Terry and the Pirates
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Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff. Captain Joseph Patterson, editor for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, had admired Caniff’s work on the children's adventure strip Dickie Dare and hired him to create the new adventure strip, providing Caniff with the title and locale. (The precise reason behind including "the Pirates" in the title is a subject of some debate, but see Dragon Lady (stereotype) for one plausible version.)
The daily strip began October 22, 1934, with the Sunday color pages beginning December 9, 1934. Initially the storylines of the daily strips and Sunday pages were different but on August 26, 1936 they merged into a single storyline. In 1946, Caniff won the first Cartoonist of the Year Award from the National Cartoonist Society for his work on Terry and the Pirates.
Contents |
Characters and story
The adventure begins with young Terry Lee, "a wide-awake American boy," arriving in contemporary China with his friend, two-fisted ‘journalist’ Pat Ryan. Seeking a lost gold mine they meet George Webster "Connie" Confucius, interpreter and local guide.
Initially crudely drawn backgrounds and stereotypical characters surrounded Terry as he matched wits with pirates and various other villains. He developed an ever larger circle of friends and enemies, including Big Stoop, Captain Judas, Cherry Blaze, Chopstick Joe, Cue Ball and Dude Hennick.
Most notable of all was famed femme fatale the Dragon Lady who started as an enemy and later, during the war, became an ally. Caniff included a number of non-American women who fought the heroes and had the funny habit of referring to themselves in the third person. These included the Dragon Lady herself and crooks and spies like Sanjak and Rouge.
Over time, due to a successful collaboration with cartoonist Noel Sickles, Caniff dramatically improved to produce some of the most memorable strips in the history of the medium.
During the War
Caniff became increasingly concerned by the contemporary Second Sino-Japanese War, but was prevented by his newspaper syndicate from identifying the Japanese directly. Caniff referred to them as "the invaders," and they soon became an integral part of the storyline.
After America's entry into World War II, Terry joined the United States Army Air Forces. The series then became almost exclusively concerned with the war with much of the action centering around a US Army base in China. This change of tone is considered the end of the strip's prime although it remained highly acclaimed.
Terry gained a new mentor in flying instructor Colonel "Flip" Corkin who was based on the real life Colonel Philip "Flip" Cochran of the 1st Air Commando Group. Comic relief was provided by fellow flyer "Hotshot Charlie". Pat, Connie and Big Stoop still made occasional guest appearances as marine commandos and the Dragon Lady and her pirates became Chinese guerrillas fighting the Japanese.
One of the highlights of this period was the October 17, 1943 Sunday page: Corkin gives the recently commissioned Terry a speech on his responsibilities as a fighter pilot, including the need to consider all those who have contributed to the development of his plane, from the designers to the support crew, spare a thought for those killed in the fighting and respect military bureaucracy which, for better or for worse, has kept the American army going for over 150 years. In an unusual honor, the episode was read aloud in the U.S. Congress and added to the Congressional Record.
The intensely patriotic Caniff, who donated design and illustration work to the military, created a free variant of Terry and the Pirates for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes. Originally starring the beautiful adventuress Burma, it was racier than the regular strip and complaints caused Caniff to rename it Male Call to avoid confusion. Male Call was discontinued in 1946.
Caniff leaves the strip
Although Terry and the Pirates had made Caniff famous the strip was actually owned by the newspaper syndicate and, seeking creative control of his own work, Caniff left the strip in 1946. Caniff's last Terry strip was published on December 29, and the following year he began Steve Canyon, an action-adventure strip that ran until shortly after his death in 1988.
After Caniff's departure Terry and the Pirates was assigned to Associated Press artist George Wunder. Wunder did draw highly-detailed pictures, but some critics, notably Maurice Horn, claimed that it was sometimes difficult to tell one character from another and that his work lacked Caniff's essential humour. Nevertheless he kept the strip going for a respectable twenty-seven years until its discontinuation in 1973, by which time Terry had become a full-grown man and reached the rank of Colonel.
In 1995, an attempt to do a revised version of the strip was released. Done by the Brothers Hildebrandt under the direction of Michael Uslan, it tried to update the strip, including making the Dragon Lady a Vietnam war orphan. It lasted about a year before ending.
Reprints
NBM, under their Flying Buttress Comics Library line, reprinted all of the Caniff Terry strips (10/22/34 to 12/29/46) in two hardcover series as well as in a series of trade paperbacks. The first 12-volume series contained all of the dailies and the Sundays in black and white. The second 12-volume series contained all of the Sundays in color with each page split between two pages. The daily strips were also printed by NBM in a 25-volume softcover edition (reprinting all of the dailies and the Sundays that ran concurrent storylines) with the strips in a smaller size and a lower quality than the hardcover volumes.
Kitchen Sink Press began a new hardcover reprint series with dailies and Sundays (in color and presented complete on one page, including title bars in the strips from the first year that were omitted from the NBM series), but discontinued it after only two volumes.
These series are out of print and can be hard to find.
In March 2007, IDW Publishing announced a new imprint, the Library of American Comics. It published quarterly collections of six hardcover editions reprinting the Sunday strips with their original color and the daily strips in black and white. The books are 11” x 8.5” oblong and retailed at $49.99 each. The first volume, published September 2007, reprints strips from October 1934 through the end of 1936. The sixth and last volume appeared in early 2009.
Terry and the Pirates in popular culture
In 1995 the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative postage stamps.
That same year an attempt was made to revive the strip using characters updated by Hollywood producer Michael E. Uslan and illustrated by noted artists Tim and Greg Hildebrandt. The new version debuted on March 26, but only ran for two and a half years before being discontinued.
In 1953, Canada Dry offered a "premium giveaway" (freebie) with a case of its ginger ale — one minibook in a trilogy series of Terry and the Pirates strips by George Wunder printed by Harvey Comics. Other incarnations of Caniff's beloved work included a television series and a radio show.
In DC Comics Secret Origins #18, the explorers who bring Alan Scott's green lantern to the U.S. are drawn to resemble Terry Lee, Pat Ryan and Connie. The scene takes place in 1934, the year Terry and the Pirates began publication.
The phrase "Dragon Lady" entered American slang as a phrase for a powerful and domineering woman.
Terry and the Pirates is often cited by fellow comic illustrator Doug Wildey as one of his main inspirations for the 1964 Hanna Barbera television cartoon Jonny Quest.
Umberto Eco's novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana references Terry and the Pirates, and its title comes from the Italian translation of one of the various adventures.
Robert Culp admitted that the comic strip Terry and the Pirates was his inspiration for the "tone" and "spirit" and "noir heightened realism" of the 1965 NBC TV Series, I Spy, when he was writing the pilot.