IS DICK TRACY FACING HIS FINAL DEATH TRAP?
Could it happen? Could Chester Gould’s cleaver-chinned cop be turned out to pasture? Could the yellow fedora be hung on a hook and Tracy disappear forever from newspaper comics? The shame of it is — it could happen. Dick Locher, a Tribune Media Services syndicated political cartoonist who also writes and draws the iconic police procedural comic strip Dick Tracy, recently spoke a little wistfully about retirement. He was being interviewed in August by Sandye Voight at the Telegraph Herald in Dubuque, Iowa — Locher’s childhood hometown — in connection with the opening of an exhibit of his editorial cartoons at the Dubuque Museum of Art. “My 10,000th cartoon is close,” Locher said. “There are other hills to climb, and it’s been a great run. I’m looking forward to the retirement cake.” Rumor has it that Locher could be blowing out the candles on that cake at the end of the year. And where does that leave Tracy? No one will say anything for attribution — a journalistic custom as new as Trac
