Terry & the Pirates No. 15: The Return of Normandie

by Milton Caniff

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0918348846
• ISBN13: 9780918348845
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing
• Length: 64 Pages

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable but somewhat preachy classic comic strip

Volume 15 of NBM's "Flying Buttress classics library" collects newspaper comic strips forming the December 1941 - June 1942 continuity. Note that Sunday pages, while included, are reproduced in black-and-white although originally printed in color. This results in some poor reproductions. In the previous episode Dude Hennick and Terry said farewell to Raven... Then Terry reunited with Pat and the gang, including ingénue April Kane. April was soon the target of gangster Sammy the Tapper and his mysterious boss, who turns out to be none other than rat Tony Sandhurst. With him is wife Normandie (nee Drake, from the 1934 continuity) and little daughter Merrily. Normandie is Pat's old flame, and he puts the little family on an evacuation plane when word comes that the city is to be attacked by "the enemy." Previously it was politically incorrect to refer directly to Japan's invasion of China, and Caniff, who made extensive use of the war in his plots, was required to avoid identifying the aggressors directly. He referred to the Japanese only as "the invader" - although he occasionally slipped in national symbols. After Pearl Harbor it was undoubtedly acceptable to be honest, but Caniff seems to derive some amusement from referring to the Japanese only by pseudonym until the March 12th episode, when Pat calls them "the Nips." It should be noted that contrary to contemporary prejudices about American "racism" during the war, Caniff, America's most popular cartoonist (the equivalent of a 1960s tv network) almost always presents Japanese soldiers sympathetically. Tony Sandhurst's true colors are revealed and Pat, Normandie, and Merrily wind up with the ruthless pirate (but Chinese patriot) the Dragon Lady. However Terry saves the pair from certain death when he springs a trap laid for the guerrillas by the troops of "the invader." Terry is captured but saved from execution by the notorious adventuress Burma, who is being kept by Kiel, a foreign agent (apparently it was also politically incorrect to refer directly to Germany's war in Europe!!) The brutal Kiel uses Terry in a plan to sink Allied shipping. Burma takes the eye of the [Nazi] secret police chief and is sent to spy on the noble [German] engineer Colonel Wolff, who is rightly suspected of anti-totalitarian tendencies.