The year that Miss Mizzou debuted, 1952, was a year marked with health problems for cartoonist Milton Caniff. This post explores both Caniff’s health and the ghost artists who occasionally helped fill in for him on his comic strip that year.

I find some interest in this topic because getting other artists to help Caniff with the strip must have been a humbling experience for the 45 year old artist who had been doing his comics solo up until then. His health problems eventually drove him to hiring Dick Rockwell as an assistant the next year. I’m also curious about Caniff’s decision to not make a trip to Columbia in 1952 with Bek Stiner. Did his health keep him away? Did he not want to come back to Columbia? Was he behind on the comic? He later said his reasoning was that he did not want to steal the spotlight from Stiner, but I’m curious what other factors were at play, if any.

February 1952:

IMAGE: Steve Canyon daily comic strip, February 28, 1952 — Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. This sequence was likely drawn by William Overgard.

In the last few strips from February 1952 Caniff got some help from cartoonist William Overgard. In 1986 Caniff wrote “… I was reminded that it was (William) Overgard who did the week of dailies about the college fraternity dance earlier that year.” There’s no telling if the fill in was due to an illness or not, but the sequence in question would have probably been drawn in November or December of 1951. The two panels I picked out above seem quite unlike Caniff, so this is likely the sequence he was talking about.

October/November 1952:

IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, November 9, 1952 — Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. This sequence was likely drawn by William Overgard.

In 1986 Caniff wrote about an illness that he got the summer of 1952: “We were having a luncheon party at our house in New City, New York. It might have been for Bunny’s birthday. Around noon, I began feeling lousy. I must have been pretty sick because we had the doctor make a house call. They used to do that in those days. Anyway, I went up to bed.” He proceeds to explain that both Noel Sickles and William Overgard helped him out on the strips he was working on at the time. “It was the week of October 6th to the 11th, and the Sunday page for November 9th, roughed out and lettered,” Caniff wrote.

Caniff’s wife Bunny had a birthday on July 3rd. The weekly strips for October would have probably been on the table in July sometime given that Caniff would usually work about three months ahead. The dates that Caniff references seem air tight as well; the characters in the strip really do not look like they were drawn by Caniff. According to Caniff, Sickles drew on the dailies and Overgard drew on the Sunday. Of course in the next sentence he also writes that they were “handing pages back and forth” so I’m not sure it’s clear which artist did which pages.

December 1952 (unverified):

IMAGE: Steve Canyon daily comic strip, December 8, 1952 — Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Was this sequence ghosted by someone?

Caniff also got sick at the end of September 1952. As I write in the Miss Mizzou book:

The newspapers of the day said that Caniff could not go to Columbia because of illness, which may or may not be true. In an undated letter to his parents after the appearance of Miss Mizzou, he writes of how he “begged off” of going and was planning to send Casson in his place. He doesn’t mention any illness to his parents, and correspondence with Casson indicates that he didn’t know of Caniff’s illness until late September. While it’s still possible he could have turned down the appearance due to health issues, in 1986 he wrote that he wanted to give the focus to Stiner instead of himself. “I didn’t want the spotlight shifting from her to me and back again,” he wrote. Caniff got out of the hospital on the 4th or 5th of October, 1952, so it’s doubtful he would have been up to making the trip to Columbia if he had wanted to go anyway.

This sickness apparently was serious enough that it hospitalized Caniff. For all we know, the July sickness could have been something that he was dealing with that progressively got worse into September. I’m not sure if anyone filled in for him artistically or not during this illness. He may have called on Overgard or Sickles in late September to cover him for some December or January strips, but it’s hard to spot if they did fill in any of these sequences. Maybe some more eagle eyed readers could pick things out? The strip that I show above from December 8th seems uncharacteristic of Caniff, so maybe it’s a possible example of ghosting?