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Summer Olson and Miss Mizzou
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:
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:
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.
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:
IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, June 5, 1949 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. Summer Smith get’s cheeky with Steve Canyon.
Book Reviews: Columbia Daily Tribune & St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Two reviews of the Miss Mizzou book showed up on the newsstands on Sunday:
There was a long review of the book in the Columbia Daily Tribune by Aarik Danielsen. It’s a great review, which features various meditations on the book’s themes as well as a quote or two from me as well. So happy to see Miss Mizzou back in the newspaper that made her a local celebrity many years ago.
The St. Louis Post Dispatch also printed review of the book by Harry Levins. The book is the first of four reviews on books by regional authors, and it’s an excellent short overview of the book. Mizzou-RAH!
Columbia Missourian Front Page Story
There was a story about Miss Mizzou and my book on the front page of Wednesday’s local Columbia Missourian newspaper! The story by Caitlin Busch is a well written overview of Miss Mizzou–encapsulating so many disparate aspects of the character in one article is not easy! Great to see Miss Mizzou back in newsprint after so many years.
Caniff, Trench Coats, & Miss Mizzou
IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, August 24, 1952 – Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate. After swimming to shore, Miss Mizzou warms up with the aid of her handy trench coat.
So why did Caniff use the trench coat for the Miss Mizzou character? Trench coats primarily came into use by the armed services to stand up to the harsh weather conditions soldiers faced in the battle field during World War I & World War II. (The “Steve Canyon” strip above from August 24, 1952 makes a playful reference to the trench coat’s warming properties.) The trench coat would have appealed to Caniff readers, many who were in the military during World War II. For a military based strip like “Steve Canyon,” using a trench coat for a character would make perfect sense.
By mixing the trench coat with Miss Mizzou’s sex appeal, Caniff could also give a subtle nod to long time servicemen who remembered his work during World War II on the sexy Male Call strips with the character Miss Lace. R.C. Harvey has written an in depth article about Caniff’s struggles to convey sexuality on the comics page that’s pretty insightful in this line of thinking. My bet is that Miss Mizzou’s trench coat was yet another experiment by Caniff to test the boundaries of newspaper censorship.
After World War II, the trench coats slowly became a fashion statement worn both by men and women. (Take a look at this photo from Harper’s Junior Bazaar, July 1953; the look is remarkably like that of Miss Mizzou.) Of course eventually many characters in popular culture would don the trench coat as well. Check out this awesome Wikipedia list of trench coats in popular culture for a glimpse of how the trench coat has evolved over the years. I’m surprised at how many comic characters make the list!