Milton Caniff Interviews

I've lifted a lot a blog material from my cartooning buddy Mike Lynch, but this time I'm just going to send you directly to his site to watch a wide-ranging 11-part interview with comic strip great Milt Caniff taped in 1982. Caniff, who died in 1988, created "Terry and the Pirates" and "Steve Canyon," and is on my personal list of Top Ten All-Time Greats. He's on a lot of people's.
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Caniff in his studio, 1947. I don't know whether he routinely drew from live models or this was just a publicity shot, but that's a pretty cool studio. I wonder what happened to all his books and props?

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Even more impressive than Caniff's work on comic strips, I think, is his continuing impact on the entire field of comics. A generation of cartoonists who came of age in the 1930s and '40s were influenced by Caniff's style--his mastery of light and contrast, as well as his powerful, confident, almost impressionistic brushwork--and passed it down to the generation after, who passed it on, who passed it on, until today Caniff shows up in the work of young artists who may not even know his name. Many cartoonists working in the '40s and '50s cited Caniff as a model, and there are echoes of him in modern artists like Frank Miller, Darwyn Cooke and Steve Rude.

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Good examples of Caniff's art are hard to find online. I chose these two panels from "Steve Canyon" because I think they illustrate his skillful composition, depiction of action, and use of black. There's a lot going on in both these panels, drawn in masses of inky blotches, but the action is always clear. Your eye goes where Caniff directs it. Just a day's work for Caniff, but masterful stuff.

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I'm not a Caniff scholar, but my impression is that his stock among modern critics tends to rise and fall. I've seen him criticized for being too old-fashioned and conservative, as well as just too darned influential. I gather that some people who really know comics get tired of seeing his imitators everywhere. Can't blame him for that! As for stodgy, it's easy to carp six or seven decades later. In the context of his times, and in comparison to what his contemporaries were doing, Caniff was a revolutionary whose work still holds up in my eyes.

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Anyway, if that's the kind of thing that interests you, then I expect Mr. Lynch's videos will interest you as well. As a bonus, the interview was conducted by Shel Dorf, one of the founders of ComicCon International and Caniff's letterer, who just died a few months ago. I admit I haven't found time to watch the whole thing yet (still hip-deep in deadlines), but I will.

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