Caniff, Milton

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Milton Caniff

Personal

Surname is pronounced "Can-iff "; born February 28, 1907, in Hillsboro, OH; died of lung cancer, April 3 (one source says April 4), 1988, in New York, NY; son of John William (a printer) and Elizabeth (Burton) Caniff; married Esther Parsons, August 23, 1930. Education: Ohio State University, B.A. 1930.

Career

Journal Herald, Dayton, OH, staff artist, 1922-25; Miami News, Miami, OH, staff artist, summer, 1925; Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, OH, staff artist, 1925-32; Associated Press Feature Service, New York, NY, staff artist, 1932-34, creator of "Dickie Dare" and "The Gay Thirties" comic strips; creator of "Terry and the Pirates" comic strip, Chicago Tribune, and New York News Syndicate, 1934-46; creator of "Male Call" comic strip, syndicated in Stars and Stripes and other military newspapers during World War II; staff artist and creator of "Steve Canyon" comic strip, Field Newspaper Syndicate, and King Features, 1947-1988. Exhibitions: Artwork exhibited at institutions in the United States and abroad, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre Museum, and the Renoir Museum.

Member

National Cartoonists Society (president, 1948-49; honorary chairman), National Press Club, National Aviation Club, Society of Illustrators, Arnold Air Society (honorary national commander), Players Club, Overseas Press Club (Palm Springs, CA), Palm Springs Racquet Club, Dutch Treat Club.

Awards, Honors

Reuben Award, National Cartoonists Society, 1946, 1972; honorary doctorate of law, Atlanta Law School, 1948; Sigma Delta Chi distinguished service award, 1950; Freedoms Foundation, award, 1950, certificate of merit, 1953, National Service Medal, 1967, for "creative editorials and cartoons which brilliantly espouse the precepts of human freedom," George Washington Honor Medal, 1969; Medal of Merit, U.S. Air Force Association, 1952; U.S. Treasury citation, 1953; Ohioana Career Medal, 1954; D.F.A., Rollins College (Florida), 1956; U.S. Air Force Exceptional Service Award, 1957; Ohio Governor's Award, 1957; Boy Scouts of America, Silver Beaver Award, 1960, Distinguished Eagle Award, 1969, Silver Buffalo Award, 1976; New York World's Fair Silver Medallion, 1964; National Cartoonists Society Golden Scroll, 1964; Goodwill Industries Award, 1965; New York Philanthropic League Award, 1965; Aerospace Education Council Award, 1966; named Man of the Year, U.S. Air Force Association, 1966; YMCA Service to Youth Award, 1966; first Elzie Segar Award, San Francisco Press Club, 1971; D.H.L., Ohio State University, 1974; Inkpot Award, 1974; Order of Constantine, Sigma Chi, 1976; Good Guy Award, American Legion, 1978; D.F.A., University of Dayton, 1979; the Milton Caniff Research Library established at Ohio State University, 1979; Spirit of American Enterprise Award, 1981; named to National Comic Strip Hall of Fame, 1981; the National Aviation Hall of Fame established the annual Milton Caniff Spirit of Flight Award in 1981; named honorary member of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, 1987, for "Male Call" comic strip; Scroll of Merit, Dayton Art Institute; War Department citation for "Male Call"; Fourth Estate Award; received numerous awards from U.S. Air Force and other organizations for distinguished service.

Writings

April Kane and the Dragon Lady, Whitman, 1942.

Terry and the Pirates, Adapted from the Famous Comic Strip by Milton Caniff, Random House (New York, NY), 1946.

Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, Golden Press (New York, NY), 1959.

(Illustrator) Rosamond Young and Catherine Fitzgerald, Twelve Seconds to the Moon: A Story of the Wright Brothers, Air Force Museum Foundation, 1984.

COLLECTIONS OF COMIC STRIPS

Male Call by Milton Caniff: 112 of the GI Comic Strips by That Name, Featuring the Effortless War Activities of Miss Lace, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1945, enlarged edition published as Male Call: The First Complete Collection of the Uninhibited Adventures of Every GI's Dream Girl—Miss Lace, Grosset (New York, NY), 1959.

Steve Canyon: Operation Convoy, Grosset (New York, NY), 1959.

