Monthly Archives: September 2014

Book Reviews: Columbia Daily Tribune & St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Two reviews of the Miss Mizzou book showed up on the newsstands on Sunday:

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There was a long review of the book in the Columbia Daily Tribune by Aarik Danielsen. It’s a great review, which features various meditations on the book’s themes as well as a quote or two from me as well. So happy to see Miss Mizzou back in the newspaper that made her a local celebrity many years ago.

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The St. Louis Post Dispatch also printed review of the book by Harry Levins. The book is the first of four reviews on books by regional authors, and it’s an excellent short overview of the book. Mizzou-RAH!

Caniff, Trench Coats, & Miss Mizzou

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IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, August 24, 1952 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. After swimming to shore, Miss Mizzou warms up with the aid of her handy trench coat.

So why did Caniff use the trench coat for the Miss Mizzou character? Trench coats primarily came into use by the armed services to stand up to the harsh weather conditions soldiers faced in the battle field during World War I & World War II. (The “Steve Canyon” strip above from August 24, 1952 makes a playful reference to the trench coat’s warming properties.) The trench coat would have appealed to Caniff readers, many who were in the military during World War II. For a military based strip like “Steve Canyon,” using a trench coat for a character would make perfect sense.

By mixing the trench coat with Miss Mizzou’s sex appeal, Caniff could also give a subtle nod to long time servicemen who remembered his work during World War II on the sexy Male Call strips with the character Miss Lace. R.C. Harvey has written an in depth article about Caniff’s struggles to convey sexuality on the comics page that’s pretty insightful in this line of thinking. My bet is that Miss Mizzou’s trench coat was yet another experiment by Caniff to test the boundaries of newspaper censorship.

After World War II, the trench coats slowly became a fashion statement worn both by men and women. (Take a look at this photo from Harper’s Junior Bazaar, July 1953; the look is remarkably like that of Miss Mizzou.) Of course eventually many characters in popular culture would don the trench coat as well. Check out this awesome Wikipedia list of trench coats in popular culture for a glimpse of how the trench coat has evolved over the years. I’m surprised at how many comic characters make the list!

Featured Reviewer: Max Allan Collins

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Max Allan Collins is a multifaceted mystery writer with a long list of titles to his credit. He’s probably best known for graphic novel “Road to Perdition” which was the basis of the Academy Award-winning 2002 film. He’s also been a writer for the “Dick Tracy” comic strip and was also the creator of the long running “Ms. Tree” comic book. Beyond comics, he has a long novel writing career, which includes his “Quarry” series, which is currently in development to be a TV show on Cinemax.

After Mickey Spillane died in 2006, Collins started co-authoring several Mike Hammer novels started by Spillane. During my Miss Mizzou research, Collins helped with some information when I was researching a character Mickey Spillane wrote into his book “Kiss Me Deadly” that was similar to Miss Mizzou. When it came to thinking about people to get advance quotes for my book, Collins was definitely on my list. Here’s what he wrote about the Miss Mizzou book:

“Milton Caniff was inarguably the 20th Century’s most influential cartoonist in the story-strip field. Marilyn Monroe was the quintessential movie star of that same century. The impact of both continues to be felt. When the two collided, it had to be worth writing about and J.B. Winter has done that very thing, in a tome as entertaining as it is well-researched.”

I love this summary of the character and how it relates to Marilyn Monroe. Collins has written a little about Monroe himself, which we’ll get to in our next section…

Recommended reading:

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  • If you’re a fan of Miss Mizzou, you might be a fan of Marilyn Monroe. Collins has written a volume in his Nate Heller series that deals with the death of Marilyn Monroe called “Bye Bye, Baby.” It’s a riveting read, chock full of real life research about Monroe put into fictional form.
  • One of Collin’s latest books that would interest comic fans is “Seduction of the Innocent.” In this book he takes a look at the real life 1950’s comic book scare started by Fredric Wertham and puts a fictional spin on situation with a pulp mystery at its core. Only someone as steeped in comics and 1950s nostalgia as Collins could have written such an intriguing book. The book stands alone, but is the third book in a series that began with “A Killing in Comics” and was followed up by “Strip for Murder.”

Recommended viewing:

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  • If you’re a Columbia, Missouri, comic fan, you’re probably familiar with Alley Oop, who was created by a former MU student V.T. Hamlin. Collins created the documentary “Caveman: V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop“ which I remember being shown in town during the 75th anniversary of Alley Oop events that happened in 2008.
  • You might also want to catch the Collins documentary “Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane” from 1998 that was repackaged in the 1955 film “Kiss Me Deadly” released by the Criterion Collection. Watch the beginning of “Kiss Me Deadly” for a glimpse of a character similar to Miss Mizzou that I reference in my book.

Do you “Miss Mizzou”?

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IMAGE: Steve Canyon, September 5, 1954. Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate.

 

I’ve spent the last few years studying Miss Mizzou for my book, but apparently I’ve been so close to the subject that I didn’t recognize something pretty obvious until recently. I knew that Caniff always had the character reminiscing about Columbia and wishing that she could get back there, but it never crossed my mind that she was “missing” Mizzou. This is such an obvious double meaning to her name, but it really works well I think.

Caniff, like many comic artists in his day, would often come up with an novelty name for a character that encapsulated some aspect of the character’s personality. Take for example Pipper the Piper, Foo Ling, Nimbus Neil, and Copper Calhoon to name a few. While this wasn’t the most subtle aspect of Caniff’s strip, you have to keep in mind that comic artists were telling stories a day at a time in just a few small panels. Giving unusual names to the characters helped people remember them from day to day and also helped new and irregular readers figure out the characters quickly.

When I’ve been searching for traces of Caniff’s character online these last few years, I would often type “Miss Mizzou” into a search box. The bulk of the results that I usually got were about people (mostly former Mizzou students) who said they “Miss Mizzou.” I always found it reassuring to know that Caniff’s character was not alone in her nostalgia for the town and the school. Do you too “Miss Mizzou”?