When your dog is well trained in one area but not in another.
Louie, by Harry Hanan, from July 12, 1953.
💬 Milt Caniff on depicting the military in Steve Canyon, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
SABA: I must say that 10 years ago, you and I would have probably been on very different sides of the war.
CANIFF: Not necessarily, and this is a funny thing. It’s come up quite frequently. Let me put it this way: the people who were fighting the war in Vietnam were not there of their own choosing. They were there because they were drafted. They didn’t enlist for “Down with Hitler” and “Down with Hirohito,” which would cause a lot of guys to enlist. Almost without exception, they were there because they were drafted. Once a guy is drafted and he’s stuck in a place, that’s where my relationship with him begins. I never got into the reasons for him being there. It’s just the fact that he was there, that’s all. Then he became my way of mirroring what was going on, and what a miserable job it was being there. But not why he was there. I didn’t like that war any more than you liked that war. But because I was showing these GIs doing their thing, it sounded as if I were a hawk. I didn’t feel that way about it at all.
💬 Milt Caniff on Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
“…although Capp and I were rivals, we were old friends. I even took over Colonel Gilfeather from him. Capp once wrote a story about that. He said, “My work was once given to guy named Milton Caniff-what ever happened to him?” [laughter]
…People used to think we were bitter rivals, which we never were, because Li’l Abner and my stuff had no rival points. We always got along well together. He was always very generous to me. In the times that he was doing a lot a of radio and television appearances, he had nice things to say about me. In fact, he would turn the conversation around to that end. He always liked Alex Raymond, and while Alex was alive, he used to do the same thing for Alex.”
[Al Capp was a very self-centered man, who was never shy about saying what he didn’t like about other people, especially people in the same business. So if he spoke well of someone, it was a great honor. I’ve never read anything from Capp that was negative towards Milt Caniff, so that really says something. Not saying he never said anything negative, just a that I haven’t read it]
💬 Milt Caniff on cliffhangers, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
“I do six novels a year. The difference is that there’s a carefully contrived umbilical between the end of one of my stories and the next, so that the audience doesn’t get turned away. When you say ‘The End,’ then lots of people take you to your word, and that’s the end of it and you. And, my trick is to hold you from the end of one story to the beginning of another. It’s a trick, a technique, that’s as old as Scheharazade again, because that’s exactly what she did. Just before the end of the story, she would say, ‘Oh, well, tomorrow…,’ and so on.
…when I first started in this whole thing, the New York News people suggested that I write to Harold Gray and to Chet Gould, who at that point had just ascended. They had become widely read. I was supposed to ask if they could offer me any advice. I wouldn’t have done this on my own, by the way. Not that didn’t highly respect them, but I didn’t want them to feel obligated, and I didn’t want to feel obligated to them. But I did because the editor suggested it. Harold Gray said something that was so pertinent: he said that each day you tell a little of what happened yesterday, and tell something of what’s going on now, and then tease them into reading tomorrow’s strip. But always a little new, a little old, and a little maybe. Very good advice. And he used this, because nothing in his drawing ever gave him the chance that I have of shooting all around the character with the telephone and so on. It was always the same drawing, more or less. But his storytelling was so skilled that he was able to hold you to Orphan Annie. If you became an addict, you were hooked."
💬 Milt Caniff on working as a cartoonist, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
CANIFF: …I’ve heard a cartoonist say this, and it always saddens me when I hear it–“Oh, good God, I hate to think of sitting at that drawing board today.” Well, they ought to get into some other trade if that’s the way they feel about it. To just go there under compulsion, as if you’ve been put in the trireme to pull an oar every day. Of course, it’s hard work, but I used to have a managing editor who said to me, “Son, you asked for work when you came here.” He’s the same editor who said, “Draw this for the old man who buys the paper. Don’t worry about the kids.” Kids don’t read newspaper comics. Everyone thinks they do, but they don’t.
For a unique vacation experience, visit Echo Canyon.
Herman, by Clyde Lamb, from July 5, 1953.
