Question: I've been a comic-book collector for better than 30 years now, and I recently began wondering what the first movie based on a comic book was. I'm not talking about matinee serials or the like, but a standard feature film. I'm sure it's probably an adaptation of a Japanese manga or a European book, but I'm more interested in what the first American feature film based on an American comic book was.
Answer: I'm tackling this question even though it's not my area of expertise and I know how complicated the history of comics and comic-strip and comic-book heroes is. But it actually looks to me as though the very earliest film adapted from a comic is American and featured Chester Gould's square-jawed lawman, Dick Tracy. Gould's strip debuted in 1931, at the height of public interest in gang wars, and Dick Tracy
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