Four Color Comics

Wow. We really are in some sort of Golden Age of comic strip reprints. Now comes word that IDW Publishing will publish a six-volume set reprinting the entirety of Milton Caniff’s classic Terry and the Pirates. Sunday pages will be in color; daily pages will be in black-and-white.

“In Terry and the Pirates,” wrote Jerry Robinson in The Comics, “all the storytelling techniques of the adventure strip fused and a classic style emerged. Caniff developed and integrated the narrative and its visual expression into a uniform aesthetic balance.” Jules Feiffer noted, “Before Caniff introduced the Dragon Lady to Pat Ryan, before Burma and Raven Sherman and Normandie Drake fell for our hero, there was not a hint of sex to be found in the American newspaper strip. Caniff changed all that.”

Terry and the Pirates provided the vehicle for Caniff’s maturation both as an artist and as a storyteller. He set the strip in exotic China, where historic events then occurring in the region during the 1930s provided the raw material from which he blended fantasy and reality to create an extraordinary graphic narrative. Howard Chaykin, who has written the introduction to Volume One, says, “It’s historically the first, and for my money, greatest example of what we do. The evolution of what Caniff did with Terry in his first year is unbelievable. It’s pure core storytelling.”

The first volume is scheduled to be published in July. It will feature 800 consecutive strips from October 1934 to the end of 1936. The book will be 368 pages and retail for $50.

Perhaps the best news of all is that “The Complete Terry and the Pirates also launches a new imprint for IDW: The Library of American Comics.” Outstanding!

[Newsarama: IDW to collect Terry and the Pirates]