In less than a year, Caniff, inspired by the work of his studio-mate, Noel Sickles, developed the most imitated of his refinements, an impressionistic style of drawing that suggested reality with shadow rather than with linear particulars. He added realism of detail, striving for absolute authenticity in depicting every aspect of the strip's locale, whether Oriental or, later, military.
But Caniff's signal achievement was to enrich the simple adventure story formula by making character development integral to the action of his stories: readers wanted to know not just what would happen but how the characters would fare. To weave into his stories such an intriguing character as an alluring but ruthless pirate queen called the Dragon Lady (doubtless the most famous of Caniff's creations) was to add to the strip's exotic locale a powerful enhancement: her characterisation complemented the mysteriousness of the Orient with the inscrutability of her personality, which nonetheless seemed so true-to-life that it lent the authority of its authenticity to the strip's stories, making the most improbable adventures seem real.
Within a few years of its debut, Terry was setting the pace for cartoonists who did adventure strips. During World War II, Caniff sent his strip to war, infusing the action with a trenchant patriotism that inspired both soldiers at the front and their families at home and brought Caniff unprecedented fame. After the war, he gave up Terry and on January 13, 1947, started Steve Canyon in order to own and control his creation. Terry was continued by George Wunder, who did his best to follow in the master's footsteps until the strip ceased in 1973.
