IDW Publishing has announced the deluxe reprinting of Milton Caniff's classic adventure comic strip Terry and the Pirates in a series of six hardcover volumes edited and designed by Dean Mullaney. Unlike the previous (and long out of print) edition of Terry and the Pirates the new series will feature the Sunday pages reproduced in full color and fully integrated with the daily strips in deluxe oversize (11' x 8.5') 368-page volumes. With this series IDW is inaugurating a new imprint, The Library of American Comics, for its burgeoning line of comic strip reprints.
Volume #1 ($49.99), which features an introduction by Howard Chaykin, is due out in July and covers the years 1934-1936. At first Caniff had different storylines going in the Sunday and daily versions of the strip, and Volume 1 will be segregated at first so readers can follow the two narratives easily, but Caniff soon integrated the daily and Sundays into a single narrative so by the end of the first reprint volume, the Sunday and daily strips will be fully integrated. Subsequent volumes will be released on a quarterly basis (Pete Hamill will provide the introduction for Volume 2).
Known as the 'Rembrandt of the comics' for his daring visual style that featured dramatic lighting and brilliant use of contrasting blocks of black and white, Caniff also revolutionized the content of the adventure comic strip blending fantasy and reality and introducing a healthy dose of what they referred to in the 1930s as 'topic A' (aka 'sex'). The importance of Caniff's achievement in Terry and the Pirates can be seen in its pervasive influence on the world of comics, which stretched all the way to
Dean Mullaney is drawing on his own collection of Sunday pages and relying on Bill Blackbeard's collection and the Cartoon Research Library at
