Dick Tracy: The Art of Chester Gould

The Story

In 1978, the Museum of Cartoon Art mounted a landmark retrospective of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy at Ward's Castle in Port Chester, New York. The museum, founded by Mort Walker of Beetle Bailey fame, was housed in a historic 1876 mansion and boasted a board of directors that read like a comic art hall of fame: Neal Adams, Stan Lee, Burne Hogarth.

This catalogue accompanied the exhibition, which ran October 4 through November 30, 1978. It features essays by Max Allan Collins—who would soon take over writing Dick Tracy when Gould retired—along with contributions from Gould himself, just seven years before his passing in 1985. The museum closed its doors for good in 2002, and its 40,000+ piece collection now resides at Ohio State University.

Printed on newsprint with a white offset cover, this is exactly the kind of ephemeral publication that wasn't meant to survive nearly five decades. Most copies were thumbed through and discarded. This one made it.