Which brings up the second problem, people reviewing comics and graphic novels always seem to know the history of the series, the author, what strange publishing diversions occurred, etc. I just picked this one up because I saw Jonathan Lethem wrote it, and I think he’s a great author full of thoughtful ideas.  See website.  Futher insight on Lethem at Powell interview.  

But when I starting reading it, I immediately became intrigued by Edie the sympathetic nurse from Oklahoma. Why refer to her as “the nurse from Oklahoma”? Are we a particularly empathtic  (currently used as an unpleasant adjective, but only in relation to supreme court judges) lot? Was that a way of saying she was naive? I mean none of the other characters had a state attached to their persona. Maybe Lethem just understands, like the rest of us Okies, that Oklahoma is the center of the universe. I’d like to ask him why he picked Oklahoma for Edie and what does it mean? Characters also refer to Rumblefish.  Another Oklahoma connection.  Someone must have been an S.E. Hinton reader.

This is a story about a kid, Titus Alexander Island,  whose parents were apparently robots. He has a relationship with the superhero Omega, who spends a lot of time being locked up. Omega seems to hang out in a mobile fry kitchen eating Bald Eagles. There’s the particularly annoying and nasty pseudo-hero,  Mink, who is coincidentally dating Edie. Women are always suckers for the wrong guy. The history of  Omega is slowly unraveled, as Omega is unravelling. There’s the omnipotent statute, “There are those who ask: If you know and see so much, why not lift a finger to alter the outcome? Believe Me, I ask myself that question every day.”  There’s the sad story of the high school kid being bullyed and beaten. There’s nanotechnology and Mink’s hand growing legs. There are so many issues, it’s hard to know where to begin. 

Four stars later ****,maybe a five. I liked this strange comic/graphic novel. The illustrations worked with the captions, dialogue and characters. At the end of the novel, Karl Rusnak, explains how Gerber raised caption narration to an art form. Well Lethem and Rusnak are genius at it as well. There is so much here that you just have to read this one for yourself. Farel Dalrymple is very clever, and I would like to see more graphic novels he has illustrated. It takes a long time for revelations to begin, hey, I’m in comic VIII before I really start to see the light. And comic X doesn’t leave much hope, the girls are alone, Titus is trying to recreate his parents and the heroes have been “warehoused”.  I suspect I could read this 20 more times and find things I’ve missed, and still find it strangely compelling.   

Links to people that know how to review comics, http://www.comicbookresources.com/?id=155&page=user_review

or Extremely graphic blog or Nerdage

Libraries or Amazon.com should have other books on Gould and Tracy; Dick Tracy: The Official Biography by Jay Maeder, Dick Tracy: America’s Most Famous Detective by Bill Crouch, Jr.  and for a more scholarly approach, read Dick Tracy and American Culture by Garyn G. Roberts. The last has a fantastic bibliography.

And there is a series of collected strips called Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy , Volumes 1-6 (so far), published by IDW.

Did you know that when a signed picture of Chester Gould was taken from the Oklahoma State University (later recovered) the Oklahoman accidentally declared him deceased and Gould took issue, being very much alive at the time. Here’s the note sent to the Oklahoman and all was corrected and forgiven.

In case you can’t read the print under the note:

‘VERY MUCH ALIVE’ as the author of the Dick Tracy comic strip, Chester Gould sent this message to The Oklahoman from his Woodstock, III., home to prove it. Last week a framed picture of the crimestoppor extraordinaire was taken from the student union at Oklahoma State University, and Gould was erroneously ideniified in the early edition Aug. 31  as “the Late” on the word of a student union official. The Oklahoman and OSU, Gould’s alma mater regret the error. 

There’s a Chester Gould/Dick Tracy museum in Woodstock, Illinois.