Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive

Incorruptible cop Dick Tracy is one of those properties that is visually stunning. With it's bright colors and ever so colorful villains, you can't look away from this gritty crime comic created by Chester Gould. 

My biggest problem with Dick Tracy was that it wasn't readily available in my area growing up as a kid. You would think a big city such as Raleigh, NC would have a newspaper that carried Dick Tracy. But except for when I would travel into very rural country to see either my grandmama or my great-grandmother, I never got to read Tracy's exploits all that often.

I was a big fan of the Warren Beatty picture from the 90s. Being only 11 or 12, I didn't know that it was supposed to suck. But even looking at the film today, you can't deny that the producers and make-up team did a pretty darn good job of making a comic strip come alive on the silver screen.

When it was announced last year that Dick Tracy was coming to comics in an all-new series and that not just one, but 3 Allreds were to be involved, I was overjoyed. Michael and his brother, Lee Allred wrote the script to this quasi-modern rebooted origin of the world's greatest cop. Comics legend Michael also penciled everything with his equally legendary wife Laura coloring the book. Dark Corridor's Rich Tommaso inked the book and he's so good at it that his inks don't flush out Mike Allred's iconic art style. 

I thought that this was a great origin tale. It had a classic feel to it with very little modern changes. Dick Tracy had always been ahead of it's time with two-way radio wrist-watches and engine-less cop cars. Thus, any new changes to the technology, while far-out, didn't seem all that odd. 

The extra material was really my only complaint. There's a timeline of important moments in Dick Tracy history which I really enjoyed. But for some reason, it stops abruptly sometime in the 1950s without any warning or explanation. Are later years planned for future collected works of Dick Tracy comics? I know that there's a new Dick Tracy miniseries being published right now (Dick Tracy Forever). Is that the plan? A small blurb promising such would have been greatly appreciated.

Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive was a super fun book by those amazing Allreds. I love their work so freakin' much. I hate that the only blemish to this awesome miniseries from IDW Publishing was the director's cut material which is left unfinished. It just doesn't seem fair. But I must stick to my ratings. Otherwise, this was a nearly flawless work.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.