Woodstock's Dick Tracy Day organizers aim to break Guinness record for longest comic strip

The first Dick Tracy Day Woodstock has hosted in years is expected to make history – a history book, to be exact.

Work is underway to create the Guinness Book of World Records’ “Longest Cartoon Strip by a Team” and display it – or at least most of it – at the July 2 event.

Volunteers throughout Woodstock have spent weeks tracing 10-foot panels of the strip, which needs to be more than 4,000 feet long to beat a record now held by Lincoln Pierce, the cartoonist behind the popular “Big Nate” cartoon and books.

Featured in 2014 on NBC’s “Today,” that strip featured panels drawn by schoolchildren and measured 3,920 feet, beating a previous mark of 3,320 feet, 2 inches.

With 430 pieces of 10-foot panels, the Dick Tracy strip aims to reach 4,300 feet, said Sue Stelford of Woodstock, event chair and vice president of the Friends of the Old Courthouse, a new organization hosting the event.

“We wanted to make a big splash,” said Stelford, an art history teacher who scanned the strips from those originally created from 1948 to 1952 by Chester Gould. Gould lived in Woodstock for 50 years until his death at age 84 in 1985.

“Even a half-mile of strip is pretty impressive,” she said.

The world-renowned comic strips – representing a continuous narrative – then were printed out on 5-by-7-inch sections of paper to be traced over by more than 500 volunteers.

Along with a display of the finished strips, portions of the strip left to be traced will be on hand at Dick Tracy Day for others to step in and finish amid other festivities at the event, such as living statues, villain cutouts for photographs and a green screen booth allowing visitors to put themselves in a Dick Tracy comic strip.

Once complete, the entire continuous strip must be video-taped and sent to the Guinness Book of World Records to officially earn the record.

The effort is both a celebration of the late Gould and a fundraising effort for the town’s Old Courthouse.

The Old Courthouse housed a Chester Gould-Dick Tracy Museum from 1991 until the museum’s closure in 2008.

A room of original artwork, photography and memorabilia, including Gould’s drawing board and chair, the museum once drew thousands of visitors from throughout the country before it closed.

It now exists solely online at www.dicktracymuseum.com.

“We love that part of Woodstock’s heritage,” Stelford said. “We were trying to get a really broad-base appeal to people. We wanted to get people interested in comics, people interested in the legacy of Dick Tracy.”

Stelford purposely chose a time period of the strip when it was created by Gould. Starring a square-jawed, yellow-hatted police detective also featured in several films, including 1990’s “Dick Tracy,” the strip lives on today under the ownership of Tribune Media Services and is written by Joe Staton and Mike Curtis.

The strip’s connection to Woodstock is just one of many things to celebrate as a community and preserve, say those involved with Friends of the Old Courthouse, which formed recently to raise awareness and money for needed renovations at the city-owned building.

Dick Tracy Day – from 1 to 5 p.m. July 2 in the Woodstock Square – is the group’s first big fundraising effort.

Along with the strip, it will feature a makeshift jail, a strolling juggler, a stilt walker, a sidewalk coloring contest, walking tours, Dick Trace crafts, a mobile library, treats and drinks, a silent auction of rare items, including Dick Tracy collectibles, and more.

DICK TRACY DAY

WHEN: 1 to 5 p.m. July 2

WHERE: Woodstock Square

COST & INFO: Featuring living statues, villain cutouts, a green screen booth, historic walking tours, crafts, a sidewalk chalk drawing contest, treats, a silent auction and the showing of the "Chester Gould Documentary" at Stage Left Café. Also, view a display of a nearly mile-long entry for the "Guinness Book of World Record's" Longest Cartoon Strip by a Team cateogry. Information: www.woodstockil.gov.