Unpopular 'Dick Tracy' museum to close

WOODSTOCK, Ill., Feb. 23 (UPI) -- A museum in Illinois dedicated to the comic strip "Dick Tracy" and its creator will close for lack of interest.

The Chicago Tribune said Saturday that with the guest book going unaltered for weeks at a time, officials at the Chester Gould-Dick Tracy Museum in Woodstock have decided to close the doors for good.

"We hate to do it but we really have no choice," museum director Jim Johnson said. "We do not have the donations to keep it running."

The museum opened in 1991, just as the film version of the long-running comic strip hit the big screen, and initially met with great success.

That success even led to a "Dick Tracy" festival in the Illinois city, but interest quickly waned and the museum's financial woes began to grow, the Tribune reported.