| Steve Canyon | |
|---|---|
 Steve Canyon (1950) | |
| Author(s) | Milton Caniff |
| Current status/schedule | Discontinued |
| Launch date | January 13, 1947 |
| End date | June 4, 1988 |
| Syndicate(s) | Field Enterprises, Sun and Times Company, Publishers Syndicate /Publishers-Hall Syndicate,Field Enterprises / News America Syndicate /North America Syndicate[1] |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Preceded by | Terry and the Pirates |
Steve Canyon is an Americanaction-adventure comic strip by cartoonistMilton Caniff. Launched shortly after Caniff retired from his previous strip,Terry and the Pirates,Steve Canyon ran from January 13, 1947, until June 4, 1988. It ended shortly after Caniff's death.[2] Caniff won theReuben Award for the strip in 1971.
By 1946, Caniff had developed a worldwide reputation for hissyndicatedTerry and the Pirates, but the rights for the strip he had created, written, and drawn (forChicago Tribune newspaper syndicate editor CaptainJoseph Patterson) were entirely owned by the syndicate. Seeking creative control, Caniff negotiated withField Enterprises for a new strip on which he could retain ownership.[3]Steve Canyon was "marketed and distributed byKing Features, which was subcontracted as Field's selling agent".[4] Caniff's popularity meant that sixty clients agreed to runSteve Canyon before publication.[4] The last Caniff episode ofTerry and the Pirates appeared in December 1946, and thenGeorge Wunder took over the strip. Caniff's new strip,Steve Canyon, debuted in 168 newspapers. In the 1950s, the strip was enormously popular, and Caniff andSteve Canyon appeared on the covers of bothTime (1947) andNewsweek (1950).[4]
Many strip creators before and since have employed uncredited assistants or ghost artists, and Caniff was no exception. In 1952, he hiredcomic book artistDick Rockwell (nephew of famed illustratorNorman Rockwell) as his assistant. While Caniff scripted and drew the main characters, Rockwellpenciled andinked secondary characters and backgrounds. Rockwell continued onCanyon until Caniff's death on May 3, 1988.[5][6]The last syndicatedSteve Canyon strip was a tribute to Caniff in two panels, one drawn by cartoonistBill Mauldin, with the other containing the signatures of 78 fellow cartoonists.
On June 23, 1997, an authorized 50th-anniversarySteve Canyon strip was published by theAir Force Times, a civilian weekly newspaper covering theUnited States Air Force.Steve Canyon and the U.S. Air Force having been created the same year, the shared anniversary was celebrated withSteve Canyon appearing as part of a 96-page insert,The First Fifty Years: U.S. Air Force 1947–1997. Drawn in the style of aSunday strip, the story and art for this commemorative were provided by Air Force Master SergeantRuss Maheras, with coloring byCarl Gafford. On Monday, September 24, 2007,Air Force Times published a 60th-anniversarySteve Canyon strip by Maheras.[7] The color, Sunday-style strip depicts Brigadier General Steve Canyon in Afghanistan, investigatingTaliban activity.[8]
Steve Canyon was an easygoing adventurer with a soft heart. Originally a veteran running his own air-transport business, the character returned to the U.S. Air Force during theKorean War and stayed in the military for the remainder of the strip's run. In later years, he was involved in Air Force intelligence and operations.
Initially, his buddies were fellow veterans, and romantic interest was provided by Copper Calhoon, a kind of capitalist version of the popularDragon Lady character Caniff had created forTerry and the Pirates. Eventually, Canyon developed a sometime-sidekick in crotchety millionaire adventurer Happy Easter, along with a permanent love interest in Summer Olson, initially Calhoon's private secretary. (Canyon and Olson were pronounced "man and wife" in the first panel of the April 25, 1970, daily strip.) General Philerie was based on legendary World War II heroPhil Cochran, who came fromErie, as noted in the character's name ("Phil-Erie"). Cochran had been the model for Flip Corkin fromTerry and the Pirates.
