Feature Book #nn [Dick Tracy]
Feature Book #nn [Dick Tracy] holds a foundational place in American comics history as the first comic book devoted entirely to a single character — a format so novel in the mid-1930s that it had no precedent. By pulling Chester Gould's hard-boiled police-procedural strip off the shared-character anthology page and giving Tracy his own standalone volume, David McKay Publications essentially invented the single-character comic book, a structural template that would define the medium for the next century. The issue also marks the moment Chester Gould's crime-fiction storytelling — grounded in forensic realism and morally unambiguous pursuit narratives — was formally elevated from daily newspaper filler to a dedicated bookshelf artifact, amplifying Tracy's cultural reach well beyond the comics page.
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David McKay Publications had been experimenting with the comics medium since 1935, when the company began packaging popular newspaper strips into collected formats; by 1936 it was issuing King Comics and other anthology titles drawing on syndicate licenses. The Feature Book series grew directly from that model, but took the decisive step of dedicating each issue to one strip property rather than mixing several. The unnumbered Dick Tracy issue — carrying all script, pencil, and ink credits solely to Chester Gould — reprinted daily strips from 1934, reconfiguring the newspaper continuity to fit the oversized 9-by-12-inch, 96-page black-and-white format that became standard for the line. Its precise publication date remains unconfirmed by scholars, with the Grand Comics Database noting it as part of the two unnumbered 1936 issues cited in Dennis Gifford's reference work, while other sources place it in early-to-mid 1937.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First comic book devoted entirely to a single character, establishing the single-character-issue format that became standard in American comics.
- All story, art, and cover work created solely by Chester Gould, creator of the Dick Tracy newspaper strip (debuted October 4, 1931, in the Detroit Mirror).
- Reprints Dick Tracy daily newspaper strips from 1934, reconfigured and abridged to fit the comic-book page — the same production approach used throughout the Feature Book series.
- Published by David McKay Publications, a Philadelphia-based book house that entered comics in 1935 and became one of the earliest and most influential comic-book publishers of the pre-superhero era.
- Physical format: oversized approximately 9 by 12 inches, 96 pages, black and white interiors, cover price ten cents.
- The issue's central storyline features Tracy temporarily deputized as a federal agent, tracking villain Boris Arson — aided by accomplices Cutie Diamond and Zora Arson — across multiple states in a multi-safe robbery scheme, with Pat Patton along for the chase.
- Supporting characters indexed in the issue include Junior, Pat Patton, Tess Trueheart, the Chief, and several villains, reflecting the rich ensemble Gould had built in the strip's first three years.
- The issue was later reprinted at least twice: as Feature Books #4 (August 1937, David McKay) and again in a 1982 limited reprint edition identifiable by a reprint notice on the inside front cover.