Editing Dick Tracy (section)

===After Gould===
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Chester Gould retired from comics in 1977; his last ''Dick Tracy'' strip appeared in print on Sunday, December 25 (Christmas Day) of that same year. The following Monday, ''Dick Tracy'' was taken over by [[Max Allan Collins]] and longtime Gould assistant [[Rick Fletcher]]. Gould's name remained in the byline for a few years after his retirement as a story consultant.

In one of Collins' first stories as the strip's writer, the gangster known as [[Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice|"Big Boy"]] learned that he was dying and had less than a year to live. Big Boy was still seeking revenge on Tracy, who had sent him up the river to prison, and he wanted to live just long enough to see Tracy's death. He put out an open $1 million contract on Tracy, knowing that every small-time hood in the city would take a crack at the famous cop for that amount of money. One of the would-be collectors rigged Tracy's car to explode, but inadvertently killed Moon Maid instead of Tracy in the explosion. A funeral strip for Moon Maid explicitly stated that this officially severed all ties between Earth and the Moon in the strip,<ref>''Dick Tracy'', 13 August 1978. Strip reprinted in ''Dick Tracy – The Official Biography'' by Jay Maeder, 1990 (color plate #12).</ref> thus eliminating the last remnants of the Space Period. Honeymoon received a new hairstyle that covered her antennae and she was ultimately phased out of the strip. Junior later married Sparkle Plenty (the daughter of B.O. and 'Gravel' Gertie Plenty), and they had a daughter named Sparkle Plenty Jr. Sparkle had been divorced by her cartoonist husband Vera Aldid, who was thus also removed from the cast. Collins felt that their original marriages were a mistake on Gould's part. In the 1990s, Tracy's son Joseph Flintheart Tracy took on a role similar to Junior's in the earlier strips.

In addition, Collins removed other Gould creations of the 1960s and 1970s (including Groovy Grove, who was gravely wounded in the line of duty and later died in the hospital; Lizz married him before his death). On a more philosophical level, Collins took a generally less cynical view of the [[justice system]] than Gould; Tracy came to accept its limitations and requirements as a normal part of the process which he could manage. Extreme technology was phased out, such as the Space Coupe, in favor of more realistic advanced tools such as the Two-Way Wrist Computer in 1987.

New semi-regular characters introduced by Collins and Fletcher included: Dr. Will Carver, a [[Plastic surgery|plastic surgeon]] with underworld ties who often worked on known felons; Wendy Wichel, a smarmy newspaper reporter/editorialist with a strong anti-Tracy bias in her articles; and Lee Ebony, an African-American female detective. Vitamin Flintheart reappeared occasionally as a comic-relief figure, the aged ham actor created by Gould in 1944 who had not been seen in the strip for almost three decades. The Plenty family (B.O., Gravel Gertie, and Sparkle) were also brought back as semi-regulars.

Original villains seen during this period included Angeltop (the revenge-seeking, [[psychopathic]] daughter of the slain Flattop), Torcher (whose scheme was arson-for-profit), and Splitscreen (a video pirate). Collins brought back at least one "classic" Gould villain or revenge-seeking family member per year. The revived Gould villains were often provided with full names and marriages, as well as children, and other family connections were developed, bringing more humanity to many of the originally grotesque brutes. "Flattop", particularly, had a number of relatives, all with his characteristic head structure and facial attributes, who turned up one by one to avenge their ancestor on Tracy.

Rick Fletcher died in 1983 and was succeeded by editorial cartoonist [[Dick Locher]], who had assisted Gould on the strip in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Locher was assisted by his son John, who died in 1986.

Max Allan Collins was fired from the strip in 1992, following a financial reorganization of their comic strip holdings, and ''Tribune'' staff writer and columnist [[Mike Kilian]] took over the writing. Kilian continued until his death on October 27, 2005.