Editing Police procedural (section)

==Comic strips and books==
The [[comic strip]] ''[[Dick Tracy]]'' is often pointed to as an early procedural.

''Tracy'' creator [[Chester Gould]] seemed to be trying to reflect the real world. Tracy himself, conceived by Gould as a "modern-day [[Sherlock Holmes]]", was partly modeled on real-life law enforcer Eliot Ness. Tracy's first, and most frequently recurring, antagonist, the [[Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice|Big Boy]], was based on Ness's real-life nemesis Al Capone. Other members of Tracy's [[Recurring characters in Dick Tracy|Rogues Gallery]], like Boris Arson, [[Flattop Jones]], and Maw Famon, were inspired, respectively, by [[John Dillinger]], [[Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd]], and [[Ma Barker|Kate "Ma" Barker]].

Once ''Tracy'' was sold to the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'' syndicate, Gould enrolled in a criminology class at [[Northwestern University]], met with members of the [[Chicago Police Department]], and did research at the department's crime lab, to make his depiction of law enforcement more authentic. Ultimately, he hired retired [[Chicago]] policeman Al Valanis, a pioneering forensic sketch artist, as both an artistic assistant and police technical advisor.

The success of ''Tracy'' led to many more police strips.  While some, like Norman Marsh's ''[[Dan Dunn]]'' were unabashedly slavish imitations of ''Tracy'', others, like [[Dashiell Hammett]]'s and [[Alex Raymond]]'s ''[[Secret Agent X-9]]'', took a more original approach. Still others, like Eddie Sullivan's and Charlie Schmidt's ''[[Radio Patrol (comic strip)|Radio Patrol]]'' and Will Gould's ''Red Barry'', steered a middle course. One of the best post-''Tracy'' procedural comics was ''[[Kerry Drake]]'', written and created by Allen Saunders and illustrated by [[Alfred Andriola]]. It diverged from the metropolitan settings used in ''Tracy'' to tell the story of the titular Chief Investigator for the District Attorney of a small-town jurisdiction. Later, following a personal tragedy, he leaves the DA's Office and joins his small city's police force in order to fight crime closer to the grass roots level. As both a DA's man and a city cop, he fights a string of flamboyant, Gould-ian criminals like "Stitches", "Bottleneck", and "Bulldozer".

Other syndicated police strips include [[Zane Grey]]'s ''[[King of the Royal Mounted]]'', depicting police work in the contemporary Canadian Northwest, Lank Leonard's ''[[Mickey Finn (comics)|Mickey Finn]]'', which emphasized the home life of a hard-working cop, and ''Dragnet'', which adapted stories from the pioneering radio-TV series into comics. Early [[comic books]] with police themes tended to be reprints of syndicated newspaper strips like ''Tracy'' and ''Drake''. Others adapted police stories from other mediums, like the radio-inspired anthology comic ''[[Gang Busters]]'', Dell's ''87th Precinct'' issues, which adapted McBain's novels, or ''The Untouchables'', which adapted the fictionalized TV adventures of real-life policeman Eliot Ness.

More recently, there have been attempts to depict police work with the kind of hard-edged realism seen in the novels of writers like Wambaugh, such as [[Marvel Comics|Marvel's]] four-issue mini-series ''Cops: The Job'', in which a rookie police officer learns to cope with the physical, emotional, and mental stresses of law enforcement during her first patrol assignment. With [[superhero]]es having long dominated the comic book market, there have been some recent attempts to integrate elements of the police procedural into the universe of costumed crime-fighters. ''[[Gotham Central]]'', for example, depicts a group of police detectives operating in [[Batman]]'s [[Gotham City]], and suggested that the caped crime-fighter is disliked by many Gotham detectives for treading on their toes. Meanwhile, ''[[Metropolis SCU]]'' tells the story of the Special Crimes Unit, an elite squad of cops in the police force serving [[Superman]]'s [[Metropolis (comics)|Metropolis]].

The use of police procedural elements in superhero comics can partly be attributed to the success of [[Kurt Busiek]]'s groundbreaking 1994 series ''[[Marvels]]'', and his subsequent ''[[Astro City]]'' work, both of which examine the typical superhero universe from the viewpoint of the common man who witnesses the great dramas from afar, participating in them tangentially at best.

In the wake of Busiek's success, many other writers mimicked his approach, with mixed results&nbsp;– the narrative possibilities of someone who does not get involved in drama are limited. In 2000, however, [[Image Comics]] published the first issue of [[Brian Michael Bendis]]'s comic ''[[Powers (comics)|Powers]]'', which followed the lives of homicide detectives as they investigated superhero-related cases. Bendis's success has led both Marvel Comics and [[DC Comics]] to begin their own superhero-themed police procedurals (''[[District X]]'' and the aforementioned ''Gotham Central''), which focus on how the job of a police officer is affected by such tropes as secret identities, superhuman abilities, costumes, and the near-constant presence of [[vigilante]]s.

While the detectives in ''Powers'' were "normal" (unpowered) humans dealing with super-powered crime, [[Alan Moore]] and [[Gene Ha]]'s ''[[Top 10 (comics)|Top 10]]'' mini-series, published by [[America's Best Comics]] in 2000–01, centered around the super-powered police force in a setting where powers are omnipresent. The comic detailed the lives and work of the police force of Neopolis, a city in which everyone, from the police and criminals to civilians, children and even pets, has super-powers, colourful costumes and secret identities.