Steve Canyon: Operation Eel Island, Grosset (New York, NY), 1959.

Steve Canyon: Operation Foo Ling, Grosset (New York, NY), 1959.

Steve Canyon: Operation Snowflower, Grosset (New York, NY), 1959.

Terry and the Pirates, edited by Maurice Horn, Nostalgia Press (Franklin Square, NY), 1970.

Enter the Dragon Lady: From the 1936 Classic Newspaper Strip, Nostalgia Press (Franklin Square, NY), 1975.

Meet Burma, Nostalgia Press (Franklin Square, NY), 1975.

Let's See if Anyone Salutes: A Cartoon Story for New Children, Sheed & Ward, 1976.

Terry and the Pirates: The Normandie Affair, Nostalgia Press (Franklin Square, NY), 1977.

Terry and the Pirates: China Journey, Nostalgia Press (Franklin Square, NY), 1977.

Enter the Dragon Lady, Nostalgia Press (Franklin Square, NY), 1977.

Terry and the Pirates, 1934-1935, Flying Buttress Publications, 1984.

Terry and the Pirates, 1935-36, NBM (New York, NY), 1984.

Terry and the Pirates, 1937-38, edited by Bill Black-beard, NBM (New York, NY), 1985.

Terry and the Pirates, 1938-39, NBM (New York, NY), 1985.

The Complete Dickie Dare, Fantagraphics Books (Seattle, WA), 1986.

Welcome to China ("Terry and the Pirates" number 1), edited by Bill Blackbeard, NBM (New York, NY), 1986.

Marooned with Burma ("Terry and the Pirates" number 2), edited by Bill Blackbeard, NBM (New York, NY), 1986.

Male Call, 1942-1946, edited by Peter Poplaski, Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1987.

Milton Caniff's America: Reflections of a Drawing Board Patriot (excerpts from Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon, and other works), Eclipse, 1987.

Terry and the Pirates: The Warlord Klang, NBM (New York, NY), 1987.

Terry and the Pirates: Feminine Venom, NBM (New York, NY), 1988.

Terry and the Pirates: Baron, NBM (New York, NY), 1988.

Terry and the Pirates: The Hunter, NBM (New York, NY), 1988.

Training with Flip Corkin 1943 (from Terry and the Pirates), NBM (New York, NY), 1989.

The Scarlet Princess (two complete Steve Canyon adventures), Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1989.

In Formosa's Dire Straits: A Steve Canyon Adventure, Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1989.

Steve Canyon: Taps for 'Shanty Town,' Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1989.

Steve Canyon: Fortieth Anniversary Collection, Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1989.

Terry and the Pirates: Raven, NBM (New York, NY), 1989.

Terry and the Pirates: Welcome to China, NBM (New York, NY), 1989.

Terry and the Pirates: Gal Got Our Pal, NBM (New York, NY), 1989.

Terry and the Pirates: Network of Intrigue, NBM (New York, NY), 1989.

Terry and the Pirates: Getting Snared, NBM (New York, NY), 1989.

Terry and the Pirates: Dragon Lady's Revenge, NBM (New York, NY), 1989.

Terry and the Pirates: Shanghaied, NBM (New York, NY), 1989.

Terry and the Pirates: The Return of Normandie, NBM (New York, NY), 1990.

Terry and the Pirates: Taffy at War, NBM (New York, NY), 1990.

Damma Exile: Four Complete Steve Canyon Adventures by Milton Caniff, Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1991.

Terry and the Pirates: Pat's Back, NBM (New York, NY), 1991.

Terry and the Pirates: Color Sundays, 12/9/34-12/17/35, NBM (New York, NY), 1991.

Terry and the Pirates: Color Sundays, 12/22/35-End 1936, NBM (New York, NY), 1991.

Terry and the Pirates: Joker among Aces, 1943-44, NBM (New York, NY), 1991.

Terry and the Pirates: Perils of April, NBM (New York, NY), 1991.

The Complete Color Terry and the Pirates, 1934-1935, Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1991.

Terry and the Pirates, Volume 2, Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1991.

Terry and the Pirates, 1937, NBM (New York, NY), 1991.

Terry and the Pirates, 1938, NBM (New York, NY), 1991.

