Chet Gould, the creator of ‘Dick Tracy’ could scare the hell out me knew how to push all of my buttons. From the beginning, I was drawn to his manic drawing style and his bravura storytelling. He always managed to strike a chord deep inside of me, but never better than with the Flattop Jr. story arc. In junior high, I subscribed to the ‘Dick Tracy’ comic book reprints that Harvey Comics published, and at one point they reprinted the Flattop Jr. run. During that story, FJ murders a young woman named Skinny, and, in a brilliant stroke, Gould has her ghost haunt her killer by clinging to his neck every waking moment. It served to take FJ’s inner torment and haul it out onto the page for everyone to see. To say I was impressed doesn’t even come close to describing how that powerful work affected me. At the story’s conclusion, following a final desperate effort to dislodge his tormentor, FJ dives into a creek running through a farmer’s field. In the final panel, we see all that remains of FJ—the expanding eddies in the water and the words “The End” lettered in the lower right corner. Somehow that just didn’t feel right to me. Something was wrong! Someone else besides Gould had lettered those words there because he wouldn’t just end it like that! It seemed that there just had to be more! And it turns out there was.
Flash forward fifty five a few years to Volume 17 of the beautiful IDW* {FOOTNOTE: *IDW Publishing is an American publisher of comic books, graphic novels art books, and comic strip collections.} ‘Dick Tracy’ archive that reprints that particular opus. The story ends in the summer as I remember all right, and Gould moves on to other things. Then in November, right after Thanksgiving, in a moment as totally non sequitury as you can get, Gould has detective Liz stumble across a cabin where FJ has been hiding with Skinny still hanging around his neck. His formerly jet-black hair is now snow white and he’s been driven manically insane by his ghostly companion. Gould then ends everything in a mad shoot-out in which Liz finally kills Flattop Junior. In a final scene he lies on the floor, finally free, as a laughing Skinny rises up from his lifeless form.
I knew it! That was more like it! That’s how it was supposed to end! Dropping that in out of nowhere like he did was pure Chet Gould. The master storyteller was at the top of his game, and at long last, I finally got to see Flattop Junior’s final act.
