Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon: 1947

Among the many bygone newspaper comic strips, there are a few that are considered classics. It is fortunate that unlike many legacy strips (such as Gasoline Alley, Dennis the Menace or Dick Tracy), these strips died with their creators, keeping the original strip undiminished by successive artists. Krazy Kat has gone away, as has Peanuts (although it continues in reissues of the originals); so to, has Steve Canyon. Milton Caniff had developed Steve Canyon shortly after WWII, and unlike his previous strip - Terry and the Pirates - he was able to assert more creative control over Canyon The collection of 1947 strips presents the first year or so of Steve Canyon's adventures. And "adventure" is the right word, because this was an adventure strip, focused on intrigue and action. As Canyon is introduced, he is an ex-WWII fighter pilot who has now runs a struggling operation called Horizons Unlimited, which specializes in charter flights, particularly for moving cargo. His first client in the comic strip is the wealthy and beautiful Copper Calhoon, who like many of the characters, have rather unique names. Copper wants Canyon to fly her to her various properties, where she suspects shenanigans are going on. She's right. Like almost every woman in the strip, she also has a romantic interest in Canyon, who generally stays detached from any love affairs, though one woman will appear later in the year that he is attracted to. Though this considered a classic strip - and it is well-drawn and written - it also is not at the top tier of the older comics. To me, the significant flaw is the occasional bits of silliness that distract from, rather than enhance, the storyline. Nowhere is this more obvious than the character of Happy Easter who can be annoying at times. Canyon himself is an okay character, but often bland compared to the characters around him. Overall, Steve Canyon the comic strip, at least in its first year, is a decent but not exceptional work.

It arrived very soon. I am very pleased with the good condition of the product.

As a paperboy in the sixties, I was always fascinated by the adventure strips in the newspapers I delivered, but unfortunately I only managed to read them sporadically and missed their continuity. It was also the time of their decline and today, the adventure strip is not what it was in its heyday during the previous decades and has largely disappeared. I often wished I could revisit those times. A number of high-quality reproductions have recently come out, restoring these great strips, and it is now time for me to delve. Since there is much agreement that the giant among the adventure strip artists was Milton Caniff, I gave the 1947 Steve Canyon a try. The post-war years had their special appeal, reflected in the visual arts - and especially Hollywood, with its Lauren Bacalls, Bette Davises, Katharine Hepburns, Agnes Mooreheads, Joan Crawfords, and scores of other individuals and femmes fatales, and the leading men of the time, and secondary characters and sidekicks - there is something about the visual style of the people, cars, planes, design and architecture of the time that is very pleasing. The look of those times is stunningly captured in Caniff's panels, little chiaroscuro masterpieces (Caniff was called the Rembrandt of cartooning), with the artist's own stable of femmes fatales, villains and supporting characters issuing from his imagination, complemented by gripping plots. This Checker restoration is well-bound and well-printed on glossy paper, and the art comes through in delicious detail, though it is admittedly a little small, due to the need to fit enough of it on each page. The panels are all beautiful and some are masterpieces so detailed that it is worth looking at them with a magnifying glass. The balloons are very wordy, however, and crowd the art. The pacing and imaginativeness of the adventures is superb. There is more depth to the stories than one would find in any of the superhero comics past or present (possibly a very few exceptions nowadays). You will find strategy and planning, tactical execution to get out of situations, technical knowledge, plot twists, and very little deus ex machina. The femme fatales have distinct personalities; Caniff did not get them all from the same mould. Obviously, one does not discuss matters of taste, but if the chiaroscuro renderings of a very special era by a recognized master appeals to you, then by all means get this hard copy of the late forties.

For years, I have been more familiar with Caniff's "Terry & the Pirates" than with "Steve Canyon". Having bought this volume, though, I can't wait to get more. Milt knew how to tell a story and was an incredible artist. As a cartoonist myself (I draw the strip "Tuttle's") I am envious of the freedom Caniff had. Not just in space, but that he was apparently given more than a month at the beginning just to establish the characters. Now, if a strip hasn't grabbed the readers by day 2 (it seems) it's gone. I want to give praise to the publishers of this book, too: Checkers. Some reprints of cartoons lately have gone to such lengths to present the strips in a large format that the cost of the volumes became prohibitive. Especially for people who aren't comicphiles. Checker has done a great job of presenting the cartoons in a crisp print that's readable and affordable. I can't want to get more editions!

Milton Caniff left Terry and the Pirates to create his own comic strip, Steve Canyon, and these early adventures are some of his greatest work. All but a few years of Steve Canyon have already been reprinted, by Kitchen Sink, in the Menomonee Falls Gazette, in Comics Revue monthly, and in Carl Horak's Caniffites, but it is good to have the beginning of the strip back in print from Checker Books. Until his support of American troops in Vietnam lost him many of his readers, Milton Caniff was one of the most popular cartoonists in the world. His snappy dialog and interesting characters, especially his female characters, make his strips well worth seeking out.