"Terry and the Pirates" & Steve Canyon

[Thunderbolt]

In the school building where I am having my training,(I'm in the USAF) they have all sorts of 1950's Air Force recruiting posters as well as selections from Terry and the Pirates as well as Steve Canyon. Does anyone know any places on the net where I can read these old comic strips?[huh] Sorry I don't post as often anymore, but I don't have much time.

 

[Salv]

The earliest Terry & The Pirates strips can be found here - 1934/35.

 

[Thunderbolt]

Gee, that's swell

Thanks a lot!

 

[BettyValentine]

Oh! Awesome! Thanks so much for the links, I used to love Terry & The Pirates when they relaunched it in the 90s. One day they didn't run the normal strip and ran one of the old ones instead - a Valentine's Day pin-up strip of all the TatP ladies - I wished they had run more of those, and I'm so glad to find them!

xoxo
BV

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Terry looks like a wannabe Tintin. And as for that suave Pat Ryan dude, give me a disheveled Captain Haddock every time! lol


.

 

[Doh!]

In March, I was fortunate enough to see a lot of Milton Caniff's artwork for these strips in person at a museum, and they are truly works of art. The man knew how to use a paintbrush!

 

[Marc Chevalier]

And what's the deal with that "George Webster Confucius" lunatic?

 

[NewMexExpat]

Hi Thunderbolt, (here in the Lounge, that must be P-47, not A-10)

I remember Steve Canyon as the premier strip of the Sunday comics in the paper in the little town where I grew up, near Holloman AFB. The F-4s were still stationed there then, and sonic booms weren't as strictly regulated, so I remember regularly hearing "the sound of Freedom". The Thunderbirds flew F-4s back then -- that surprise low flyover from the rear of the crowd they opened the show with just SHOOK the ground.

The Air Force loved artists like Caniff whose work boosted the image of the service and flying. I think he did some large works donated to or commissioned by the Air Force Art Collection.

Here's some info on Caniff and the Canyon series:

http://www.toonopedia.com/canyon.htm

... and here are two places you can buy the collected strips:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0971024995/104-5280142-4127956?v=glance&n=283155

http://www.kenpiercebooks.com/canyon.htm

Hope this is helpful to you.

AIRPOWER!!

- Mark

 

[Nathan Dodge]

The checkerbpg website sells the Steve Canyon strips in books in a year-by-year format, but the reproductions are quite small. ebay is a good source for finding the old (1980s) Kitchen Sink Press publication called "Steve Canyon Magazine." It has fine background features in addition to large, clear reproductions. The mag ran from 1983 to about 1989. They are great!

 

[Nathan Dodge]

This blog posts Steve Canyon Sunday strips from the 1940s-50s, though they haven't updated in awhile.

EDIT: Google Books has thirty or so pages of Steve Canyon 1947 and 1948 available to read.

I like the early years of the strip, when Steve was a freshly-returned WWII vet who started his own air cargo business.


Adventure!

 

[Atomic Age]

Terry and the Pirates was also made into a movie serial in 1940.

http://www.amazon.com/Terry-Pirates...ef=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1267377483&sr=1-2

In addition Terry and the Pirates was a huge influence on Jonny Quest. Originally Hanna Barbara wanted to do Terry and the Pirates as an animated TV show, but they couldn't get the rights, so the created Jonny Quest instead.

http://www.amazon.com/Jonny-Quest-C...ef=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1267377663&sr=1-1

Doug

 

[Nathan Dodge]

What I like so much about Steve Canyon and this era of newspaper adventure strips in general is the ebullience and positive attitude that is portayed. The whole reading experience is representative of the "Can-Do" attitude that was so prevalent in the U.S during the war years. Sometimes I think I'm reading stuff my grandfather would say. Maybe it was all propaganda but I find genuine feeling in it. One would be hard pressed to find anything in our current media forms filled with so much optimism.

As for characterization, Milton Caniff--one of my heroes--drops in small and infrequent tidbits concerning Canyon's past and whenever ol' Steve is in a bind which is just enough to get me wanting to know more about Stevenson Burton Canyon.

My introduction to Steve Canyon came in 1983 when I was 12 years old. My family used to vacation in North Carolina every summer and one time we went to Asheville and I found a great comic book shop and I stumbled across Kitchen Sink's Steve Canyon Magazine #2 on the wall rack. (The college-aged store employees were discussing a friend's "lavender" healer character in their Dungeons & Dragons game lol ) I quickly ditched whatever current Marvel books I was set to buy that day and was totally captivated by this collection of old comic strips. The bonus historical material that bookended this fine publication made finding this magazine all the better and only fed my then-nascent fascination with the 1940s.

My, I do ramble...

 

[Corto]

Thanks for all the linkage. Just FYI, you can find lots of new-condition, inexpensive used Steve Canyon trade-paperbacks on Amazon as well as the new ones. They're printed a little small for me- but they're all that's out there. I did once find a trade-paperback of "In Formosa's Dire Straits" (which is a classic Canyon adventure) printed appropriately large.

Also, check out the DVD of remastered Steve Canyon 1950's tv shows. They're pretty much unabashed commercials for the Air Force (and the military-industrial complex), but still very cool.

I'm a huge fan of Canniff. I wish I could draw and ink half as well as he could.

...and, Thunderbolt, if you're interested in the USAF's Vietnam-era "Steve Canyon Program", pick up a copy of "The Ravens" by Christopher Robbins- it's about the days when they used Piper Cubs and people (instead of UAV's) for dangerous, forward air control work in an exotic and "undeclared" locale...

 

[Nathan Dodge]

Thanks for all the linkage. Just FYI, you can find lots of new-condition, inexpensive used Steve Canyon trade-paperbacks on Amazon as well as the new ones. They're printed a little small for me- but they're all that's out there. I did once find a trade-paperback of "In Formosa's Dire Straits" (which is a classic Canyon adventure) printed appropriately large.

Also, check out the DVD of remastered Steve Canyon 1950's tv shows. They're pretty much unabashed commercials for the Air Force (and the military-industrial complex), but still very cool.

If you drew your avatar, I can see the Caniff influence.

The 1980s Steve Canyon Magazine is printed in a larger format than the Checker editions and as I mentioned, the suplemental material is just plain fascinating! This magazine is one of the early exposures I had to the 1930s-40s.

I'm mostly familiar with the "Horizons Unlimited" Canyon, the transport company he had immediately after WWII.

And speaking of USAF commercials, I happen to like Strategic Air Command (1955) as a historical artifact and to see those B-47's in flight, though I'm politically opposite the likes of James Stewart and John Wayne, both of whom I adore as actors.