My interaction with Dick Tracy has been sporadic. I saw some parodies from Mad Magazine (such as "What if Gilbert and Sullivan wrote Dick Tracy?"), had a few times when I was able to follow the strip ('81-'84, '86-88, and some in the 2000's), saw a few books reprinting a story, and seeing the old movie "Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome" (co-starring Boris Karloff) and the 1990 feature starring Warren Beatty. So it was fun reading some of the old strips.
I have a hunch that volume 2 ends with Dick Tracy and friends arresting Boris Arson. (I've only read volumes 3 and 4 at this point, and don't expect to read most of them). This collection starts off with Boris escaping with the help of his sister Zora, followed by three other stories (I was surprised that the stories lasted 5 months; I'm more used to 3 month stories in comic serials).
I only recognized one of the villains: Lips Manlis, who was in the 1990 movie, played by the late Paul Sorvino. Besides large lips, the only thing in common between the movie version and the original comic character was they started out as a gangster. In the film version, he was bumped off early. In the comics, Dick Tracy offered him a chance to go straight with a new name ("Bob Honor"). I loved seeing the development of the character. He rescued some of his former gang members to keep them from dying in a fire. This volume ends with Bob recovering and one member at large. How long to get that lone wolf into custody? You'll have to read volume 4 for that answer.
P.S. You'll find it amusing that when I was writing in "former gang members" in the above paragraph, I almost typed "former band members." Yep, you'd expect that from a music lover!
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