Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy Volume 11 Hardcover – February 15, 2011

Why are volumes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 and 11 of the Dick Tracy series readily available to purchase from a huge number of sources at reasonable price but vol 8 is only available second hand at exhorbitant prices (ie US$1000 give or take). One would think that everyone who has a copy of vol 8 would also have copies of all the other vols. Why would someone only purchase vol 8. More to the point why did they only publish a small number of copies of vol 8 knowing full well that everyone with the other vols would also want vol 8. Is this a case of insider trading with an employee of the publisher knowing that there would not be a second edition printed buying up all available copies to make a killing at a later date. I have all vols except vol 8...so my collection has a huge hole in it ...what is the point of having a two year gap in a collection. No one would buy a set of encyclopaedias with one book missing. It is pointless for the publisher to keep issuing this series...No one in their right mind will buy future vols if they cannot complete their set. It was my intention to purchase vol 8...but didnt do it straight away...foolishly believing that this book would be available for some period of time. It was six months max. I was going to buy a copy on the net a couple of weeks ago for us $150 but decided to wait for a cheaper option. It appears I made a mistake. I should have bought two copies at that price and sold the second one for a large profit.

Volume 11 is really great, packed with action and interesting characters. I am hooked on Gould's artistic style and quirky story lines. What a unique talent.I thank god for Chester Gould and Dick Tracy. I have had so much enjoyment over the past few months reading these "complete" volumes. I wish that volume 1-6 had been printed in the larger format, as the Sundays are so tiny in those, but it is just great to have them all nonetheless.IDW did a great job on the layout/graphic design of these books; what eye candy! The only negative is that the spine can be weak due to the greater with vs. short spine height.

Even the introduction admits that this is not the greatest period for Dick Tracy. When a character like Coffeehead gets top billing along with Mumbles you know you’re in trouble. Coffeehead seems more like a parody of a Dick Tracy villain than an actual member of his rogues’ gallery. He's a coffee fiend (or perhaps drug addict) who has a head literally shaped like a coffee pot. Not only is his setup ludicrous but his evil plan is to bump off the Crime Stoppers who I’ll discuss in a moment. His weapon of choice is a rubber band that shoots peas. This is also one of the stories where it’s most obvious that Chester Gould is making it up as he goes along which may have worked when you’re reading one story a day but the plot inconsistencies become obvious when reading weeks or months of material in one sitting.So Junior decides to start a youth group called “Crime Stoppers” that will essentially be a vigilante gang of boys. He received the blessings of Dick Tracy but this immediately seemed to me like a really bad idea but it only got worse. They find themselves on the trail of a coin machine thief but inexplicably decide not to tell the police lest they become “squealers”. Even when the crook LITERALLY TRIES TO KILL the Crime Stoppers, one at a time. He attempts to murder Junior TWICE and when Dick Tracy gets an inkling of what’s going on he AGREES that they shouldn’t be squealers although he does order Junior to make things come out ok. Everything DOES turn out well but it is a horrible lesson for children.The next story is pretty icky. I don’t remember the ages of B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie ever being stated but based on physical appearances I always assumed they were middle aged but apparently that didn’t stop them from having a baby. The big joke is that B.O. and Gertie are so unattractive that their baby must be a trainwreck and everyone, including the nurse, are laughing out loud (which seems highly unprofessional). The punchline is that the baby (Sparkle Plenty) is incredibly gorgeous with hair down to her waist. B.O. Plenty manages to lose a pile of cash given to him for pics of his daughter and Gould spends WAY too much time on its recovery.It is with Mumbles that the book finally gets going. Mumbles is interesting in that Gould writes his text to purposely make it difficult to read and then has one of his henchmen translate for another so the reader gets what he's saying. However, if you read what he says carefully you can decipher it and I actually found it kind of fun. By the end of the storyline I got pretty adept at understanding Mumbles and Gould stops translating. Mumbles is also a much better villain than Coffeehead even if his MO seems far fetched.Having now read 11 volumes I have seen the strengths and flaws of Chester Gould. On the one hand his stories can be quite riveting and he creates some vicious killers. On the other hand the villains tend to be one trick ponies. They may have different names and different modus operandi but they are basically all the same character. There is no complexity to them. Gould always seems to try to up the level of sociopathology but under the hood they are all the same. Sometimes it feels like I'm reading the same story over and over again. I can understand the appeal of Chester Gould and he's very talented but the technical flaws become more and more apparent as I plow through the stories.

wsprtygdbk "what did he say?" I said it was a pretty good book.. mumbles was a good character but "what did he say" got repetitive

This is another wonderfully produced book containing even more adventures of top detective Dick Tracy and the criminals who really should know better by now (but don't!).

The Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy series is a masterpiece,and Volume 11 is no exception. It features Mumbles, one of the comicstrips most memorable villains. It's a great read!

Super recomendado, atención 100% y el vendedor 100% nos encantó

Undicesimo capitolo dedicato al famoso detective di Chester Gould. La casa californiana IDW sta ristampando tutte ma proprio tutte le striscie dalle origini in poi. Tutti i volumi sono completati da aneddoti e curiosità varie legate all'epoca di cui tratta il volume in questione, la rilegatura è sontuosa ed è completata da un segnalibro in raso. Unico svantaggio per gli italiani è la lingua che è rigorosamente in originale, però con un piccolo sforzo si riescono a seguire le storie e a valutare la traduzione che fece la Milano Libri negli anni 60/70 quando pubblicò numerose storie del personaggio e lo fece conoscere qui da noi. For fans only.