Sunday Funnies - March 12, 1960 - part 2 of 4

Sunday morning and back again for more 4 color fun delivered to your doorstep for pennies a serving.  Another glimpse back to the days before newspapers wanted to charge you a dollar for page after page of advertisements and actually offered content between said ads.  SOME even had news!

Part 2 of my scans of the March 12, 1960 edition of the "Star".  I'm sure I knew what city the "Star" was in when I bought it, but this info is lost to the passing sands of time I suppose.  

Today we see Milton Caniff's mature soap opera "Steve Cayon".  So far from his adventuresome "Dickie Dare" or "Terry & The Pirates" days, yet changing for all the right reasons.  Deft inking and layouts and adult characterization and good solid storytelling.

Harry Weinert's "Vignettes of Life" another of the hodge-podge/anthology strips of the day.  Easy to read, easy for the editor to lop off 1/2 of and run ads or another feature instead.  More commerce in action...it is what it is.

Lee Falk's "Mandrake the Magician".  Past it's prime here for sure, but 1960 still doesn't seem out of time for MM as 1968 will.

Full bore centerspread with three (count 'em 3!) strips to a double size page.  Far better than the last time I looked at a paper and saw as many as 6 on a regular page.

Mell Lazarus' "Miss Peach", "Ripley's 'Belieeve It or Not'" and Jimmy Hatlo's "They'll Do It Every Time".  The strip page was evolving as tastes were and rightfully so.  These strips are breezy, easy to read and easy of the eye.

Nothing wrong with any of that, I learn more and more as I mature as well.

Talk to you soon.

King Comic Heroes - part 10 and final

The era of adventure or hero newspaper comic strips ran wild from the 1930's, easily through the 40's, 50's and 60's before being rung to a halt in the 1970's when strips were so tiny in the paper you couldn't tell a decent story or lay out any artwork that made any sense. The reason's the newspaper comics section got smaller are of course mainly economic, but the strips that had their real heyday in the early days had much more competition for reader's entertainment dollar as time went on as well.

For such a brief window of opportunity though, some authentically talented storytellers and artists brought the best of their talents to this rare artform and The King Feature Syndicate corralled an inordinate number of them. Here's the last chapter in this Pioneer Book's special, spotlighting a slew more of them. Roy Crane's "Wash Tubb's & Captain Easy" is easily the most underated strip ever done and it's good too see that in the present, it's getting it's due. Others like Milton Caniff's "Steve Canyon" have long been celebrated commercially and artistically, and as seen here in this blog, Allen Saunders' serialized, decades-long storytelling in strips like Kerry Drake, Rip Kirby and Steve Roper were highlighted in the pages of "Nemo: the Classic Comics Library"'s "Playwrite for Paper Actors" series.

How exciting it must have been to read these cliffhangers as they were originally doled out in daily and weekly installments when current. To run for the next day's newspaper and pull them open to the comics section FIRST to see what has become of your favorite hero since yesterday's hair-raising installment.

Ah, to live in a different time. Simple pleasures that were so elloaborately forged.

Talk to you soon.

"Milton Caniff's Private War" - Nemo #32 part 1

Printed upside-down and filling the back half of "Nemo: the Classic Comics Library's" final issue #31, was issue #32. What a great treat as they cleaned out their vaults and shared with us what they had laying in wait.

First up is a very in-depth article about a specific part of Milton Caniff's career. After so much success before, during and even long after the years of World War II with his strips "Terry & the Pirates", "Male Call" and "Steve Canyon" there came a time when things didn't go so right. The downside of having a life-long career, I suppose, is that your audience changes. Even in generations...and in public perspective. As the decades shifted from the 1930's to the 1940's to the 1950's and into the 1960's, Caniff's audience and the country at large went from the gung-ho, "let's get Hitler and fight for the right!" of WWII to the "what in the hell are we doing here?" of Vietnam.

Boys and Men in uniform weren't held on a pedestal anymore. They weren't heroes, they were considered war-mongers. Mr. Caniff felt they remained heroes and "Steve Canyon" could tell a story of changing times.

Here's his struggle to keep from cancelation.

Read on, kiddoes.

Talk to you soon.

Milton Caniff - Adventure Comics Strip Shakespeare and Picasso rolled into one!

Born this day in 1907, Milton Caniff would be 103 years old today!

With the amount of work he left behind for us to read, re-read, enjoy, re-enjoy, learn from and learn from again, you'd almost think he was still around, cranking out genius on a daily basis.

Caniff began his career in 1932, doing generic assignments on different strips for the syndicate, then in 1933 the adventure began!


Caniff began a strip called "Dickie Dare", a fantasy-adventure strip about a young boy who loved to read adventure stories. He'd read about Robin Hood and the like and then drift off into a fantasy in which he was swashbuckling right alongside his literary heroes. The strip lasted just over a year, and before the run was over, fantasizing about adventure wasn't enough. Dickie found himself traveling 'round the world with dashing soldier-of-fortune/adventurer/family friend, "Dynamite Dan" Flynn.

America's youth was just not experiencing fantasy alongside the fantasy of their fantasy hero...they were experiencing real life adventure alongside their fantasy friend. Caniff cut away two layers in one fell swoop. Genius!

In 1934, Caniff was hired away to do a new strip for the Chicago Tribune. He kept the adventure, he kept the young hero the readers could identify with, he kept the dashing adventurer whom he fought alongside...he changed were the names...now it was young Terry Lee adventuring alongside dashing Pat Ryan and their adventures were set in the exotic orient.

"Terry and the Pirates" may be the most elaborate, well executed, best drawn, most layered in character or story, adventure strip ever done. Caniff had listened to his muse and followed suit.

It's topics like this I hope you take what's inside my head for what it's worth.

Milton Caniff was not only one of the most prolific and longest producing writer/artist in the adventure comic strip field, he was also one of the most celebrated in his own time.

What I can tell you about this amazing persons storytelling and art pales in comparison with what else is out there.

Caniff went on to do a strip for "Stars and Stripes" magazine during WWII. A humor strip with a gorgeous pin-up idol name Miss Lace who kept the troops morale up, if by only reminding them what they were fighting for.

In 1947 Caniff began probably his most famous strip, "Steve Canyon". "Canyon" was another adventure strip, but this time in a post-war world. "Canyon" went from military action to civilian action to cold-war espionage action, with a soap opera type way of keeping all the characters intertwined as the story developed. Caniff had grown into an even denser storyteller and "Steve Canyon" ran from 1947 until Caniff's death in 1988. It remains a rich tapestry of character and art that's still being unravelled, marveled at and studied to this day, over 20 years later.

Please take my advice. Do some googling around for Milton Caniff and read the volumes written by scholars for decades about his man. Read as many strips as you can and wrap yourselves in the complexity of story...complexity that belies this strips limited space to tell that story.

And just lose yourselves in the art of one of this mediums true masters. My God, you could drown in the blacks that his brush laid out.

Thanks Milton! For never underestimating your readers want for more. We should all learn from that alone...then we'll get to your other scores of talents!