Clover Press; $100

Ever since Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates debuted in newspapers in 1934, writers have been trying to come up with adjectives to describe it. American Flagg! creator Howard Chaykin summed up the strip and its impact succinctly when he said, “In the first few years of Terry and the Pirates, Milton Caniff invented the visual and textual language that defines the very vocabulary of all adventure and character-based comic art…. It is the greatest adventure comic strip ever done – a genuine masterpiece of its art form.”

The strip, of course, has been collected previously. The Library of Comics (LOAC) produced a glorious complete set (beginning in 2007) that was at the time the gold standard of comic strip reprints. That incarnation, though, no longer holds the title. This one does.

This 164-page, 11” x 14” hardcover, which perfectly compliments the previous six volumes in the series, is reproduced from Milton Caniff’s personal set of color syndicate tabloid proofs. Those proofs were not available for previous books, which ultimately means that is the best that this foundational action-adventure strip has ever looked. The dailies are crisp black and white, and the Sundays are the truest color ever reproduced.

Truthfully, any student of comic storytelling can’t go wrong with any of the volumes in this series, but as events spiral toward the second World War, this one is particularly captivating.

“Bravo!” as usual to Dean Mullaney, Bruce Canwell, and their team at LOAC.

– J.C. Vaughn