“Miss Mizzou” paper doll by Arn Saba & Barbara Rausch.

In the Miss Mizzou book I mention that a paper doll was created in 1958 that was never put into production. Unfortunately this doll has been lost to time; no known copies exist. However, since I’ve completed my book, I came across a Miss Mizzou paper doll that was created a few decades later. First, a little history lesson.

Canadian cartoonist Arn Saba created the character Neil the Horse in the mid 1970s. The character appeared in various forms throughout the years, but in the 1980s, a “Neil the Horse” comic came out under the umbrella of Dave Sim’s Aardvark-Vanaheim company. Saba was quite a Caniff fan, and quite the comic historian as well. Cartoonist Barbara Rausch had a regular page in the back of “Neil the Horse” that had drawings various clothes that fit on top of a “paper doll” drawn by Saba. This was an homage to the various paper dolls of yesteryear that would appear in magazines and newspapers, as well as comic books in the early part of the 20th century.

The main doll that Saba used was a character from the Neil the Horse series named “Mam’selle Poupée.” The doll clothes that Rausch would draw had various themes in those early issues of the comic, and one of the main series of dolls was titled “Great Women of Comics.” Clothes appeared for characters like Daisy Mae, Little Orphan Annie, Katy Keene, Mama Katzenjammer, Phantom Lady, and even Caniff’s character The Dragon Lady from “Terry and the Pirates.”

Of particular interest is Barb Rausch’s paper doll clothes for Caniff’s Miss Mizzou that appear in “Neil the Horse” #6 (1984). The doll of Mam’selle Poupée that fits these clothes is printed in “Neil the Horse” #3 (1983). Put the doll and the clothes together and you get a “Miss Mizzou” paper doll:

In addition to being a Caniff fan, Saba also did an interview with Caniff that was originally printed in the “Comics Journal” No. 108 in 1986, and reprinted in “Milton Caniff: Conversations.”  Saba, now known as Katherine Collins, recently name dropped Caniff in an interview on the inkstuds podcast.

You can pick up some “Neil the Horse” back issues on ebay and make your own Miss Mizzou paper doll.

On August 20, 1958, the “Columbia Missourian” newspaper published a photo of a sign that was put up anonymously that morning on Third Street in response to Columbia’s road naming controversy getting national attention. The joke sign is one of my favorite pieces of whimsy to come out of the Miss Mizzou story. Let’s take a look at the old photo and compare it to a modern photo of the same intersection:

IMAGE: Third Street and Highway 40, Columbia Missourian, August 20, 1958. Used with permission.

IMAGE: Providence Road and Business Loop 70, summer 2014. Photo by J.B. Winter.

This intersection has gone through quite a change in over 62 years if you compare the photographs. The telephone poles in the background seem like they’ve been moved, both roads have been widened, and the fire hydrant in the fore-ground is a different style. (Has it perhaps been moved as well?) Within the last couple of years they’ve added the wheelchair accessible structures to both sides of the street and have added crossing signals for pedestrians as well. It’s hard to see any similarities between the photos aside from the trees in the background.

One more note about the 1958 photo: The person in the car is Columbia native Bob Martin, a MU student who graduated in 1959 and lettered in golf. He is a former city champion, city senior champion and state senior champion golfer. You can read some of his writing up on the Missouri Golf Post website.