Heck Of A Guy

Dick Tracy Responds To Committee's Casual Dismissal Of Him As County Seal Symbol

Dick Tracy Defends County’s Right To Make Bad Choices

From the title of the McHenry County Blog series of posts at covering the McHenry County Seal Contest,¹  one can readily discern the outcome of the effort to put Dick Tracy on the McHenry County Seal: “Dick Tracy Fails to Get the Ladies‘ Vote: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.”

An obviously saddened but unbowed Dick Tracy reports he is still steadfastly loyal, despite the apparent lack of reciprocation, to the County where his creator, Chester Gould, made his home for many years.  Tracy, in fact, remains unhesitant in his support of the powers that be, pointing out that the capacity to make the wrong decision is the bedrock of local government.²

Tracy goes on to explain that he is disappointed but unsurprised by the result. “When they said they wanted a seal that was unique, easily identifiable, and not boring, I felt I fit that description and so, I had a responsibility to volunteer to serve. Somewhere along the line, it began to look as though those qualities weren’t really what was wanted - or maybe someone changed their mind. I can’t say it didn’t hurt, but  I still have my day job righting wrongs, protecting the weak, bringing treacherous villains to justice, and whatnot so I’ll be all right.”

The Missing Ingredient In The McHenry County Seal Recipe

Inspired by Dick Tracy’s example, I too am rallying to the aid of McHenry County.

From Cal Skinner’s reprise of the Management Services Committee meeting to consider candidates for McHenry County Seal, I garnered the following:

• None of the entries in the seal  design contest were clear winners
• The County Board Committee favors a combination of ingredients seal³ that references several aspects of the County
• Dick Tracy was eliminated because (1) he was deemed to lack contemporary relevance and (2) he is a cartoon and thereby lacks sufficient dignity for a county seal⁴

It was, in fact, while navigating through the McHenry County Blog that the solution presented itself to me.

Cal, it turns out, has a batch of inexplicably negative posts about the attempt by the Crystal Lake Park District here in McHenry County to place a 75 foot cell tower in a small (15 acre) neighborhood park.

A cell tower was, I realized in an instance, the ideal Dick Tracy counterpart, the perfect anti-Tracy symbol.

A cell tower isn’t historic like Dick Tracy; it’s the epitome of contemporary McHenry. Heck it may even approximate hip and trendy.

Just compare those cell phone company ads shown in the montage above with Dick Tracy’s wrist radio (shown on left).

Look, Tracy’s radio emits green sparks.  How uncool is that?

As for that typical cross section of the population shown in the cell phone ads collage, just show me one person or one phone that  isn’t super-groovy.

A cell tower is electronics and cyberspace and wireless communication and all things good.

Cell towers can unite a neighborhood, as seen in this photo from the McHenry County Blog.

And if you’ve ever seen one of those suckers, you know -

Besides, at least one local governmental agency, the Crystal Lake Park District, is obviously already on board with the cell tower notion.

Now admittedly, a single, lonely cell tower on a seal might be a tad stark, but we’re going for, remember, the pizza with everything approach.

So, to allow some choices, I’ve adapted each of my three favorite non-Tracy designs presented at the Seal Contest meeting to include the iconic cell tower.

Check them out.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

1. The story behind the decision to revise the McHenry County Seal and, eventually, to hold a seal design contest is summarized in The McHenry County Seal Slaughter and McHenry County Seal Wars↩
2. Tracy’s chief supporter, DrHGuy, it should be noted, is considerably less sanguine in response to Tracy being cavalierly dismissed as a candidate for county seal. One suspects that the final Heck Of A Guy  post on this issue has yet to be written.↩
3. Also known as the “Pupu Platter Approach”↩
4. I admit to being somewhat confused by the cartoon-dignity issue. Has anyone informed the Board that, for example, the cow and the ear of corn on the county flag are not a real cow or a real ear of corn super-glued onto the fabric of the flag but are, well, cartoon figures of a cow and a ear of corn? The difference between them and Dick Tracy is that Tracy has his own syndicated comic strip which has run daily for over seven decades. How is that a bad thing? You don’t think that the McHenry cow and ear of corn cartoons wouldn’t turn pro if they had the chance to appear on the comics page of the Southeast Haegers Bend Neighborhood Penny Shopper? On the other hand, having been raised on a farm, I do appreciate the sense of esteem intrinsic to bovines, which is, in turn, the basis of the old, well-known figure of speech, “As dignified as a herd of heifers.”↩

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Tess Trueheart On Cover Of Bride

Tess Trueheart Tells All In Magazine Interview

“All” includes the ups and downs of of her relationship with her well-known mate, Dick Tracy, heroic detective and current candidate for McHenry County Seal.

When Dick Tracy readers were first introduced to Tess, Tracy and Tess had arrived at the Trueheart home to announce their engagement. Instead, they find a gang led by Big Boy (modeled on Al Capone) robbing her father, Emil. Emil is killed and Tess kidnapped, leading Tracy to join the police, rescue Tess, and bring the villains to justice.

After that traumatic episode, Tracy’s workaholic ways not only delayed the wedding but led Tess, who served as a WAC in the 1940s and then opened her own photography studio, to break off the engagement and marry Edward Nuremoh, a baseball player (”Nuremoh” is “Homerun” spelled backward). It turns out that Nuremoh was planning to marry and then divorce her to grab rights to her inheritance. It was Dick Tracy, of course, who brought Nuremoh to justice.

