Chester Gould

Chester Gould was interested in comics from an early age. He wrote and drew several strips while attending Oklahoma A&M University and at Northwestern University (where he graduated in 1921). After graduating from the Chicago Art Institute in 1923, Gould went to work for a Chicago area newspaper. Gould found work illustrating several minor comic strips, and also bombarded the major newspaper syndicates with ideas for a new strip. It was sometime in 1931 that Gould got a idea, based on his own work as a newspaperman. Gould saw that the headlines were filled with stories about gangsters and their escapades. Gould was disgusted by the apparentm triumph of good over evil, and decided that his new character would fight against these hoods. He sent this strip, called "Plainclothes Tracy" to the Chicago Tribune. The editor at the Tribune loved the idea, but suggested that the strip needed a shorter name. And so, "Dick Tracy" premiered on October 4th, 1931. From the beginning, Gould's strip