Milton Caniff’s Master Class II – The First Steve Canyon Sunday Page – January 19, 1947

If you are wondering why this post is titled “Milton Caniff’s Master Class II”, that’s because I previously wrote a piece about Caniff’s final Terry and the Pirates Sunday page in 2022.

In 1983, while an art student at Rutger’s University/Mason Gross School of Art, I took an Art & Semiotics class from the enigmatic Billie Pickard-Pritchard.  I say enigmatic, because Billie was a true man of mystery.  He claimed to have been born in France, and was a former professional billiards player and race car driver.  While Billie spoke French fluently, one of my classmates, Marc Gaston, who was born in Haiti, claimed that Billie’s French was not that of a native speaker.  Lloyd McNeill was a colleague of Billie’s and my longtime figure drawing teacher.  When Billie brought a painting in for an exhibition, Lloyd told me it was the first artwork he had ever seen by Billie.  This was after decades of teaching together.  Lloyd was truly confounded by Billie!  I remember the painting pretty well.  It was a geometric piece done in rather muted colors.  Billie had worked the piece so that there was no trace of a mark in it.  I recall him telling me that he sanded and sanded the piece to get rid of any brush strokes.  It was like he had erased his own history with the work.  If you look Billie Pickard-Pritchard up online, there is scant information, as if he had barely existed.  Truly, an enigma.  But Billie was also a very good teacher.  When I had him as a painting teacher, around my third semester of painting, Billie would walk around the studio with his unlit pipe in his mouth, talking with each student in that rich baritone voice of his.  You could smell the wonderful aroma of his pipe tobacco, mixed in with the paint and medium fumes in the studio.  Oftentimes we would talk about things other than art, but he would eventually come around to tying things together to the painting in front of us.  Billie employed the Socratic method of teaching well, as did a number of the professors in the art department at Rutgers.  It was an approach that influenced my own teaching in the decades to come.

I was not sure what to expect from an Art & Semiotics class, as conceptual approaches to artmaking were still relatively new to me.  But I was very surprised in the early days of the class when Billie introduced Milton Caniff’s first Steve Canyon Sunday page to us.  The Sunday page appeared on January 19, 1947, three weeks after Caniff’s final Terry and the Pirates Sunday page.  There was a week of Steve Canyon daily strips that preceded this Sunday page.  I had met Caniff briefly just recently at the old Museum of Cartoon Art in Rye Brook, New York.  Caniff did a chalk-talk presentation for the audience and luckily my friend Charlie “The Patron Saint of Popeye” Roberts took a photo of Caniff and me.  I had been a fan of comic books for years, and only recently started to learn about the old comic strips from the Chicago Tribune/New York Daily News syndicate.  I had some introduction to Caniff’s work at this point, brief as it was. 

Billie projected a slide of the Steve Canyon Sunday page on the screen and proceeded to go panel-by-panel, asking us what we could discern from both the images and text.  It was an eye-opening experience for me, revealing Caniff’s full mastery of the art form.  I adopted this exercise later on for my Graphic Narration classes at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.  On the first day of class, we could go over Caniff’s final Terry and the Pirates Sunday page, panel-by-panel, without the text to begin with.  We would look for whatever clues we could find regarding season, place, body language, etc.  Then a couple of weeks later, we would go over this Steve Canyon page, panel-by-panel, focused as much on the text as the drawing.  It goes something like this:

“Why, it’s Stevie Canyon!”, the cop exclaims with a broad smile on his face.  That’s our introduction to Steve Canyon in this first panel of this first Sunday page.  Caniff gives us his first clue right off the bat: Stevie.  By using the diminutive of Canyon’s first name, we can assume that this officer has known Canyon since Steve was a boy.  There’s a definite familiarity there.  The use of dialect in “Me sister in Shannon writes that ye paid her a personal call!”, identifies the cop as Irish, tying in to the fact that his sister lives in Shannon.  Canyon replies with his own Irish lilt, “That I did!”. So there’s a good chance that Canyon himself is Irish.  We also know that he has some kindness in him, visiting the sister of this old friend while in a different country.  You’ll notice that all we see of Canyon is a bit of his left shoulder/arm.

As Canyon makes his way through the revolving door, the doorman mentions that his son received the souvenir Canyon sent to him from Egypt.  There are a few things here.  We now know that Canyon is a world traveler.  First Ireland and now Egypt.  He remains a kind person, sending a souvenir all the way from Egypt for the doorman’s son.  He also appears to have good relationships with regular folk.  We also learn that this is a building that Canyon has been to before.  Now we get to see a bit of Canyon’s back with the plaid fabric.

