Popular Comics #23
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freePopular Comics #23 is a representative artifact of the earliest phase of the American comic-book industry's transition from newsstand novelty to a durable medium, arriving at the precise moment — 1937 — when newspaper-strip syndication and comic-book publishing were still deeply intertwined. The issue brings together under one cover two of the most culturally potent adventure strips of the 1930s: Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates, which writer Tom De Haven would later call 'the great strip of World War II' and 'the Casablanca of comics,' and Zack Mosley's Smilin' Jack, then at the height of its early popularity after adding a daily format in 1936. For readers in 1937, a single dime bought them ongoing serialized adventures of characters — Terry Lee, Pat Ryan, Connie, and the Dragon Lady — who were simultaneously being heard on a new radio program that had launched that same year, underscoring the multimedia reach these comic-strip properties already commanded.
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Popular Comics was Dell's flagship anthology title, launched in February 1936 and packaged in its early years by M.C. Gaines out of the McClure Syndicate offices, following the newspaper-strip reprint format Gaines had pioneered with Famous Funnies. By 1937 Dell had also begun working with Western Printing and Lithographing Company at its Poughkeepsie, New York plant, which would formally take over production duties by 1939. Issue #23 sits squarely in this transitional editorial window: content was drawn entirely from established syndicated strips — including those from the Chicago Tribune–New York News Syndicate — rather than original comic-book material, making these issues primary documents of how syndication economics shaped the early comic book.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Dell in 1937 as part of Popular Comics (1936 series), one of Dell's first three regular comic-book titles alongside The Funnies and The Comics.
- The issue reprints Terry and the Pirates strips by Milton Caniff, featuring Terry Lee, Pat Ryan, Connie (George Webster Confucius), and the Dragon Lady — all characters who originated in Caniff's newspaper strip, which launched October 22, 1934.
- The Dragon Lady, one of the most famous femme fatales in American comics history, was modeled visually on actress Joan Crawford and partly inspired by a real Chinese pirate named Lai Choi San; she had debuted in the comic strip in December 1934.
- Smilin' Jack, created by aviation enthusiast Zack Mosley, is also featured; the strip launched as On the Wing on October 1, 1933, was retitled Smilin' Jack on December 31, 1933, and had only recently expanded to a daily format on June 15, 1936 — meaning 1937 issues of Popular Comics were among the earliest comic-book appearances of the daily-strip version.
- By the time of this issue's publication, Terry and the Pirates had already become a radio hit: the audio program launched in 1937 and ran on and off until 1948, making the strip one of the era's true cross-media franchises.
- The issue's editorial context was overseen in this period by M.C. Gaines, a foundational figure in comic-book history, working through the McClure Syndicate/Dell arrangement.
- Popular Comics #23 is a 64-page, full-color anthology priced at ten cents, consistent with Dell's standard format for the series during 1936–1937.
- IDW Publishing later collected the complete Terry and the Pirates newspaper strips starting in 2007, giving modern readers access to the same Caniff material reprinted in issues like this one.
Cast · 5 characters
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
After being pranked by a toy camera Herby doesn't trust a real photographer.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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