Milton Caniff attended the Ohio State University from the fall of 1925 until he graduated in 1930. While at OSU, Caniff was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity, contributing artwork to The Magazine of the Sigma Chi, as well as to The Norman Shield, the fraternity’s pledgeship and reference manual.
Pledgeship refers to the process in which potential new members pledge themselves to the ideals of the fraternity, fostering a deep commitment to the fraternity. This clearly worked in Caniff’s case, as he was a lifelong supporter of Sigma Chi, even doing a short testimonial film for the fraternity in the late 1930s:
Caniff was also featured in the fraternity’s magazine from time-to-time over years, accompanied by wonderful cover illustrations and photos. On at least one occasion, Noel Sickles provided the interior caricatures of Caniff for the accompanying article. In the February-March 1945 issue of The Magazine of the Sigma Chi, the magazine went all-out, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Caniff’s wonderful Terry and the Pirates comic strip. A whopping 48 cartoonists contributed full-page specialty cartoons and drawings celebrating Caniff’s achievement. Curious how Hal Foster would draw Terry? It’s in there. Joe Shuster has Superman take Terry on a flight without Terry’s plane. Interestingly, Noel Sickles did not contribute to this issue. As far as I know, this is the first time all of these cartoons and drawings have been reprinted. Without further ado, the images are pictured below in their order of appearance in the magazine.
I welcome folks downloading these images. It took quite a bit of time to scan and clean up the images, so if you decide to share them, I would greatly appreciate a link back to this blog, or at least a mention of the blog.
I did not intend on the last two blog posts to be about Caniff, but when good material shows up, it’s time to act. Don’t be surprised if there is a third Caniff post in the works! Thanks for reading and take care.
Rob Stolzer has been collecting original comic strip and cartoon artwork for over 40 years. He has written numerous articles for Hogan's Alley, the CFA-APA and other journals. Stolzer taught art at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for 33 years, where he taught Art Seminar, Drawing, Figure Drawing, Graphic Narration, Illustration, and Painting courses.
One Comment
Jim Latimer
Fascinating, and beautiful. Amazing to see these tributes paid by other creators. Thanks for gathering these.