b. Nov. 20, 1900, Pawnee, Okla., U.S.
d. May 11, 1985, Woodstock, Ill. |
American cartoonist who created "Dick Tracy," the detective-action
comic strip that became the first popular cops-and-robbers series.
Gould
studied cartooning through a correspondence school, briefly drew sports cartoons
in Oklahoma, then worked for the Chicago Daily News. "Dick
Tracy" was first distributed in 1931 by the Chicago Tribune-New York News
Syndicate, Inc.; its underlying code of "crime doesn't pay" and its
support of tough and often violent law enforcement were widely appealing. Drawn
with hard outlines and bright colours and accurate in the details of crime and
criminal investigation, the comic strip features Dick Tracy, a clean-cut,
plainclothes detective with a hard, jutting jawline, whose methods, reminiscent
of Sherlock Holmes's, made him the nemesis of a gallery of grotesquely
caricatured criminals. Gould retired from the strip in 1977.
