Tracy Timeline...

1931:  Chester Gould’s detective strip Dick Tracy debuts


1944:  First appearances of Gravel Gertie and Vitamin Flintheart


 1945:  First appearance of B.O. Plenty.  He and Gravel Gertie are wed the same year.


1946:  Debut of Diet Smith, Tracy’s wealthy industrialist friend who provides Dick with his newest technical innovations, beginning with the two-way wrist radio.


1947:  B.O. and Gravel’s daughter, Sparkle Plenty, is born Tracy conducts the first closed-circuit TV police line up.


1948:  Dick Tracy employs the Telegard, a portable, antennaless television burglar alarm Sam Catchem debuts as Tracy’s sidekick, replacing Pat Patton, who has become Chief of Police.


1948:  Tracy operates the first battery-powered TV camera.


1949:  Tess Truehart and Dick finally marry.

1951:  Dick and Tess’s daughter, Bonnie Braids, is born.


1953:  TV criminal show-up makes its first appearance.


1959:  Gould wins his first National Cartoonists Society “Reuben” award for Dick Tracy.


1962:  The Magnetic Space Coupe, the first engineless car, takes Dick to the moon.


1963:  Debut of Miss Moon Maid.


1964:  Two-way wrist TV.


1968:  Voice-o-Graph invented.  Matches criminal voiceprints.


1969:  Gould abandons his moon-oriented storylines as the Apollo missions show no life there.

1977:  Gould captures his second “Reuben” for Tracy, and retires from all but a consulting role on the strip at year’s end.  Max Allan Collins is named his replacement for scripting beginning with the new year.  Longtime Gould assistant Rick Fletcher to handle the art.


1978:  Moon Maid, now Junior’s wife and mother of his infant child, is killed by a car bomb meant for Dick.


1981:  Junior Tracy remarries, this time to Sparkle Plenty.


1983:  Fletcher passes away, and Dick Locher takes over drawing chores.


1985:  Gould dies in his adopted hometown of Woodstock, Illinois.


1986:  Two-way wrist computer makes its debut in the Tracy arsenal.


1988:  Sparkle Plenty, Jr. born to Junior and Sparkle.