, saying, "Okay, Chet, focus here. Get back to the damn story!".Similarly, Gould beats a few things to death, whether it be the constant preachiness and reminders of the superiority of magnetism (such as the constant fawning over it by Diet Smith and DT, and the ever-present "the nation that controls magnetism will control the universe" banners), or Mr. Bribery saying "no more corpus delicti' for the 800th time, which got old, perhaps, after the 20th time he says it.That said, there was a noticeable shift with the Haf-and-Haf sequence. Overall, it read much more like a classic DT strip, both in tone and form, and was a lot more focused, too.So, of course, get this book. I look forward to seeing how he gets out of the moon period, as well as seeing the cranky, reactionary, right-wing DT of the 70's.