Repetition, Recapitulation, Routine: Dick Tracy and the Temporality of Daily Newspaper Comics

This article examines individual installments of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, one of the most popular and controversial comic strips of the twentieth century, in order to show how that comic uses formal elements of repetition and recapitulation to orient a wide variety of audiences into the world of the narrative. It explains how Gould's repetition reveals the logic of seriality that underlies any daily newspaper comic, and how cartoonists had to utilize such repetition if they were to attract and maintain a wide readership.