War Games: Two Complete Steve Canyon Adventures, Kitchen Sink Press (Princeton, WI), 1992.

Terry and the Pirates, 1939, NBM (New York, NY), 1992.

Terry and the Pirates, 1940, NBM (New York, NY), 1992.

Terry and the Pirates, 1941, NBM (New York, NY), 1992.

Terry and the Pirates, 1943, NBM (New York, NY), 1993.

Terry and the Pirates, 1944, NBM (New York, NY), 1993.

Terry and the Pirates, 1945, NBM (New York, NY), 1996.

Terry and the Pirates, 1946, NBM (New York, NY), 1996.

Milton Caniff's Steve Canton, 1947, Midpoint Trade Books, 2003.

Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, 1948, Checker (Dayton, OH), 2003.

Also artist for Pocket Guide to China, a U.S. Army publication of World War II. Contributor to Life, Saturday Evening Post, Coronet, Esquire, and other periodicals. Much of Caniff's artwork is housed at the Milton Caniff Research Library at Ohio State University.

Adaptations

Terry and the Pirates was adapted as a radio series, National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 1938-39, 1942-44; Terry and the Pirates was adapted as a movie serial by Columbia, 1940; Harvey Publications published a Terry and the Pirates comic book series, 1947-56, and a Steve Canyon comic book series, 1948; Steve Canyon was adapted as a television series by NBC, 1958-59.

Sidelights

Milton Caniff will be best remembered as the creator of the comic strips Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. These adventure strips, marked by their superior artwork and exciting stories, enjoyed a daily audience of some thirty million readers. A New York Times obituary writer explained that "Caniff's art was credited with bringing a new level of realism to cartoon drawing." A Newsweek reviewer once described Caniff as "the most widely aped artisan" in the comic strip field. "When the definitive history of the comics is finally written," Art Wood proclaimed in Great Cartoonists and Their Art, "standing at the head of the line exchanging a brush for Father Time's quill pen will be a genial genius among comic artists, Milton A. Caniff."

"Caniff," Lynn Hoogenboom recounted in the Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, "was the only child of John William Caniff, a printer, and Elizabeth Burton. The family moved from Hillsboro to Dayton, Ohio, in 1919. As a teenager, Caniff worked as an artists' helper at the Dayton Journal. He graduated from Stivers High School in 1925 and entered Ohio State University, where he majored in fine arts. While there, he was a part-time retoucher at the Columbus Dispatch and served as the art editor of both the college humor magazine and his class yearbook. After earning his B.A. degree in 1930, he worked full time at the Dispatch. On 23 August 1930 Caniff married Esther Parsons, whom he had known since grammar school; they had no children. When the Great Depression forced the Dispatch to make cutbacks in 1932, Caniff lost his job. Three months later he landed a job with the Associated Press and moved to New York City; for the rest of his life he and his wife lived in the city or its environs to the north. At the Associated Press, Caniff worked as a general illustrator and did a one-column panel, Puffy the Pig; a three-column panel, The Gay Thirties; and an adventure strip, Dickie Dare. "

Started in July 1933, Dickie Dare was a pleasant-looking, cartoony feature in the course of which the spunky little hero of the title and his dog, Wags, got themselves involved in the plot of any book that had fired the boy's imagination. The first adventure involved Dickie on the side of Robin Hood and his merry men; later he was to travel with Aladdin to Africa, and fight alongside King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The readers, however, were not happy with the adventures' endings (which revealed them to be merely daydreams) and in May 1934, Caniff introduced the dashing figure of "Dynamite Dan Flynn, author and adventurer," into the strip, turning it into a slam-bang action feature that attracted the attention of newspaper readers. It also drew the notice of Joseph M. Patterson of the New York Daily News, who was then looking for an action strip to add to his line-up of syndicated comics. Patterson suggested to Caniff that he create an adventure series "so powerful that nobody could eat his breakfast without reading it."

