Terry and the Pirates (Feuchtwanger)

    (Sig. Feuchtwanger, 1938)
™ and ©1938 Chicago Tribune-N.Y. News Syndicate, Inc.

Milton Caniff’s rip-roaring, adventure drama series was first seen on the comics pages of newspapers, but the tightly plotted and wide-ranging stories are more effectively presented collected in sequence in comic books or graphic albums. Among the first to realize this was Sig. Feuchtwanger, an obscure New York publisher who brought out a 16-page booklet of Terry and the Pirates color Sunday strips in 1938.

At this stage, Caniff was just consolidating his drawing and storytelling techniques into a style of incredible expressive and emotional power, experimenting with cinematic angles, unusual layouts, and bold swatches of black to create contrast and motion. His main characters—Terry, Pat Ryan, the Dragon Lady, April Kane, etc.—were maturing into complex personalities, and the fantasy-adventure storyline was coming into focus as the shadow of war fell over Terry’s Far Eastern locale.
Jump to issue:
  NotesWriterArtist