Naperville, art world mourn ‘Dick Tracy’ cartoonist Dick Locher

Dick Locher created characters and critiqued politicians for decades as he drew the popular Dick Tracy comic strip and earned a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.

The Naperville resident, whose art also graces the Riverwalk, the new Hotel Indigo and a park that honors the town’s founder, died Sunday. He was 88.

A native of Dubuque, Iowa, Locher started working on the “Dick Tracy” strip in 1957 with Chester Gould, who created it in 1931. “I got to work with a legend while creating an icon,” he said in 2011.

Locher took over as the strip’s artist in 1983 and began writing the storyline in 2005. He retired in 2011, but not until the city where he lived for nearly 50 years allowed him to create a sculpture of the square-jawed, fedora-wearing detective.

Read more about Dick Locher HERE