“Chester Gould introduced a new hard-hitting type of realism [that] marked a radical and historic departure: the comics were no longer just funny.” — Jerry Robinson

Dick Tracy brought blunt, ironic, and retributional violence — to the comics page. The quintissential Tracy line about his crimefighting tactics? “I’m going to shoot first and investigate later!” The strip is also notable for its introduction of scientific detection to comics, a theme that Gould continued to exploit well into the 1960s. And now, nearly ninety years after the first Tracy strips, Chester Gould’s massive body of work is collected in its entirety.