In the mid-1950s Steve Canyon became guardian to Poteet Canyon. Just why she was sent to him was left unanswered for many years, along with how she was related to him. She went to Maumee University, then got a job in journalism, first at a local newspaper. At the nearby airfield, she became friends with Bitsy Beekman, who worked at a high-end magazine likeVogue. In the late-1960s to the late 1970s, more stories focused on Summer's son by her first marriage, Leighton Olson, Jr., who got involved with drugs, then went to Maumee University, now filled with radical antiwar types. He became steady with Stalky Schweisenberger while at Maumee U.
Caniff was intensely patriotic, and with Canyon's return to the military, the story began to revolve aroundCold War intrigue and the responsibilities of American citizens. Despite this shift in tone, Caniff was able to maintain thepicaresque quality of his globally set stories. During Christmas time, inSteve Canyon, as he did inTerry, Caniff made a special effort to remind readers of servicemen's sacrifices.[9]
Caniff was famous for colorful villains and intriguing female characters, such as Madame Lynx and the lovely exiled ruler, Princess Snowflower. Madame Lynx was based on Madame Egelichi, thefemme fatalespy played byIlona Massey in theMarx Brothers movieLove Happy (1949). The character stirred Caniff's imagination so much that he hired Ilona Massey personally to pose for him.[10] Besides casting Ilona Massey as Lynx, Caniff patterned Pipper the Piper afterJohn F. Kennedy,[10] and Miss Mizzou after eitherMarilyn Monroe[10] or actressBek Nelson.[11] The character of Charlie Vanilla (who would frequently appear with an ice cream cone in hand) was based on Caniff's longtime friendCharles Russhon, a former photographer and U.S. Air Force lieutenant, who became a technical advisor on fiveJames Bond films.[12]
In the late 1940s, producerDavid O. Selznick considered aSteve Canyonfilm series starringGuy Madison, but Madison's agentHenry Willson talked Selznick out of it.[13]
The strip was adapted into a filmed, half-hourtelevision series of 34 episodes onNBC in 1958–59 (with reruns onABC in 1960).Dean Fredericks (1924–1999), formerly theHindu manservant onJohnny Weissmuller's 1955–56Jungle Jim series, played Canyon—a troubleshooter for the United States Air Force, spending half the season traveling from base to base before becoming the commanding officer stationed at the strip's fictitious Big Thunder Air Force Base inCalifornia. With the exception of General "Shanty" Towne (in the pilot episode), none of the other supporting characters from the newspaper strip appeared in the series.
The show is broadcast periodically on theDecades over-the-air television network.
From 2008 to 2009, the first 24 episodes were released on DVD; the remaining episodes were released on July 28, 2015.[14]
A series of novels was published byGrosset & Dunlap in the 1950s. They were all written by Caniff, with illustrations by himself.[citation needed]
A statue of Steve Canyon was erected inIdaho Springs, Colorado, and a nearby mountain canyon was renamed "Steve Canyon". A mosaic of Steve Canyon's ward, Poteet Canyon, stands in front of the city fire station in the town ofPoteet, Texas.[15]
TheCIA/US Air Forcecovert air war inLaos during theVietnam War was unofficially called the "Steve Canyon Program"[16]
Harvey Comics reprinted the strip in a half-dozen 1948 comic books, andDell Comics published seven issues of original stories (1953–1959) by former Caniff assistant Ray Bailey (who had anticipatedSteve Canyon with his ownBruce Gentry about a charter pilot) in theirFour Color series (numbers 519, 578, 641, 737, 804, 939, and 1033).Steve Canyon was reprinted byThe Menomonee Falls Gazette,Kitchen Sink Press, andComics Revue,[17] withHermes Press reprinting the comic book in 2011.
Kitchen Sink Press publishedSteve Canyon Magazine for 21 issues, until replacing it withtrade paperback collections using the same numbering:
Kitchen Sink Press also published a one-shotSteve Canyon 3-D comic in June 1986 featuring an anaglyph 3D process by Ray Zone.
In 2006, Checker Book Publishing Group began releasing a year-by-year collection ofSteve Canyon. Nine volumes were released before publication ceased:
In 2012,IDW Publishing began a new hardcover reprint series under their "The Library of American Comics" imprint.
No. 83: Bek Nelson-Gordon was 'Miss Mizzou.' An actress who graduated from Lincoln High School in the 1940s, she was the woman 'Steve Canyon' comic strip artist Milton Caniff picked from a chorus line to be the trench-coated model for Miss Mizzou.
