Writer Tom De Haven described Terry and the Pirates as "the great strip of World War II" and "The Casablanca of comics".

The following year, with the Field Syndicate, he launched Steve Canyon, an action-adventure strip of which Caniff retained ownership,[5] which ran until shortly after his death in 1988.

Wunder drew highly detailed panels, but some critics, notably Maurice Horn, claimed that it was sometimes difficult to tell one character from another and that his work lacked Caniff's essential humor.

[citation needed] On March 26, 1995, Michael Uslan and the Brothers Hildebrandt produced an updated version of the strip which carried over no continuity with the original.

[6] The adventure begins with young Terry Lee, "a wide-awake American boy," arriving in then-contemporary China with his friend, two-fisted journalist Pat Ryan.

He developed an ever-larger circle of friends and enemies, including Big Stoop, Captain Judas, Cheery Blaze, Chopstick Joe, Cue Ball, and Dude Hennick.

In a rather bold move for a 1940s comic strip, Sanjak was hinted at being a lesbian cross-dresser with designs on Terry's girlfriend April Kane.

[8] Over time, owing to a successful collaboration with cartoonist Noel Sickles, Caniff dramatically improved to produce some of the most memorable strips in the history of the medium.

Pat, Connie and Big Stoop still made occasional guest appearances as marine commandos, while the Dragon Lady and her pirates became Chinese guerrillas fighting the Japanese.

[6] One of the highlights of this period was the October 17, 1943, Sunday page, "The Pilot's Creed": Corkin gives the recently commissioned Terry a speech on his responsibilities as a fighter pilot, including the need to consider all who have contributed to the development of his plane, respect his support crew, spare a thought for ones killed in the fighting, and respect military bureaucracy which, for better or worse, has kept the American army going for over 150 years.

Originally starring the beautiful adventuress Burma, it was racier than the regular strip,[citation needed] and complaints caused Caniff to rename it Male Call to avoid confusion.

[14][15] In 1953, Canada Dry offered a "premium giveaway" with a case of its ginger ale — one mini-book in a trilogy series of Terry and the Pirates strips by Wunder printed by Harvey Comics.

In the Warner Bros. cartoon China Jones, Daffy Duck plays a private detective, and goes to a Chinese bakery to receive a "hot tip".

[16] Robert Culp said that the comic strip Terry and the Pirates was his inspiration for the "tone" and "spirit" and "noir heightened realism" of the 1965 NBC television series I Spy when he was writing the pilot.