Monthly Archives: October 2014

The Duchess of Denver & Miss Mizzou

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IMAGE: Steve Canyon Volume 3: 1951-1952, published 2013.

IMAGE: Steve Canyon Volume 3: 1951-1952, published in 2013. Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate.

If you look at the cover of the “Steve Canyon Volume 3” put out by the Library of American Comics, you might think that Miss Mizzou is featured on the cover punching Steve Canyon. This is not Miss Mizzou, but another blonde character named the Duchess of Denver.

The Duchess of Denver made her debut in the strip on April 17, 1951. The Duchess had a background in the theatre, but in her appearance she’s part of a scam run by her crooked husband. Steve Canyon and Foo Ling save her from her predicament, but it seems like she wasn’t happy with being saved either. She later apparently drowns at sea at the end of the storyline.

IMAGE: Steve Canyon, April 17, 1951. The introduction of the character the Duchess of Denver. Her name is mentioned on the sequence from the previous day, but she first appears in this strip.

IMAGE: Steve Canyon daily comic strip, April 17, 1951 — Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. The introduction of the character the Duchess of Denver. Her name is mentioned on the sequence from the previous day, but she first appears in this strip.

If you look at her as Caniff drew her in the strip, she looks quite similar in some ways to Miss Mizzou; the only major difference is her haircut. This begs the question: Was the look of the Duchess influenced by Marilyn Monroe, just like Miss Mizzou? I kind of doubt it. While Monroe was starting to get some momentum in 1951 (She was named “Miss Cheescake” by the “Stars and Stripes” newspaper later in August.) the major feature that’s against this comparison is Monroe’s hair style. In 1950-1951, Monroe had a hairstyle that was mostly straight compared to the Duchess and her curly hair.

One might be tempted to think that the debut of the Duchess of Denver might have been a play by Caniff similar to the Miss Mizzou roll-out the next year; she’s seemingly named after a specific town after all. Unfortunately I doubt her debut caused many eyebrows to be furled in Colorado. The name “Duchess of Denver” was probably borrowed from the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels by Dorothy Sayers from the 1920s and 1930s, so I doubt Denver, Colorado, saw Caniff’s character as anything but a an amusing facsimile. If you read enough of Caniff you begin to see that he often references things from the 1920s and 1930s, just like many artists reference the influences of their younger years.

Featured Reviewer: R.C. Harvey

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R.C. Harvey is a cartoonist, critic, and author of many books on cartooning. I first came upon his work through his Rants and Raves column in the now defunct “Comic Buyers Guide,” which is probably where I first heard about Milton Caniff. Yes, R.C. Harvey is probably to blame for my interest in Caniff. You can still subscribe to his ongoing Rants and Raves column on his website.

I asked Harvey to send me an advance review blurb for the book, and he provided a wonderful quote. I had to truncate it slightly for the book, but here’s the whole quote below:

In his Steve Canyon comic strip, Milton Caniff tried hard to create a character as provocative as the Dragon Lady or Burma in his Terry and the Pirates. The closest he came was Miss Mizzou, who shows up only five times, each time wearing a trench coat and, she assures us with a knowing wink, little, or perhaps nothing, else. In this slim and impressively researched volume (the footnotes are as fascinating a read as the main narrative), we find out that Mizzou had an equally tantalizing life beyond the borders of the comic strip, and J.B. Winter never fails to remind us of what she was wearing (or not) beneath the trench coat.

I like that he references the Dragon Lady and Burma in regards to Miss Mizzou. I didn’t mention much of this relationship between Caniff’s past characters in the main text of my book, so this was a perfect compliment to include in the front of the book as a blurb.

Recommended reading:

meanwhile miltoncaniffconversations

Summer Olson and Miss Mizzou

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IMAGE: Steve Canyon daily comic strip, February 21, 1952 – Copyright 2014, Milton Caniff Estate. Summer Olson and Steve Canyon embrace each other.

One of the things that I don’t mention in the book is how much Summer Olson probably had to do with the popularity of Miss Mizzou. Let me explain further.

Summer Olson was a character who first introduced into the strip on May 29th, 1949. She is introduced as Summer Smith, a secretary of Romulus Brandywine:

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IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, May 29, 1949 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Summer Smith is introduced as a secretary.

She was engaged to a pilot, Leyton Olson, who Steve Canyon was commanding over in Asia. By the end of that storyline, Leyton had disappeared on a mission that Canyon had sent him on, and was presumed dead. Summer Olson returns to the United States while pregnant with Leyton’s child.

Canyon of course feels bad about losing Leyton under his command, but he’s also concerned about the financial prospects for Summer Olson and her child. Steve reconnects with Olson and her son for an Air Force assignment in the states in a storyline in early 1952. Canyon eventually falls for Olson, and asks her to marry him on February 17th, 1952:

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IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, February 17, 1952 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Steve Canyon asks Summer Olson to marry him.

Their plan to get married is foiled when Leyton Olson sends a telegram saying he’s coming to town. Spooked that her missing husband would show up after all this time, Canyon takes off for his next assignment. Eventually it turns out that the telegram was sent by Leyton’s father (Leyton Olson Sr.), so Canyon was spooked away for nothing.

Months pass while Canyon is attending to other air force assignments, but he eventually finds out about his mistake with Summer Olson and hopes to hurry to Chicago to try to marry her. On his way there, he’s delayed by the first Miss Mizzou adventure in the Canadian woods, which further complicates the situation between the couple.

Introducing marriage into the storyline would have raised a lot of interest in the strip in early 1952, and I’m thinking that interest brought a lot of readers to follow the Miss Mizzou adventure that fall as well. Canyon reconnects with Olson in the storyline after Miss Mizzou appears, so it’s likely that people were reading in anticipation to see what happened with the couple.

Spoiler Alert: They didn’t get married right away. When Canyon returns, Summer has just landed a high paying job with the ruthless industrialist Copperhead Calhooon. The Copperhead drives a wedge between the couple by making Summer work late hours, and their relationship cools.

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IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, November 30, 1952 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Summer Olson laments that she can’t afford to give up her job and settle down with Steve Canyon because she needs to support her son.

The couple did not get married until 1970. Mostly this was a choice based in dramatic effect; Caniff wanted Canyon to be freewheeling in his adventures so he could introduce various love interests along the way to keep audience interest high. But I think Caniff knew from the beginning that Steve and Summer were eventually going to marry, as this early exchange on June 5th, 1949 implies:

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IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, June 5, 1949 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Summer Smith get’s cheeky with Steve Canyon.