Dick Tracy, Detective

A knife-wielding psychopath is attacking innocent people, seemingly at random, and it's up to the world's best comic book detective to stop him in RKO's "Dick Tracy, Detective" (1945). As Tess Trueheart waits around for her sweetheart to stop working long enough for dinner, Dick and Pat Patton follow the clues to discover a villain named Splitface is trying to make a killing in the extortion racket.

In a time when superheroes abound, it's nice to return to one of the original comic book heroes whose superpowers are all-natural (though aided, on occasion, by technological innovation). Actor Morgan Conway portrays Tracy with a combination of formidable intelligence and polished, tough-guy cool that epitomizes the ideal American man of the mid-Twentieth Century. As with other titles in the series, the villains contrast starkly with the handsome, affable Tracy. Surly, physically deformed and one-dimensional villains like Splitface are everything the hero is not: a true shadow of a brilliant and heroic figure.