“Checking in, Sarge!” is our intro to panel #3, to which the newsstand seller responds, “Captain Canyon!”  We learn that these are two former military men who likely served together, with Canyon as Sarge’s commanding officer.  Sarge mentions a financial statement, and “…you’ll never regret having backed me on this deal!”.  Canyon’s kindness to others continues, as he appears to be the financial backer for Sarge’s newsstand.  Two more small-but-important bits of information: Sarge has his hand on Canyon’s arm and he’s wearing dark sunglasses inside the building Canyon just entered.  It’s not a reach to assume that Sarge is blind, likely due to some injury suffered while they were in the military.  Given the date the strip, this likely occurred during WWII.  Canyon is loyal to folks who are important to him.  Finally, once again, all we are seeing of Canyon is a body part, this time his right arm.

Caniff lowers the camera in panel #4, focused on the young girl named Posie, who asks Canyon if he would like a flower for his buttonhole.  Canyon refuses, at the same time handing her some money.  His evident kindness is also seen in the offer of a movie for Posie and her mother.  This also reinforces the relationships that Canyon fosters with regular folk.  He is respected and he offers respect to those who deserve it.

In panel #5, Canyon moves the camera to a bird’s-eye view, focusing diagonally down to a scene in front of the elevators.  We now get to see the back of Canyon’s head!  When Canyon inquires about the elevator going up, the two elevator operators point him to the open car, with “…and for you, we don’t wait till it’s full!  Right, Irma?”  The two women clearly respect Canyon, enough so that they’ll give him special accommodations.  The response of “R-R-RAJAH!” is right out of the military.

Finally, we see our hero!  Canyon opens the door to his office, Horizons Unlimited, with his secretary on the phone.  We’ve reached the halfway point of this initial Sunday page before seeing Steve Canyon’s face, and yet Caniff has offered so much information about him. 

Canyon’s secretary offers Canyon the phone, informing him that it’s the secretary to a big shot on Wall Street.  His response is very different than his interactions with the regular folk, offering something of a wise-ass response.

The scene change in panel #8 is pretty dramatic.  If you’ve watched Citizen Kane, you’ll be familiar with the overwhelmingly large spaces that Orson Welles would incorporate to show wealth and power.  That’s what we’re seeing here, with Mr. Dayzee and Copper Calhoon being dwarfed by the enormous space.  Mr. Dayzee tells Canyon that Calhoon wishes to engage his services and that Canyon should report to Calhoon’s apartment immediately.  Canyon doesn’t appear to take such orders well, responding with, “…but what if I don’t want to place my services at the command of Miss Copper Calhoon?”.  The use of the word “command” speaks volumes here.  Canyon is not someone to be ordered about.

Canyon’s smart aleckness appears again in response to Dayzee’s outrage.  He purposely refers to Calhoon’s secretary as Mr. Doozie.  The mid-to-late 1940s was a great time for old time radio and there were many wonderful detective shows available.  Many of those lead characters exhibited the same sort of wit and wise-ass tendencies as Canyon, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Caniff let some of the tone of that dialogue into the strip. 

Finally, this is our first good at Copper Calhoon, dressed in all black and with a slight whiff of villainy about her. 

We don’t get to hear what Mr. Dayzee says here, but Canyon’s response cements his character.  The faux outrage shows that he does not care one whit about wealth and power.  But there is one more important clue:  “…the click you hear will mean you’re soloing!”  Remember back to panel #3 when we determined that Canyon had been in the service?  Soloing would only take place for a flier, so Canyon was likely a pilot in the Army Air Force during WWII, which became its own branch (Air Force) in 1947.  Further, Canyon’s world travel and the name of his business gives us some clues as to what he does for a living.

Canyon’s secretary bemoans the fact that it would have been nice to have money to pay the office rent, pointing to where Canyon’s priorities lay. 

The final panel focuses back to Copper Calhoon, who cuts off her secretary with, “I want that man!!….Get him!”  She is clearly someone who is used to getting her way, and is intrigued by Canyon’s attitude.  As was pointed out in my Art & Semiotics class at Rutger’s, the use of Calhoon’s cigarette smoke is no accident.  Caniff purposely snaked it in front of Calhoon’s face, trailing upward.  Maybe there’s some symbolism there, or maybe it’s to add to tight composition and mood of the scene.  Calhoon is literally blowing smoke in response to Canyon’s attitude.  I remember Billie focused on that smoke for a while in that discussion, though I’m not sure we came up with a clear meaning.  It was important to Caniff though.

Many thanks for checking-in.  Until next time, stay well.