Stripper's Guide

Today is Memorial Day, so let's do a strip that has some slight military connection. Of course our Obscurity of the Day isn't the Milton Caniff classic version of Terry and the Pirates, but the revival from the 1990s.

The original Terry ended in 1973 just short of its 40th anniversary. After Caniff left at the end of 1946 to create Steve Canyon it was ably continued by George Wunder for the rest of its run. Terry's 1973 demise is owed mostly to the unpopular Vietnam war, which impacted the country in so many ways, even to our taste in comic strips. In the 90s, though, after the much more popular first Iraq war, apparently Tribune Media Services was willing to give the genre another try.

The new version of the strip was actually just part of a projected Terry media onslaught. Michael Uslan, who wrote the strip, was a movie producer coming off the huge success of the new Batman movies. He wanted to create a TV show of Terry, and a new version of the comic strip was to be a sounding board to test the popularity of the idea. As Uslan stated at the time that the Terry strip debuted, "We are in the business of building franchises."

Uslan brought some heavy guns to bear on the strip revival by hiring the Hildebrandt brothers as artists for the series. The Hildebrandts were famed for their fantasy and science fiction paintings and had a huge fan following.

The modernized Terry and the Pirates centers on, of course, the Dragon Lady, now a hi-tech combination businesswoman/pirate working out of Tokyo with all sort of futuristic gewgaws. Terry and Pat are in a quasi-military group known as The Alliance, dedicated to foiling the Tokyo pirate trade.

The strip looked fantastic and the stories were some seriously hard-boiled stuff. Quite a few papers jumped on board for what obviously had a shot at becoming that unlikelist of successes, a modern-day adventure comic strip [Edit: Jeffrey Lindenblatt says the initial subscriber roster was a paltry 20 papers -- I stand corrected]. However, it was not to be. The fabulous art on the feature was ruined by tiny reproduction, and older readers vociferously objected to the updated punky versions of the classic characters. Then Uslan lost interest when it became obvious that a Terry and the Pirates TV show was never going to make it to the air. The high-powered pairing of Uslan and the Hildebrandts came to an end after a one year contract -- their stint began on March 26 1995 and ended March 31 1996.

Apparently either Tribune Media or franchise-builder Uslan wasn't willing to completely give up on the project though. A new creative team was assigned to the strip. Jim Clark took over the writing and Dan Spiegle the art. From a scattering of reports, the new pair did a good job on the strip, but best of luck finding them to read. Many comics page editors dumped the strip even before the end of the first year, and when the creative team changed the sinking ship took on water quickly. By the time the strip was finally dumped by TMS on July 27 1997 the number of clients was miniscule -- I wouldn't be surprised if they were in single digits [EDIT: And Lindenblatt concurs -- see his comment below].

Despite the cachet of the classic name and the high-end talent on the strip, apparently no one has ever stepped up to the plate to do a reprint book of the strip. A real shame because I get the impression it's well worth a read. [Edit: there was, however, a comic book series -- see Steven Rowe's comment below]

Labels: Obscurities