Ninety years ago yesterday one of the greatest 1930s adventure strips debuted in the New York Daily News
It would be the following day when we would learn the full title of Milton Caniff‘s new comic strip.
Terry and the Pirates by Milton Caniff would catapult the cartoonist to fame and fortune.
Peter Bosch at 13th Dimension gives a nice illustrated summary of Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates.
Terry and the Pirates would run until 1973 with George Wunder taking it on in 1946 and then revived for a not bad, but ill-fated run from 1995 to 1997.
note:
The original art to the above promotional strip exists and it occasionally appears on the internet being touted as the first appearance of Terry and the Pirates, it is not. The earliest I find it appearing (via newspapers.com) is two months and a week after the October 22 debut in The Hamilton Spectator of December 29, 1934.
On the other hand Apple Mary by Martha Orr did not appear unheralded.
Ninety years ago, a week after Terry and the Pirates first appeared another strip showed up. Apple Mary was more soap opera than adventure though danger, excitement, and intrigue were ever present. On October 29, 1934:
And yes, that introductory strip above is the actual first Apple Mary comic strip, and the strip still runs today!
For reasons unexplained King Features refuses to acknowledge the evolution of Apple Mary to Mary Worth’s Family to Mary Worth though the connection is undeniable and was made within four months of the strip’s launching:
The weirdest aspect of this whole kerfuffle is that it’s impossible to fahom what’s in it for King to gaslight everybody on this. Ownership isn’t in question, nor is there anything to be lost by attributing Mary’s creation to anybody other than whoever they claim created the strip–especially since you’d think the fact that it’s a woman would be trumpted instead of denied. I mean, who cares, except those of us who believe that verifiable history is factual, and ignoring it is a lie.