A lot of daily and weekly comics touched upon the Bicentennial during July of 1976 -- some to better effect than others. A few ran Bicentennial gags all week. Others concentrated their efforts to the full-color Sunday page (or the previous Saturday if they didn't have Sunday strips). Most of these mentions came from daily gag strips, which probably had it easier than it the last few adventure strips, which would have had to shoehorn a Bicentennial mention into an ongoing narrative.
Dick Tracy managed to avoid that conundrum on Sunday, July 4. There's no mention of the Bicentennial in the main story, but creator Chester Gould used his popular "Crimestoppers Textbook" feature (which always ran as the last panel on the Sunday strip) to get timely. I won't bother showing you the whole strip, but here are the last few panels:
Wait, let me make that "Crimestoppers" panel a bit easier on your eyes and neck:
These are some pretty bad black-and-white scans from an online newspaper archive, but you get the picture.
I don't think this strip has ever been reprinted. IDW has been running a "Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy" series for several years now, but that series won't probably won't hit 1976 until around the end of this decade. Until then, online archives and comics clippings from eBay will probably have to do.
More Bicentennial comics next week!
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