“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.

IMAGE: Milton Caniff poses with Bek Stiner for a publicity photo in 1952. Photo courtesy of Gabrielle Adelman.

One of the more frustrating questions to consider with Miss Mizzou is the character’s visual influences. Did the look of Marilyn Monroe influence the character the most or was it the official character model Bek Stiner?

According to a 1971 book, at some point Caniff mentioned that the first Miss Mizzou was drawn from a picture of Marilyn Monroe. If true, I’m thinking that this image was probably the one that I used for my book cover; it looks closer to images of Marilyn Monroe than Bek Stiner in my opinion. Once Caniff got this drawing done, he probably took it down to the Copacabana nightclub where he found Bek Stiner. Could the picture above be the first meeting between Stiner and Caniff?

IMAGE: Steve Canyon daily comic strip, August 12th, 1952. Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate.

When the character started appearing in the comic strip in August 1952, she still somewhat looked like Marilyn Monroe, but I think the features of Bek Stiner started to slowly get integrated into the character.

IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, October 5, 1952 — Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate.

By October of 1952, she looks quite a bit closer to Bek Stiner, and I think the character stayed with this look during the rest of her comic existence.

It’s hard to determine how much Caniff intended the character to look like any one model because he wasn’t always the greatest portraitist. In an infamous example, TIME magazine wanted to feature him on the cover in 1947, so he drew up a self portrait for the magazine. They didn’t like the result enough, so they got another artist to draw him instead. In later years I think his portrait skills increased when he gave it the time and effort outside his comic strip, such as when he started doing portraits for the Aviation Hall of Fame. He was the sole portrait artist for the organization starting in 1962 until his death in 1988.

IMAGE: Steve Canyon Sunday comic strip, August 22, 1954 — Copyright 2014 the Milton Caniff Estate.

Miss Mizzou in the comic strip was somewhat of a nightclub entertainer, but what kind of music did she sing? Cartoonist Milton Caniff dropped a lot of song references in the “Steve Canyon” comic strip, so I thought I’d explore some of the songs mentioned during Miss Mizzou’s 1952 and 1954 appearances:

• August 16, 1952 — Mizzou sings part of  “Wait Till The Clouds Roll By.“
• August 25, 1952 — Mizzou mentions “Rose Marie.”
• August 09, 1954 — Mizzou apparently sang “Home on the Range.”
• August 11, 1954 — Mizzou’s singing “I Dream of Jeanie” in the first panel. The second panel includes requests for “Mother Machree,” “Melancholy Baby,” and “Deep Night.”
• August 14, 1954 — Mizzou gets a request for “In the Gloaming.“
• August 22, 1954 — Mizzou sings part of “Love’s Old Sweet Song.”

A lot of these songs are what could be termed “old standards” that have been covered by many people over the years. I tried to link to versions of these songs that were made pre-1950s so you might be able to hear versions of these tunes that could have possibly been influences to Caniff.