Continuing with our policy of celebrating the year of the Bunny (plus sucking up to the Chinese), we present a comix caper culled from one of the classic adventure strips of all time - with Apologies to Milton Caniff and George Wunder - "Taffy & the Pirates!"
For those of you too young to remember - In the late1930s, Milton Caniff sent the young Terry and his pals off on their wayward adventures to the Far East, where "Terry and the Pirates" became one of the most popular adventure strips in history!
By WWII, Terry had grown up and joined the AVG (American Volunteer Group, more commonly known today as the Flying Tigers), where he and his cohorts helped fight off the Japanese invaders in China. After the war, Caniff took a "Leave of Absence" to create "Steve Canyon," while George Wunder stepped into his somewhat waterlogged brogans to keep Terry and the crew going for the next decade an' a half or so...
But all things change and by the '50s, when I first started reading "Terry and the Pirates," the main thing I wondered about was, "Where the heck are the Pirates?"
The Pirates, of course, were never the "Ahr-Ahr me hearties" Spanish Main-type pirates, but crafty, devious Chinese Pirates - and the meanest, the roughest and rowdiest - the slinkiest an' sulkiest of 'em all, was the Dragon Lady, a cool, cruel an' sexy Oriental femme fatale who would strut across the fantasies of many a young lad from the 1930s to the 1960s... So here she is, portrayed by Vicky, along with Taffy, HotShot Tubbins and a rabble of scurvy Sea Dogs who seem to be having some sort of altercation, while replaying the glory days of the Sunday Funnies...
The original version of this pic and layout was inspired by a Caniff panel, and was inked back in '94 for the San Diego Comic Con Program Booklet... Click here for samples...
