IMAGE: Steve Canyon daily comic strip, October 16, 1950– Copyright 2015 the Milton Caniff Estate. Steve Canyon tells Reed Kimberly that he’s rejoined the military because of the Korean conflict.
“Steve Canyon” started out in 1947 as a “post-World War II” comic strip. The protagonist Steve Canyon was a pilot in the war, but went into the civilian sector to deliver packages by air. A lot of the early story-lines in the strip mentioned his military connections from the war and how his current civilian life contrasted with his years in the service. The World War II years of Caniff’s previous strip “Terry and the Pirates” had won him a dedicated audience interested in military matters and the Steve Canyon strip made a nod to this where it could. When the Korean War started in 1950, Caniff felt it appropriate to get Steve Canyon back into military life, so the character re-enlisted. The strip stayed a military strip for the rest of its run until 1988.
During World War II, Caniff had created the comic strip “Male Call” with the character Miss Lace. The strip was exclusively made for servicemen overseas and fit right in with the pin-up girl culture that was becoming popular with that audience. Perhaps the introduction of Miss Mizzou in 1952 could also be seen as carrying on the legacy of Miss Lace for the servicemen involved with the Korean conflict? Many drawings of Miss Mizzou have somewhat of a “pin-up” look to them so this may have been the case.
It must be said that the images of Miss Mizzou that have a “pin-up” look stand in contrast to how Miss Mizzou was drawn in the comic strip most of the time. Suggestive Miss Mizzou images occasionally made it into newspapers or magazines to promote the comic strip, but within the borders of the comic strip, the character was drawn quite conservatively. This demure character image was probably a calculated move by Caniff to satisfy censors so they would ignore the risqué dialog he would occasionally give to the character. R.C. Harvey has written about this technique Caniff used at various points in his strip.
Miss Mizzou wasn’t the only cartoon character tied to Mid-Missouri and the Korean War. Columbia, Missouri native Bill Hume (1916–2009) was stationed in Japan during the Korean War and drew a series of cartoons featuring a Japanese woman he named Babysan. Politically incorrect by today’s standards, the character would speak in broken English and pose in suggestive outfits. Hume returned to Columbia, Missouri after the war and put out several books with the character. R.C. Harvey has written an essay about Hume that has appeared in the recent book “Insider Histories of Cartooning.” (Miss Mizzou is briefly mentioned in the essay as well.)