Milton Caniff’s landmark adventure Terry and the Pirates has been among the most reprinted newspaper strips of all time…and deservedly so. The artist’s fame for establishing the tone, cadence, composition and dramaturgy of the mid-century adventure genre in comics is well known. I won’t rehash it here. The latest and most ambitious reprint Terry project concluded this week when Clover Press and the Library of American Comics shipped the final three volumes in the 13 book Terry and the Pirates: The Master Collection. As I said in my initial review of the first volumes, the series is magnificent, if you don’t mind juggling oversized tomes. The sourcing of best available art, coloration and overall reproduction are the best I have seen among the many renderings of Terry over the years. This is LOAC’s second go at the strip. The imprint was launched two decades ago with a 6-volume oblong set. The first 12 volumes of the Master Collection reprint the full run from inception in 1934 through Caniff’s exit in 1946. A thirteenth volume carries new commentary, ancillary art and all of the front matter from the earlier series. Kudos to LOAC and Clover. Unlike many comic strip reprint projects that lumber for years, or peter out in mid-run, this one only took three years to complete. This final tranch of volumes also comes with a packed in bit of extra art (see above. Most of the set is available at Amazon, or directly from Clover.
Continue readingTag Archives: history
The Fabulous Furry Revolution
The United States has never made a bold move forward without anchoring it in a reading of the past. Our “Founding Fathers” have been carted out regularly to sanctify everything from The Civil War to Progressive and New Deal reforms, the Civil Rights movement to Reaganism. Americans like to frame changes in our politics and culture not as radical breaks from the past so much as realizations of original principles. It is self-evident in our own time. Consider the distance between Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and the countless founders bios from Fox News hosts. Arguing about America’s future is always grounded in a a declaration about its past.
It should not surprise us, then, that one of the most ambitious projects in the underground comics movement of the 1970s was a cartoon retelling of the war that started it all. The 50th Anniversary reissue of Gilbert Shelton and Ted Richards’ Give Me Liberty: A Revised History of the American Revolution is a cause for appreciation and reflection on the rich legacy of the 60s/70s counter-culture. Across 1975-76 in the pages of their Rip-Off Press comic books and underground newspaper syndicate, the creator of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and collaborator on the Disney-defaming Air Pirates combined well-researched history with hippie irreverence.
Continue readingPeak Segar: Plunder Island (1934)
The Plunder Island sequence of Thimble Theatre Sundays that ran from December 1933 to July 1934 was E.C. Segar’s signature epic. It concentrated most of this master’s diverse talents and blended the many genres Thimble Theatre traversed into the strips most impressive run. Fabulism, farce, adventure, sentiment, venality, romance, screwball — all and more are here. And along the way, Segar even fleshes out and distinguishes among his key characters.
Continue readingShelf Scan 2024: Reviving Calvin, Nancy, Flash, Mandrake and Popeye…Again.
There are now generations of young adults who have no memory of daily newspapers, let alone that back page and Sunday section of comics. Without that experience, I wonder how that legacy survives and continues to inspire everyday readers and young artists. If the volume of classic reprints this year is any indication, however, we graying lovers of newspapers past can’t be the only market for decades-old dailies. Many essential strips enjoyed fresh or continuing reprint projects this year that keeps the likes of Popeye, Nancy, Mandrake and more on current store shelves. Even the most reprinted strip of the last generation got revisited in 2024.
Continue readingShelf Scan 2024: Taschen’s Ultimate Duck
Kicking off this year’s roundup reviews of notable books for comics history buffs, let’s start with the annual Taschen doorstop.
Continue readingThe Timid Soul Toys With Fascism
The authoritarian strain in modern democracies has only heightened since I first posted this bit of cartoon wisdom several years ago. In 1937, H.T. Webster’s Casper Milquetoast (The Timid Soul) responds to Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Germany’s Adolph Hitler with his own fantasy of assertiveness. This 1937 vision of fascism’s psychological appeal to feelings of personal disempowerment is eerily relevant to the current ethos. Webster perceptively understands how the personal and political entwine around identity. And through Casper he renders it as a will to power that is at once frightening but also silly and petty. Webster even seems to understand something American liberals are only now grasping: the most effective response to bro-aviating fascist cosplay is ridicule.
Continue readingAdvertising Decency: The Cartoon War on Hate
Hate is an easy sell. In the marketplace of hearts and minds, intolerance, grievance, anger are some of the most compelling product features of any cause or candidate that is new to the political shelves. Likewise, simple, high aspirations tend to market more easily. See “Hope and Change.” Appealing to base instincts or ambition and aspiration is Marketing 101 in America’s cultural economy.
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Panels & Prose 