Creates Terry and the Pirates

Responding to the challenge, Caniff caught the public's imagination with Terry and the Pirates, an adventure strip about a boy, Terry Lee, and his tutor, Pat Ryan, who travel throughout the exotic Orient encountering such villains as the voluptuous pirate queen known as the Dragon Lady. The strip made its debut in October of 1934. Since existing strips took place in Africa and southeast Asia, Caniff decided upon China as the exotic locale of his new creation. Years later in the Magazine of Sigma Chi Caniff explained his initial research methodology: "I have never been to China, so I go to the next best place, the Public Library. From its picture file, and with careful clipping of every scrap of data on things Oriental, combined with a dash of Encyclopaedia Britannica, I am able to piece together a pretty fair background of Far Eastern lore. For authentic speech mannerisms I plow through a pile of books by traveled people from Pearl Buck to Noel Coward. By now I am an arm-chair Marco Polo and tipping my hat to every Chinese laundry man in New York."

At first the strip involved the same combination of character types as used in Dickie Dare—that of a tall, handsome hero (Pat Ryan) and his youthful companion (Terry), who were joined by a Chinese side-kick nicknamed "Connie" (full name George Washington Confucious) to provide the comic relief. The first episodes did not reveal great originality. The heroes went in search of a lost mine, encountered a beautiful lady pirate (the Dragon Lady) off the coast of China, and rescued an heiress from the clutches of her kidnappers. Soon, however, the narrative increased in excitement, the characters grew into their true human dimensions, and the locale acquired a fascinating authenticity. By 1937 the Japanese appeared as "the invaders" and the author made no secret of his sympathy for the embattled Chinese people.

At the same time the famous "Caniff style" also came to full fruition: from his fellow Ohioan and colleague of his Associated Press days, Noel Sickles, Caniff learned to use the brush to evoke mood and to suggest motion and speed. The two men shared a studio in New York City, and their constant interchange of ideas not only helped improve their respective working methods, but led to a close artistic relationship. Under the joint pen name of Paul Arthur they collaborated on the "Mr. Coffee Nerves" ad strip for Postum. Terry and the Pirates was further distinguished by its enticing gallery of women characters: from the voluptuous, implacable Dragon Lady, to the shining-haired, golden-hearted adventuress Burma, to Normandie Sandhurst (née Drake), a tragic heroine torn between her love for Pat Ryan and her duty to her despicable husband, they were all inimitable. The female characters were especially popular with male readers. John Steinbeck once wrote of the series: "When my grandchildren speak of their sugarplum eroticisms, I can say 'You see? This is how it was in my day. This Dragon Lady (from "Terry") with the figure of a debutante … was one of your old man's girlfriends.'"

Terry Goes to War

The entry of the United States into World War II propelled Terry to the front rank of newspaper strips, as the wild adventures of Pat and Terry gradually gave way to the realities of war. "When the action began," Stephen Becker wrote in Comic Art in America, "it was as real as an Army manual. Caniff had been drawing planes, tanks, uniforms, weapons for over four years; he was an encyclopedia of Far Eastern warfare, and no other cartoonist ever overcame Caniff's headstart. He not only knew the physical details of the terrain and the war material; he understood the issues of the war, and he knew how men and women would react to those issues." Terry, having finally passed the adolescent stage, became a lieutenant and pilot in the Air Force, and his commanding officer, Colonel Flip Corkin, moved into the place heretofore occupied by Pat Ryan, but there was now greater equality between the two. Terry became a different kind of strip, in which the individual deeds were muted before collective heroism. This culminated in the famous Sunday page of October 17, 1943. In this strip, Colonel Flip Corkin gives advice to young Terry upon his just being commissioned a pilot. Known as the "Pilot's Creed," this Sunday page grabbed the attention of Congressman Carl Hinshaw of California. Hinshaw felt the patriotic sentiments expressed should be preserved, so he read it into the Congressional Record, the first comic strip ever included in the Congressional Record. The "Pilot's Creed" went on to be reproduced as a poster sold worldwide.

The war years witnessed Caniff's popularity at its peak. He wrote articles and contributed illustrations to hosts of newspapers and magazines, and was himself written up in the pages of Life, Coronet, Newsweek, Time, and other publications. The Magazine of Sigma Chi devoted an entire issue to the artist in 1945. Caniff was just as popular, perhaps more so, with the troops. From 1943 to 1946 he wrote and drew Male Call, a comic strip which ran in some 2,000 military newspapers; Caniff donated his work on the strip for free. Male Call's heroine, the alluring and usually scantily-clad Miss Lace, enjoyed a richly deserved success with the soldiers, and her image was to be found in more than one army barracks, alongside the photographs of such popular pinups as Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth.