Wedding of Tess Trueheart and Dick Tracy A Surprise Despite 18 Year Courtship

Dick Tracy Loves Tess Trueheart

Although the wedding of Tess and Tracy takes place nearly two decades after their engagement, family, friends, and readers are taken by surprise, as this excerpt from Daryl Cagle’s Blog - Big Events makes clear:

The Saturday Evening Post, for one, was cold-cocked. Shortly before Christmas 1949, the Post profiled Chester Gould and made a large point of answering the perennial question–When is Dick Tracy ever going to marry that nice Tess Trueheart girl?–with assurances that Tracy had no such plans at the moment. Barely days later, goofily beaming Tracy and radiant Tess announced to the world that they had officially tied the knot, after 18 years of notably chaste courtship. Furiously assailed by the foolish-looking Post, Gould publicly pleaded that the entirely unexpected nuptials had surprised him as much as they had anyone else; he’d had absolutely no idea, he insisted, that Tracy and Tess were talking wedding. Considering his day-by-day plotting habits, this was probably true. “Tracy never tells me anything,” Gould sighed.

The nuptials took place Christmas Eve 1949.

Marital Woes

As Tess reports, the wedding did not end the couple’s conflicts, most of which had to do with Tracy’s dedication to his job keeping him away from home. Matters came to a head in February 1994. A week before Valentine’s Day, Tess Trueheart served Tracy with divorce papers.

The New York Times reported on this turn of events in Dick Tracy Takes It on Chin: Wife Splits,¹ excerpts of which follow:

First it was Donald and Ivana. Then Loni and Burt. Now Dick and Tess.

Yes, comic strip fans, it is true. After 45 years of marriage, Dick Tracy and his wife, the former Tess Trueheart, are splitting up. Tribune Media Services, which distributes the strip, has announced that Tess will hit her heroic husband with divorce papers on Feb. 7.

Apparently, Tess, like so many other police spouses, is fed up with Dick’s long hours and lack of consideration. In recent strips, Dick spent the evening saving a luscious-looking fashion designer from attack; when he came home, after midnight, Tess had left him a note informing him that his dinner was in the freezer.

Michael Kilian, a reporter for The Chicago Tribune who has been writing the comic strip for the last year and a half, said he was introducing marital discord into the comic “to bring Dick Tracy into contemporary times.” In this, he and the artist who works with him, Dick Locher, are following other long-running comic strips that in recent years have taken up issues like sexual harassment and job security. A True Dilemma

Dick will be served divorce papers while he is attending the Federal Bureau of Investigation training school in Virginia, Mr. Kilian said. Just as he is trying to rush home to talk to Tess, the United States Capitol will be attacked by a gang of unemployed-stockbrokers-turned-terrorists, led by the evil Pig E. Bank.

“Dick will be torn between saving the nation’s Capitol or going back to Tess,” Mr. Kilian said. “And I’m not going to tell you the end of the story.”

Rest assured, though, that Tess will not be forgotten. “She is still the love of his life,” Mr. Kilian said.

Junior Tracy

…The Tracys have two children of their own, Bonnie Braids and Joe, and an adopted son, Junior.

Since news of Dick’s breakup began filtering out on Monday, Mr. Kilian said he had been overwhelmed by calls from reporters. “The phrase I keep hearing,” he said, “is, ‘How could you do it?’ ” (A similar question was posed to the writers of “Superman” comics when they announced in November 1992 that they would kill Superman. He was later brought back to life somehow or other.)

Happily, the couple reconciled, in part for the sake of their children, and have been blissfully joined ever since. The produced another child, Joe Flintheart Tracy, in 1979.

Dick Tracy and Tess Trueheart

Footnotes

1. By Elizabeth Kolbert, January 26, 1994↩

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Dick Tracy McHenry County Seal Campaign Takes Back Seat

Tracy’s Space Coup, propelled by magnetic fields, is the focus of the Motormania cover story this month, allowing the County Seal candidate to simultaneously reach out to the NASCAR and pro-space exploration voter factions.

Credit Due Department
The magazine cover graphic was produced with the help of MagMyPic

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Tess Trueheart on Larry King Live

Tess Touts Tracy For McHenry County Seal

While admitting to her bias as the famous gumshoe’s spouse, Tess Trueheart is unequivocal in her support of Tracy’s candidacy for McHenry County Seal.

How can anyone compare other symbols to Dick? He’s captured enough criminals to fill a couple of prisons, he’s saved hundreds of lives, and he only discriminates between good and evil. He likes and respects a lot of folks that are, frankly, funny-looking and at least one that - well, let’s just say it’s obvious how “B.O. Plenty” got his name.

I respect  John McCain’s record as a war hero, but it’s not as if Dick Tracy sat out the war. He was arresting Nazi gang leaders like Pruneface as a local cop. Later, he was appointed Lieutenant Second Grade in the Naval Reserve and served as a plainclothes detective in  Navy intelligence, tracking down Nazi spies.

And, although he’s older than Mr. McCain, who confesses he doesn’t know how to send email, Dick Tracy has been using not only a wrist radio and wrist TV for years but also miniature cameras, voice analyzers, and closed circuit TVs since the middle of last century. Heck, he routinely flew to the Moon to solve crimes.

Dick Tracy’s Crimestoppers is a good example of his work in the community.  He was even green early on, using a car that was powered by magnetic forces rather than an internal combustion engine.

Dick Tracy is, after all, a professional icon; he’s  used to being in the public eye. He is known everywhere, he’s a symbol of  absolute honesty, and his square cut, incredibly handsome profile is instantly recognizable.

So, the question is, “Do we want a County Seal that features Dick Tracy and the qualities he epitomizes or do we want something like that giant ear of corn on the McHenry flag? Do we want instantly recognizable Dick Tracy on the Seal or do we wnat one of those indistinguishably bland pieces of clip art that keep turning up on county seals across the country?”

If the Dick Tracy campaign is successful, for the first time
in my adult life I could be proud of my County Seal.

Credit Due Department
The Larry King graphic was created with the help of Newsr.

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