Dick Tracy Mural - Pawnee, OK - Official Local Tourism Attractions on Waymarking.com

Cartoonist and artist Chester Gould is honored with this Dick Tracy mural in his hometown of Pawnee, Oklahoma. According to TravelOK, "Pawnee paid tribute to native cartoon artist Chester Gould with a mural inspired by his popular Dick Tracy comic. Tulsa artist Ed Melberg created this mural in the style of Gould’s work, painting it on a wall in Gould’s hometown in 1990."

Melberg's mural is on the west side of the Subway building, at the southeast corner of 6th and Harrison, almost across from the courthouse.

The mural is approximately 10' square, and has the following text:

(Talk balloon): Crime does not pay
(Talk balloon): Little crimes lead to big crimes

Dick Tracy/Chester Gould (signature)
Chester Gould, Birthplace 1900 Pawnee, Oklahoma

A small plaque says this:

Mural refurbished with a grant from
GRDA Grand River Dam Authority 2010


From wikipedia, about the artist Chester Gould and Dick Tracy:

In 1931, Gould was hired as a cartoonist with the Chicago Tribune and introduced Dick Tracy in the Detroit Mirror on Sunday, October 4, 1931. The original comic was based on a New York detective Gould was interested in. The comic then branched to the fictional character that became famous. He drew the comic strip for the next 46 years from his home in Woodstock, Illinois.

In order to keep informed of police methods, Gould took courses in forensics and investigative procedures. He was later proud of having introduced the two-way wrist radio for Tracy in 1946, and in 1947, the closed-circuit television, both of which were later invented, though in somewhat different forms.

Gould's stories were rarely pre-planned, since he preferred to improvise stories as he drew them. While fans praised this approach as producing exciting stories, it sometimes created awkward plot developments that were difficult to resolve. In one notorious case, Gould had Tracy in an inescapable deathtrap with a caisson. When Gould depicted Tracy addressing Gould personally and having the cartoonist magically extract him, publisher Joseph Patterson vetoed the sequence and ordered it redrawn. The strip also drew protests from those who felt that Mr. Gould's depiction of crime was too gruesome, that he poured on too much gore and carnage.

Later in the strip's Gould period, the Tracy strip was widely criticized for being too right-wing in character and as excessively supportive of the police. A handful of critics thought Gould ignored the rights of the accused and failed to support his agenda with an adequate storyline. The late 1950s also saw a newspaper readership growing less indulgent of Gould's politics.

For instance, Gould introduced a malodorous, tobacco-spitting character, B.O. Plenty, with little significant complaint from readers in the 1940s. However, the 1960s introduction of crooked lawyer Flyface and his relatives, surrounded by swarming flies, created a negative reader reaction strong enough for papers to drop the strip in large numbers. There was then a dramatic change in the strip's setting, leaving behind the strip's origins as an urban crime drama for science fiction plot elements and regular visits to the moon. An increasingly fantastic procession of enemies and stories ensued. The Apollo 11 moon landing prompted Gould to abandon this phase. Finally, Dick Tracy was beset by the overall trend in newspaper comics away from strips with continuing storylines and toward those whose stories are largely resolved within one series of panels.

Gould, his characters, and improbable plots were satirized in Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner with the Fearless Fosdick sequences (supposedly drawn by "Lester Gooch"); a notable villain was Bomb Face, a gangster whose head was a bomb.

The "Official Tourism" URL link to the attraction: [Web Link] The attraction’s own URL: [Web Link] Hours of Operation: 24/7 Admission Prices: Free Approximate amount of time needed to fully experience the attraction: Less than 15 minutes Transportation options to the attraction: Personal Vehicle Only

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