Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Terry and the Pirates


Wallace Wood is often said to have ghosted and/or assisted on George Wunder's TERRY AND THE PIRATES but no one seems to know exactly when. Here is a TERRY strip found on the 'Net that is claimed to have Woodwork. The only place I even think I see it is in the hair on the figure in the last panel. I don't know. What do you think?

4 comments:

  1. Yeah, the hair maybe. And you'd think Wally would draw better guns than that.

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  2. As a fan of both Wood's and Wunder's work I too have searched for signs of Wood assisting on "Terry." I haven't yet been convinced.

    While the two men shared stylistic similarities (the treatment of cast shadows in panel two, for instance; or the three-plane composition in the last panel), by this time Wood's powerful style was already well enough developed to have been more obvious--unless his contribution was quite small,like inking a background here and there.

    Wunder's art style changed often during his first decade on the strip. It's possible this was the result of frequent collaborators. However no one in the know seems to have tackled the question of post-Caniff "Terry" ghosts.

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  3. because the smurf asked, here's a start

    George Evans ghosted the daily from 1961 to 1973.

    other ghosts and assistants

    Henri Arnold (asst)
    Stan Aschmeir (ghost- a few)
    Ray Bailey (asst) 41-44 for Caniff
    Frank Engli (letters and Colors) 36-46 for Caniff
    Russ Heath (asst) c1961 around 6 months
    Fred Kida (ghost pencils daily and sunday) 1961
    jack Lehti (asst) c1961
    Lloyd Ostendoff (asst) 1940 for Caniff
    Mike Peppe (i)
    Charles Rabb (asst) 1930s for Caniff
    Mike Sekowsky (ghost)
    Don Sherwood (asst) 1961-1962
    Noel Sickles (asst) 30s for Caniff
    Wally Wood (ghost) 3 weeks c1962
    Frank Springer (asst) early 60s

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  4. I believe that an important clue is the signature. If you look at the signatures, there are strips that have a "W" very suspicious.

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