Miss Mizzou Mentioned in Vox Magazine

voxmagazine-providenceThis last week, Vox Magazine published a collection of articles under the Along Providence heading. The articles explore a lot of different aspects of Providence Road, one of the main thoroughfares in Columbia. In the printed magazine there was a sidebar on Miss Mizzou explaining the story about Caniff Boulevard I tell in my book.

This Miss Mizzou mention happened without any prompting on my part; I didn’t talk to a reporter, and neither my book or I are mentioned in the sidebar. I’m just happy to see Miss Mizzou being mentioned locally, especially with the connection to Providence Road.

I’m also happy to see an in depth feature about Providence Road in the local press. There are so many stories connected to the road, and my book only tells a small fraction of the total history. Kudos to Vox Magazine for exploring Columbia in such a unique way!

NOTE: Due to the holidays there won’t be a blog post next week, but I will be back to blogging when the new year begins.

Mizzou Memories: Mort Walker

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Mort Walker is the creative force behind the comics “Beetle Bailey,” “Hi and Lois,” and many other comics over the last few decades. Within Columbia, Missouri, he’s the most well known cartoonist to have attended the University of Missouri. He’s recognized on the MU campus by both a Bronze Beetle Bailey Statue and an eatery called Mort’s in the MU Student Center.

With this in mind, I asked Mort if he’d give me some comments about Miss Mizzou for my book. I used part of his quote on the back of the book, but here’s his whole quote he sent:

“By the time Milton Caniff introduced Miss Mizzou I had left Mizzou and was pursuing my  career in New York. Milton Caniff had become my friend and was helping me create Beetle Bailey and suggested I put some sexy women in the strip. I thought Miss Mizzou was a great character but I can see the trouble it could cause. When I created Miss Buxley based on Marilyn Monroe she was a similar character and the General was always excited by her. But women all over the country were campaigning against sexism and Miss Buxley became a target. I was called to appear on TV shows with angry women “out to get me.” Papers with women editors were dropping my strip and I was puzzled at what to do about it. I decided to send the General for sensitivity training and have Miss Buxley become Beetle’s girlfriend. I stopped using any objectionable flirting and having her showing off her body. It worked out fine and I don’t have any complaints now.”

Other than Miss Mizzou, Miss Buxley is the only other comic strip character based on Marilyn Monroe that I’ve come across. Thanks for the quote Mort!

Recommended reading:

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  • If you’re interested in Mort Walker, please buy yourself a copy of “Mort Walker’s Private Scrapbook.” If you’re an MU alumni, you will especially love this book because it shows a lot of Walker’s college artwork and tracks the progress of his art style over the years.
  • Of course for the comic professionals, you can’t get any better reference volume than Walker’s “The Lexicon of Comicana.” This infamous volume introduced the groundbreaking nomenclature of what to call various aspects of cartoon shorthand. It’s tongue in cheek, but has developed quite a following over the years.

Inside Columbia Magazine Story

insidecolumbiaA story about the Miss Mizzou book is in the December 2014 issue of “Inside Columbia.” You can take a look a the story online or pick up a copy at a local newsstand like The Mizzou Store or Barnes & Noble. I love how the story mentions a lot of Columbia, Missouri, comic history including Mort Walker, Ernie’s Dick Tracy drawing, Steve Gerber, and Frank Stack. Putting Miss Mizzou amongst that history was one of my goals in producing the book, so I’m happy to see the character put within this context.

One more thing about “Inside Columbia“: They are currently running their Best of Columbia 2015 nominations, and apparently somebody put me on the list as a nominee under the author category. Feel free to go to the site and vote for me if you wish. I’m not hoping to win or anything, but it is nice to be nominated.

Featured Reviewer: Matt Tauber

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During the researching and writing of the Miss Mizzou book, I stayed tuned to various people who were writing about Caniff online. Matt Tauber comes out head and shoulders above other Caniff aficionados on the web. His eye is ever sharp to Caniff happenings going on around the world, and I always seem to learn something new whenever I read his writing. He has also helped out as a contributing editor to the Library of American Comics volume “Caniff: A Visual Biography.”

Tauber wrote a review of the Miss Mizzou book that I had to shorten for the intro, but I wanted to share the full review with you here:

The notion of a celebrity cartoonist is hard to convey to modern audiences. Yes, there are still hundreds of comic strips, but most creators dwell in relative anonymity or face fading name recognition from fame earned decades ago. During Milton Caniff’s heyday, there was a platoon of popular and famous cartoonists. The newspaper was a daily household object, and some artists became as well-known as their creations, and their creations took on lives of their own.

This is the period mined with vigor by J.B. Winter in his new book – “Miss Mizzou: A Life Beyond Comics.” Mizzou was one of many femme fatales Caniff created for his “Steve Canyon” comic strip. “Steve Canyon” debuted in 1947 and could not have come out any later. The diffusion of television, the shrinking of strip size on the comics page and the decline of the adventure strip were all waiting in the next decade or so. He had just enough time to put “Steve Canyon” into the minds of the mass national culture. Caniff’s eagerness and enthusiasm for his new strip sold it to the public as much as mastery of his craft.

Caniff took the name Mizzou from a nickname he’d heard for the Missouri University in Columbia. His Miss Mizzou arrived in the strip in 1952, wearing nothing but a trenchcoat. Miss Mizzou gave the front of a worldly, independent woman, but under the façade was the broken-hearted girl next door looking for a shoulder to lean on.

Experienced at publicity, Caniff hired a model to do public appearances as Miss Mizzou. As the book relates in detail, this led to the model being invited to MU where she was feted like royalty. This led to the creation of campus traditions based on Miss Mizzou that would last for decades. The heart of the book uncovers the controversy created by citizens and students torn over how MU and Columbia could benefit by this association. Was this daring damsel with her suggestive outfit too sexy for Columbia, Missouri? These passionate feelings for Caniff and Mizzou set the city on its ear.

This book knocked me right in the cerebellum sweet spot. Winter looked at what most would call an interesting anecdote and said, ‘There’s way more to this.’ We dive in right with him and explore Mizzou on a molecular level. As a Caniff devotee, most of what I read was new to me, as were most of the pictures and news clipping reproduced in the book. This is what we need more of, a work of comics scholarship that isn’t dry and eschews academic blather. A story well told from a period in time when a comic strip heroine could come to flesh and blood life.

Thanks for the review Matt! You should all check out his blog, where he blogs about pop culture things, but also passionately (and predominately) blogs about Caniff.

Recommended Reading:

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As I said above, Matt was a contributing editor to the Library of American Comics volume “Caniff: A Visual Biography.” He helped out Dean Mullaney and Lorraine Turner go through some of the collection at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and find some amazing Caniff pieces for this book. (You can read about this adventure on Tauber’s blog.) This book is a highly recommended visual treat!