Terry and the Pirates

Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff. Colonel 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 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.

Our story begins

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, Dude Hennick and especially famed femme fatale The Dragon Lady. 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.

**Marooned** Terry & the Pirates daily strip February 29, 1936
Terry, a bare-chested jodhpurs-wearing Pat Ryan, and Connie find themselves marooned on an island with the lovely, mysterious Burma. Note Terry's boyish appearance in this early strip.

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, while Pat Ryan became a naval commando and the Dragon Lady and her pirates became Chinese guerrillas. The series then became almost exclusively concerned with the war. This change of tone is considered the end of the strip's prime although it remained highly acclaimed. A notable example is the October 17, 1943 Sunday page where the recently commissioned Terry receives a speech on his responsibilities as a fighter pilot, including the need to respect his support crew and the military bureaucracy, from his trainer, Flip Corkin. 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. Terry stayed in the Air Force, became a full-grown man and reached the rank of Colonel. Wunder produced the strip for twenty-seven years until its discontinuation in 1973.

Reprints

NBM, under their "Flying Buttress Comics Library" line, reprinted all of the Milt 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 that ran concurrent storylines with the dailies (in black & white). The early Sundays that ran separate storylines (12/9/34 to 8/23/36) were not contained in this set. The second 12-volume series contained all of the Sundays in color with each page split between two pages. The daily books 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 much 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 the 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.