MILTON CANIFF

There's a nice coffee table book devoted to Milton Caniff and I thought I'd write about it here. Caniff was the guy who did Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon for the papers in the 40s and 50s.

The cover above was colored by Marie Severin. If her bright and colorful style looks familiar that may be because you've seen it before...in Caniff's Steve Canyon.

Before Caniff lots of "serious" comics were muted, greyed down, in the style of the old pulps (above).

Yikes! Even Wally Wood (above) fell prey to the muted color enthusiasts.

Caniff popularized a light, airy, bright color approach (above), even with dramatic subjects. Maybe he did it to compensate for his liberal use of black. He was famous for that.

He sent the engraver a hand watercolored copy of every Sunday page. The color had to be just right.

The book covers his early newspaper work (above) before he did the strips that made him famous. Haw! Duke Ellington is identified as "colored" in the headline, showing that even artists are products of their times.

The book also includes a lot of preliminary sketches. I always like to see an artist's roughs.

Caniff did a lot of caricatures (above) for the newspapers.

For the comic strips he invented a boxy, geometric way of drawing women's heads. Maybe he was influenced by famous square-headed women like Garbo and Joan Crawford.

Caniff frequently had his picture taken with the models he drew. Not a bad idea.

BTW: Someone asked what I'll be dressed as for Halloween this year. Aaaargh! I'm so pressed for time that I'll probably do my Muskrat Lodge uniform again. How about you guys? What will you be wearing?

Also BTW: Holy Cow! I have one crossed eye in this picture! I crossed my eyes deliberately for the photo but how I achieved just one crossed eye is a mystery even to me.

Also, also BTW: I have my eyes on this Lincoln stovepipe hat. It probably won't fit though. Halloween hats never do.