Introduces Steve Canyon

After the war Caniff tried to negotiate a better contract for himself on Terry, but the negotiations broke down. Dissatisfied because he did not own the rights to the adventure strip, Caniff allowed George Wunder to take over Terry while he went on to create Steve Canyon, featuring the adventures of a U.S. Air Force colonel, for Field Enterprises. Reinhold Reitberger and Wolfgang Fuchs recounted in Comics: Anatomy of a Mass Medium that "more than 200 daily papers contracted the series without knowing its name or its theme, long before Caniff drew the first tentative line." Steve Canyon debuted on January 19, 1947 (Caniff had drawn his last Terry strip a few weeks earlier). "Here was Caniff approaching his full power," Becker maintained. "His use of 'camera angles,' his alternation of close-ups, long shot, middle distance, his creation of suspense in two or three panels—all were superb."

A former Air Force captain, Stevenson Burton Canyon (to give him his full name) came upon the stage as the head of Horizons Unlimited, a shaky air transport company; but the Korean War prompted him to get back into Air Force uniform once again. Canyon eventually rose to the rank of colonel. His adventures, mostly undercover, included rescuing Americans held captive in China, tracking down an intelligence "mole" in Thailand, and flying all kinds of hush-hush new aircraft. Always strewn in his path were a bevy of female antagonists, such as the voluptuous Madame Lynx, the one-armed Madame Hook, Queen Taja, and especially Copper Calhoun, "the she-wolf of Wall Street," Steve's most constant pursuer. Between war adventures Canyon enjoyed more peaceful interludes, many involving his pert and high-spirited ward, Poteet Canyon, who sometimes managed to steal the show from her guardian. In 1970 Steve Canyon married his long time girlfriend, Summer Olson.

More than once, ideas used by Caniff in Steve Canyon became a reality. In one adventure, Captain Shark, a woman submarine expert from a formidable foreign country, moved prefabricated submarines to warm-water ports over land. A year and a half later, it became known that the Soviet Union was actually transporting prefabricated submarines in much the same way. Then Canyon captured Shark in her snorkel submarine, an innovation that was, in fact, later developed. A reconnaissance plane used for guiding naval vessels was another idea preconceived by Caniff.

Although the Steve Canyon comic strip had long been enormously popular, Lynn Hoogenboom pointed out in the Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives that things changed during the 1960s: "When a backlash against the military began to develop during the Vietnam War, … Steve Canyon's military orientation started to alienate what should have been the strip's natural audience. At the same time, the public's attention span for long, complex stories began to wane, and adventure strips went into serious decline. Then, as disillusionment with the war grew, heroes of any sort fell into disfavor. Caniff, who always kept a finger firmly on the public pulse, responded by reducing the length of his average episode from thirteen to nine weeks, increasing the percentage of episodes with comic elements, and having Steve's sidekicks, who tended to fall into the antihero category, take the lead in many episodes. The quality of Caniff's work was not fully appreciated toward the end of his career, when gags were honored more than storytelling, limited space made it impossible for newspapers to reproduce Caniff's best artwork, smaller dialogue balloons forced him to leave out some of the nuance that placed his dialogue in a class by itself, and lingering hostility toward the military kept sophisticates from realizing just how flip, cynical, and on the cutting edge Steve Canyon really was."

At age eighty Caniff continued to write the strip in its entirety and drew it with the assistance of Dick Rockwell, artist Norman Rockwell's nephew. In a late adventure, Caniff indulged himself by taking Canyon to China to meet Pat, Terry, and Connie. Caniff received many awards from the U.S. Air Force for Steve Canyon, and the cartoon colonel himself was honored with a special "Steve Canyon Day" at the 1964 World's Fair.

Phlebitis prevented Caniff from joining the military himself. "It was something I always wanted to do," the Los Angeles Times quoted Caniff as saying. "It was like a small boy who dreams of catching the game-winning touchdown or rescuing the heroine from the villain. Fortunately, the strips have allowed me to have a close association with the military."

Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon, and the other Caniff creations might never have appeared in print if Caniff had pursued a career in acting, something he once seriously considered. But he changed his mind when Columbus Dispatch cartoonist Billy Ireland advised him, "Stick to your inkpots, kid. Actors don't eat regularly." Caniff also remembered the advice of his high school art teacher back in Dayton, Ohio: "Unless a piece of art inspired the viewer to part with cash money to acquire it, then the drawing was not worth a hoot."

A self-professed "working stiff," Caniff spent from fourteen to sixteen hours every day at the drawing board. Unique among artists in the comic strip field at the time, Caniff used live models to pose for his drawings. He wrote the stories as he went along, sometimes trapping his characters in dangerous situations before coming up with a solution to their dilemma.

"Caniff's works," Ron Evry wrote in an article posted at the Reuben Awards Web site, "were an essential part of the American newspaper comics section for well over fifty years, and the importance of his influence on other artists in comic strips and books cannot be underestimated." Gordon Flagg, writing in Booklist, concluded that "Caniff's bold, realistic, movie-influenced drawing style and innovative storytelling techniques made him the most influential comics artist of his era."

Expressing his philosophy in creating each comic strip, Caniff once wrote: "I have always admonished myself to write for the man on the bus or the woman who is having her second cup of coffee after her husband and children have been sent off for the day. At these moments we are alone together, and I bring to them an uninterrupted display of my wares. The playwright can have the advantage of chain reaction emotion stemming from mutual appreciation by many people crowded together. I am happy to have my reader alone for the few minutes each day during which we rendezvous."

If you enjoy the works of Milton Caniff, you might want to check out the following:

The cartoon work of Noel Sickles (1910-1982), including his work on the strip Scorchy Smith.

Will Eisner's strip The Spirit, which ran from 1939-1952.

Alex Raymond's (1909-1956) comic strip, Flash Gordon, 1934-44.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Adams, John Paul, Milton Caniff: Rembrandt of the Comic Strips, McKay (New York, NY), 1946.

Authors in the News, Volume 1, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.

Becker, Stephen, Comic Art in America, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1959.

Couperie, Pierre, and Maurice Horn, A History of the Comic Strip, Crown (New York, NY), 1968.

Goulart, Ron, The Adventurous Decade, Arlington House, 1975.

Harvey, Robert C., Milton Caniff: Conversations, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2002.

Horak, Carl J., A Steve Canyon Companion, Bud Plant, 1996.

Reitberger, Reinhold and Wolfgang Fuchs, Comics: Anatomy of a Mass Medium, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1971.

Robinson, Jerry, The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art, Putnam (New York, NY), 1974.

Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume 2: 1986-1990, Scribner (New York, NY), 1999.

Sheridan, Martin, Comics and Their Creators, Hale, Cushman & Flint, 1942.

Waugh, Coulton, The Comics, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1947.

Wood, Art, Great Cartoonists and Their Art, Pelican (Gretna, LA), 1987.

PERIODICALS

American History Illustrated, March-April, 1990, Richard Marschall, "Masters of Comic Strip Art," p. 44.

Booklist, April 15, 2002, Gordon Flagg, review of Milton Caniff: Conversations, p. 1371.

Chicago Tribune, April 5, 1988.

Editor and Publisher, April 7, 1984, David Astor, "Five Decades of Cartooning," p. 34.

Life, January 6, 1941; December 7, 1959.

Los Angeles Magazine, May, 1983, Chuck Hartle, "Milton Caniff: Cartoonist," p. 23.

Los Angeles Times, April 21, 1974; April 4, 1988.

Magazine of Sigma Chi, February-March, 1945, "A Salute to Milton Caniff." Newsweek, December 16, 1940; February 20, 1947, "Caniff, Canyon, and Calhoon"; April 24, 1950.

New Yorker, January 8, 1944, John Bainbridge, "Significant Sig and the Funnies."

New York Times, January 20, 1985, William Zimmer, "Art: A Classic, Heavily Shadowed Style"; April 3, 1989, "An Air Force Legend Gets Final Salute," p. B1.

Time, December 2, 1946, "Not for Kids"; January 13, 1947, "Escape Artist".