Drawing Ire : Is no marriage safe? Dick Tracy is stepping into the ‘90s by splitting with his wife. Why can’t Ziggy, Snoopy and Cathy get real instead?

Holy egads! It looks like copper Dick Tracy and his wife, Tess, are getting a divorce!

So who isn’t? you ask, underwhelmed at the news.

We’re not talking about some fly-by-night Hollywood couple here. This is Dick and Tess Trueheart Tracy, for gosh sake. Married 45 years, comic-strip characters 63 years.

Just the facts: Seems Tess wants Dick to pay a little less attention to truth, justice and the American way and a little more attention to their marriage. The divorce papers will be served on Monday while he’s at FBI training school.

Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Kilian, who has been writing the Tracy strip for 1 1/2 years (and says he liked the movie), wants to put Dick Tracy--a product of the Depression--”into more contemporary situations.”

Well, we don’t want Dick Tracy to be a modern kinda guy. We don’t want him to be human.

We want him to be a plain, simple comic-strip character: A goody-two-shoes cop with Jack Lord hair, who battles ugly bad guys in shootouts that would have left Superman for dead--but in true comic-strip style, they all manage to survive.

And we want (a group whine, please): Dick and Tess to stay together. Pick on another comic strip, you. If it’s contemporary reality you’re after, here’s what we’d like to see:

* Miss Buxley gain 40 pounds.

* Cathy lose 40 pounds and accept Susan Powter as her personal savior.

* The “Far Side” make sense every day.

* Andy Capp stand up and announce at an AA meeting, “I’m Andy and I’m an alcoholic.”

* Hagar trim that horrible beard.

* Dagwood dump the bow tie and one-button shirt and get himself a couple of Armani suits.

* Heathcliff, his dog tags lost, sitting in a cage at the shelter.

* Garfield sitting next to him.

* Snoopy and Marmaduke come out on “Geraldo” as the world’s first gay pet couple.

* Rex Morgan decide that he’s burned out, propose to faithful nurse June, elope and run off to serve in the Peace Corps in a remote South American village.

* The Wizard of Id renounce his title and declare himself the Wizard of Ego and Superego.

* Ziggy join Hair Club for Men.

* Charlie Brown, opting for toupee over weave, issue a press release saying that he now prefers to be called “Charles.”

* Dick and Tess Tracy patch things up: Next, on “Oprah.”