Product Description

The definitive biography of the legendary creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon.

Milton Caniff was one of the most influential American cartoonists of the 20th century. He rose to prominence during World War II when he took the characters in his Terry and the Pirates strip into the war. The trenchant pragmatic patriotism of the strip warmed the hearts and steeled nerves on the home front as well as the battlefront (one of his strips was read into the Congressional Record.) He went on to create Steve Canyon, which was syndicated from 1947 to Caniff's death in 1988.

Milton Caniff, Terry and the Pirates, and Steve Canyon: Meanwhile… traces Caniff's life from the cradle to the grave, marking the milestones in the development of the comic strip that Caniff established. Caniff reshaped the medium and set standards by which all storytelling strips were subsequently judged. Although Caniff adapted to changing fashions, he is best known for innovations such as his impressionistic chiaroscuro drawing style that suggested reality economically with shadow rather than with detail; creating many colorful characters, including the stalwart Pat Ryan from Terry and the Pirates, Burma the shady lady, and, most memorable of all, the Dragon Lady, a beautiful but mysteriously menacing pirate queen who turned Chinese patriot during the War; and enhancing the melodrama of adventure strips by making character development integral to the action-packed plots.

While Milton Caniff provides a biography of Caniff and analyzes his storytelling techniques, it also serves as a history of the medium and reveals the inner workings of the syndicate business (at which Caniff was as expert as he was at cartooning). The book traces Caniff's life from the cradle to the grave, and examines the artistic innovations and work routines of a nationally distributed cartoonist whose career was central the development of the artform, marking along the way the milestones in the development of comic strip artistry that Caniff established. The book charts Caniff's rise to fame and fortune through artistic excellence and patriotic fervor when the characters in his comic strip Terry and the Pirates entered World War II, then recounts the decline of his strip Steve Canyon's popularity (whose protagonist served as an unofficial spokesman for the U.S. Air Force from the Korean War until the end of the strip in 1988) when the same brand of patriotism that had inspired admiration during World War II provoked protest during Vietnam, a bittersweet conclusion to a career spent producing a daily feature for 55 years, a record that would stand for a generation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #386808 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 952 pages

From Booklist
In the 1930s and 1940s, the newspaper comic strip was one of the nation's most popular storytelling media, and Caniff's exotic high-adventure Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon were among the most widely read strips. The popularity of the China-based Terry skyrocketed in the early forties, when its cast entered World War II, but it was Caniff's bold abandonment of the successful strip in 1946 to launch Canyon, which continued until the artist's death, in 1988, that landed him on the cover of Time. Today aficionados consider his achievement unmatched, and his innovative combination of atmospherically chiaroscuro illustration and cinematic continuity still hugely influences contemporary cartoonists. Comics scholar Harvey, who worked on this biography for nearly 25 years, had the benefit of extensively interviewing Caniff, and the wealth of firsthand information he obtained and conveys helps explain why it weighs in at just short of 1,000 pages, which may strike some as excessive but, given Caniff's towering stature in the comics field, seems only appropriate, perhaps even necessary. Flagg, Gordon

About the Author
R. C. Harvey is a columnist for The Comics Journal and Comics Buyer's Guide, a biographer of cartoonists Murphy Anderson and Gus Arriola, and his essays have appeared in Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace and Pogo by Walt Kelly. He lives in Champaign, IL.

Customer Reviews

Much More Than A Comic Strip
"Meanwhile..." ismuch more than justa biography of MiltCaniff. It pro-vides an insight tocultural attitudesimmediately prior toWWII, during the war, and on into thelatter part of the20th Century. Whileit brings to lifethe creative geniusof Caniff, it alsoprtrays his abilityas a masterful bus-iness man followingsuccess upon successin the managemeentand promotion of hisproduct.I eagerly followedthe exploits of Ter-ry and the Piratesas a youth as wellas Steve Canyon dur-ing my Air Forcecareer and was fas-cinated with Caniff's pursuit ofaccuracy in portray-ing service life andthe role that theAir Force Associa-tion played in as-suring he was keptabreast of the lat-est developmentsthat might affectColonel Canyon.It is a book I willkeep on my referenceshelf and use often.

