A year after an Archie Comics reboot was cancelled due to undisclosed licensing issues, Dick Tracy will make his way into an original graphic novel from Hermes Press in 2019.
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Richard Pietrzyk, who has worked on the Dick Tracy strip, will bring the story to life. According to Newsarama, Pietrzyk’s story is set in the 1940s based in part on conversations he had with Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould near the end of Gould’s life.
“One of the things about the graphic novel – what I want to bring into the story of the graphic novel is a few of the ideas and stories that I brainstormed with Chester,” Pietrzyk said. “In a sense, he’s going to have a finger in this book. Every time I showed up at his house we’d go over characters, and I showed him some 40 characters over the years. Some of those characters will appear in this graphic novel, and some of those story ideas will be used as well. I kicked around a lot of things with him that I hope to use in the novel. I’m very excited and ready to get started!”
The planned Archie Comics reboot was a series, which would have been written by Alex Segura and Michael Moreci, with artist Thomas Pitilli and colorist Dee Cunniffe. Archie’s Dick Tracy was set to bring the long-running comic strip character back to comics in early 2018, launching a new series which would explore the hard-boiled detective’s humble beginnings.
“So, this is not-great news,” Segura tweeted after the Tribune Agency issued a statement, now deleted, via Twitter. “Michael Moreci, Thomas Pitilli, and I were very much looking forward to creating this comic for you guys. But due to a mistake on the licensor’s part, we won’t be able to make that happen. To say we’re bummed is a huge, huge understatement.”
“Due to an unfortunate error on our part, Tribune is sad to announce that there will not be a Dick Tracy comic book series from Archie Comics,” Tribune said in the original statement. “While we had high hopes for the book and Archie Comics negotiated the deal in good faith and is not at fault, we discovered a preexisting licensing deal that precludes us from continuing with this project. We apologize to Archie Comics, the very talented creators and their many fans.”
