TERRY AND THE PIRATES
Milton Caniff Had a Special Appreciation for Soldiers at Christmastime

Story by Brian Cronin • Yesterday - CBR

It's our yearly Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar! This year, the theme is A Comic Strip Christmas! Each day will spotlight a notable comic strip, and at least three Christmas-themed comics from that strip. Today's comic is For Better or For Worse.


Milton Caniff

Every day until Christmas Eve, you can click on the current day's Advent Calendar post and it will show the Advent Calendar with the door for that given day opened, and you can see what the "treat" for that day will be! You can click here to see the previous Advent Calendar entries.

The drawing for this year's Advent Calendar, of Santa Claus giving out presents to comic strip kids (although instead of a present for Charlie Brown, his dog, Snoopy, gets a present instead), is by Nick Perks.

Day 20 is now opened (once opened, the door will feature an image from the featured comic strip)...

RELATED: We Followed the Pattersons Through Decades of Christmases, For Better or For Worse

WHAT WAS TERRY AND THE PIRATES?

In the history of comic strips, few artists are quite as revered as Milton Caniff, perhaps the most beloved artist of the 20th Century among other comic strip artists, and one of the most influential (Hal Foster and Alex Raymond being the other two of the trinity of influential comic strip artists with Caniff. Charles Schulz was obviously also very important, but the Schulz impact tended to be less immediate than artists who took after Foster, Raymond and Caniff. With Schulz, it was sort of a "feel" that other creators emulated, with Foster, Raymond and Caniff, artists would often pretty much just APE those guys).

Caniff was a skilled storyteller right off the bat, as soon as he began work at a syndicate in 1932, at the heart of the Great Depression. Storytelling was always something that Caniff was excellent at, but it is interesting to note that his character work was not always a strength of his. When you look at his early work compared to his heyday, the difference is striking. Especially when it came to how BROAD some of his early characters were. In any event, after working on a number of strips for the Associated Press' syndicate, he got a chance to launch the adventure strip, Dickie Dare, in 1933, inspired by the work Raymond was doing on Flash Gordon. Dickie Dare was about a boy who would imagine himself on all sorts of fantastical adventures. Eventually, Caniff decided to just send Dickie on REAL life adventures, traveling the world with his companion, "Dynamite Dan" Flynn.

Dickie Dare was a compelling enough strip that New York Daily News publisher Joseph Patterson hired Caniff to work on a new strip, which Patterson wanted to see based in Asia, as Patterson felt Asia to be one of the last great areas for adventure in the world (Patterson was the guy who told Chester Gould to change Plainclothes Tracy to Dick Tracy. He was heavily involved in the Chicago Tribune New York news comic strip syndicate. One of his other major strips that he had an outsized influence upon will be spotlighted soon). So Caniff launched Terry and the Pirates, which was, in a way, a riff on the Dickie Dare concept.

It starred Terry Lee, who traveled with his companion, journalist Pat Ryan. When the strip begins, they're on a search for gold, but obviously, their adventures soon take them all over the place. As the strip is about the piracy of the area, one of the major characters in the strip is the Dragon Lady, the most dominant pirate of the whole area, who seems to harbor a bit of a thing for Pat. Caniff slowly introduced a number of interesting supporting characters, like the Southern transplant, April Kane, an early girlfriend for Terry.

Obviously, once World War II began, the setting of the strip meant that it would have to deal with the war, and so both Terry and Pat ultimately enlist (Terry having eventually grown to the age where he could enlist in the Army Air Force). Also, the Dragon Lady briefly becomes an ally, as she hates the Japanese as much as Pat and Terrry (but only because they're messing with her making money). Once the war was over, Caniff was getting frustrated by the fact that he didn't own the strip, so a rival syndicate offered him the chance to launch his own creator-owned series, and so he left Terry and the Pirates at the end of 1946 and launched Steve Canyon, a strip about a pilot, very much in the mold of Terry and the Pirates (obviously). Terry and the Pirates continued under George Wunder until ending in 1973. Steve Canyon would last until Caniff's death in 1988.

RELATED: Little Orphan Annie Always Embraced Christmas No Matter How Dark Things Got

HOW DID TERRY AND THE PIRATES HANDLE CHRISTMAS?

In this 1939 strip, the gang are at the headquarters of the British pirate, Captain Blaze, when April Kane and Big Stoop (a very large and very mute Mongolian man who befriends Pat and Terry and their translator, George Webster "Connie" Confucius) decide to have some Christmas fun...

Click here to enlarge the strip.

In 1940, Terry has been injured, and he's being taken care of by two minor Chinese characters, Dr. Ping and Hu Shee, who were fighting back against the Japanese as guerillas. They decide to give Terry a Merry Christmas...

Click here to enlarge the strip.

In 1941, Pat gives Terry a great speech about Christmas...

Click here to enlarge the strip.

In 1944, Caniff started doing a very special thing. In this Christmas strip, he paid tribute to the pilots who transported supplies through the Himalayas at great peril...

Click here to enlarge the strip.

This became a yearly tradition for Caniff. He would spend each Christmas doing special tributes to the soldiers, like this excellent one right before Caniff left the strip in 1946 about how veterans might act kind of distant at Christmastime...

Click here to enlarge the strip.

Caniff continued it every year in Steve Canyon. What a neat thing to do. Caniff was really amazing.