Meanwhile...Inside the life, times, and genius of Milton Caniff
First, some truth in reviewing. I have known Bob Harvey since we worked together on our college newspaper, and I have long admired his writing skills. We correspond occasionally, and see each other about every two years. And yes, I paid for my copy of Meanwhile...
That said, Harvey has written a fine, highly readable book, and a great one for anyone interested in comic strips and particularly Caniff's great creations, Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. Indeed, you can think of Meanwhile... as two books in one: A long biography of Caniff and a short history of American comics in the 20th Century. Caniff's career spanned the high and ebb tides of newspaper comic strips, particularly the era of high-adventure strips. And that is no coincidence. Caniff helped pioneer that variety strip and he raised it to an art form. Indeed, I think Harvey demonstrates that Caniff, in his own right, ranked with such icons of American popular culture as George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, and Humphrey Bogart.
Meanwhile... is not a perfect book. It is long, occasionally repetitious, and in need of judicious editing. Detail is important in nonfiction writing, especially biography. But Harvey, at times, overdoes it. I, for one, could do without a full-page listing of the books on Caniff's shelves or seemingly endless reprinted letters praising him. And as a nonfiction writer, I disagree with the author's decision not to footnote the book extensively.
When I raised these thoughts with Harvey, his return e-mail delved into what he sought to accomplish with the book.
Just as every novelist wants to write the Great American Novel, I wanted to write the Great Biography of an American Cartoonist. Having a suitable subject, Caniff, I next pondered how to achieve my next goal, which was to make the reader "live" Caniff's life as Caniff led it, or some such. I wanted to enable a reader to experience what it was like to be Caniff, to be "a cartoonist." One of the ways I thought a reader's experience of reading, of getting into another world--of being "a cartoonist"--could be intensified was to give the reader verbal information that would engage his or her imagination. As you read, you imagine the things the words are naming; the more concrete those things are, the more imagining you do, the more intensely you experience the "world" of the book you're reading. So when Caniff moves out into "the country" on South Mountain Road [in Rockland County, N.Y] in the 1930s, I scoured around to find out what the vegetation would be along South Mountain Road--what sorts of trees and bushes abounded there and so forth. And when I found out, I put those trees and their undergrowth into the book. In the chapter covering World War II, I quote lots of the letters that Caniff received--because he said somewhere that getting letters was the way he connected to the outside world, the world beyond his studio.... Now you know why I put them all in there.
Harvey, more than most authors, largely succeeds in fulfilling his ambitious goal.
Surprisingly, Caniff emerges from the pages of Meanwhile... as a writer first and an illustrator second--a stunning conclusion, considering Caniff's great innovations in comic strip art and his obsessive attention to detail and accuracy (whether military metals, weapons, or Asian clothing) that won him the admiration of his fellow cartoonists and shows in art galleries.
Harvey argues persuasively that what first carried Terry and the Pirates and later Steve Canyon was not just Caniff's superb craftsmanship and his inventive approach to illustrating, but his talent for plotting his story lines and writing dialogue. Caniff created memorable characters of depth and personality with the deft hand of a short story writer, so much so that some readers believed that Pat Ryan, the Dragon Lady, and Happy Easter actually lived and breathed. As the author puts it: "In fact, he [Caniff] enhanced our experience of his adventure stories by giving his protagonists enough personality to be fully human without complicating them beyond easy recognition: we like them, and because they are conventional, we know they are each `one of us.' And our identification with them engages and holds our interest."
In his analysis of what made Caniff extraordinary, Harvey describes in detail many stories lines of Terry and Steve Canyon (worth the price of the book alone) to emphasize the elements that encompass the development and growth of Caniff's career and talent. The reader is drawn along through Harvey's synopsis, not just by Caniff's story line, but by the author's own talent for making the descriptions intriguing. He is aided by a large number of reprinted strips, which enliven the book and illustrate the many points he makes. Reading them together, you see clearly the evolution of Caniff's writing and illustration skills over the years, as well as the growing depth of his main characters.
Caniff was Midwest born and raised, and he the never lost the sense of patriotism, honor, moral principals, humility, and striving for success that characterized so many people from that part of the nation during his formative years. His environment nurtured him. As Frank Stanton, a Caniff friend throughout their adults years, told Harvey: "It was during his days in Columbus that he developed three sets of central skills essential to his sensational success as the creator of Terry and Canyon: story teller, artist, and actor. He is remarkably efficient in each, and each of these skills reinforces and enhances the other two in his work. It is a rare combination in a rare guy."
--Patrick Young
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Milt Caniff bio
This is the definitive history of Milton Caniff's life as one of the greatest contributors to the art of the comics. It is well-written & complete in detail.