Mark Arnold:
Real Heroes
Mark Arnold reviews the Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy and American Splendor.
The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy
Following the great success of Fantagraphic’s Complete Peanuts series and Hank Ketcham’s Complete Dennis the Menace series, IDW didn’t want to be left out of the action, by tackling another popular long-running comic strip, Dick Tracy.
Those more familiar with Chester Gould’s graphic style of later years and rogue’s gallery of strange villains such as Pruneface and Flattop, may be quite shocked to discover that the comic strip was more straightforward than in later years and featured a villain no more shocking than Stooge Villar in its earliest days. This is where it started and set the stage for the next 45 years, when other hands took the strip over.
American Splendor (Vertigo)
Harvey Pekar has been very successful writing a comic book series about his own life. Though independently produced over the years, this new series follows the same format as previous incarnations but is now published by DC’s Vertigo imprint. Pekar deserves this more mainstream attention, for in recent years he successfully overcame cancer (see Our Cancer Year) and also was the subject in two feature films, Comic Book Confidential and more importantly, American Splendor starring Paul Giamatti.
For those still unfamiliar with Pekar’s work, he’s somewhat of a Sad Sack that usually finds happiness despite his meager surroundings.
Mark Arnold is a comic book and animation historian and a writing, art, and film/video production professional. He writes comic books and articles on comic books and animation for various publications in addition to scripts, short stories and novels. He is also skilled in sales, marketing and promotion, and has film and TV production experience with digital video, video tape, and film. He has many online websites including Fun Ideas, Mark's Rare Comics, The Harveyville Fun Times!, So Rare!, and Food Shop. He also writes an (almost) daily blog and writes and draws a weekly comic strip called Protecto, the Little Robot. For the curious, Mark can be reached online at thft@att.net. Whew!