💬 Milt Caniff on "shifting camera angles" in comics, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
CANIFF: …all the years that I’ve been at this thing, I’ve never drawn two panels the same. Ever.
SABA: Not that you know of, anyway.
CANIFF: Well, it doesn’t occur to you at the time, but when you have two people talking, you still shift the camera around, so to speak, so that it isn’t dull for the viewer, and it also isn’t dull for you.
SABA: This is one of the things that you’re justifiably famous for. You really initiated that technique of being able to have a lot of dialogue go on in a comic strip by shifting the camera angles, as they’re called. I don’t believe that was done at all before you came along, or at least, not to any extent.
CANIFF: No, it wasn’t, generally speaking. I was seeking some device, something to make it noisy, and to make a grab for the audience. Part of it was the heavy blacks. It made the thing just look noisy on the page, and draw your attention that way. The other thing was, when you started to read it, you weren’t riveted to one point of view across a horizon, you see.
…
CANIFF: It’s the kind of thing that the good directors do. Hitchcock, for instance, does this very effectively, and I probably picked it up from him, or from some other director before him that I liked. And I used the movies' technique simply because the movies were accepted, and was simply trailing along behind them in a different medium. And, I would do this with storylines, too. I would read Saturday Evening Post and Colliers and things of that day, to see what was being read by people. When I came along in a different medium, I could almost play the same tune on a different horn and grab the same people.
When you somehow got roped into hosting a party you didn’t want to attend.
Just Nuts (also known as Dumb-Bells) by Charles “Gar” Dunn and Joe Cunningham, from July 24, 1925.
💬 Katherine Collins on studying comics history, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
I don’t suppose that in fact there really is any prerequisite that you have to know anything at all in order to enjoy, or even create, popular art, as long as you’re having fun. But I think it adds to the depth of reader’s enjoyment of any reading if he knows the context and traditions from which a work has sprung. Too often, work that is regarded as fresh, innovative and vital, is in fact just a pale rehash of something done originally, and better 40 years before. How is a reader to savor the full resonance of story which follows an archetypal pattern if he doesn’t know anything that was published before last year? I believe that it is the ignorance of the general comics readers that is responsible for the generally low standards in today’s mainstream comics. They simply don’t know any better. And of course, the main reason for this ignorance is that nobody encourages people to study comics or take them seriously…
When your facial hair choices frighten children.
Kitty Higgins, the topper to Moon Mullins by Frank Willard, from July 26, 1936.
💬 Katherine Collins on Caniff's view of his own work, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
“I think it is a very interesting, enlightening, and complete interview, and gives a very good picture of Milton Caniff’s thinking. You will see, however, that despite my repeated rephrasing of the same basic question–are comics Art or aren’t they?-that he never truly addressed what I wanted to discuss. And as it turns out, that lack of discussion was his answer. He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t care. He probably wouldn’t know how to think about that question if he wanted to. At the time, this drove me I crazy. I couldn’t believe it. How could he not think about it, considering his achievements? Didn’t he think that his terrific ability to portray character, to convey mood, to evoke emotion, gave him the right to demand to be taken seriously? The answer, apparently, was no. His answer was, as he often has said, he just wants to sell newspapers.”
Catching strays from passing children.
Henry, by Carl Anderson, from July 22, 1954
<img src=“https://micro.arkholt.com/uploads/2025/the-atlanta-constitution-thu-jul-22-1954-.jpg" alt=“A young buy walks along and meets a portly man wearing a hat. The boy gestures for the man to follow him. The boy takes the man to a service station garage, points to the man’s belly, and then points to a sign outside of the garage which says, “For Your Safety - Let Us Inspect Your Spare Tire”">
💬 Hal Foster on the inspiration for Prince Valiant characters, from The Comics Journal 102, September 1985
SABA: …what methods did you use to write the story? How did you settle what it was going to involve?
FOSTER: Well, those ideas have to come to you.
Mrs. FOSTER: He just picks them out of thin air, I think. …
Mrs. FOSTER: Or something that you read.
FOSTER: Yes.
Mrs. FOSTER: It would stick in his mind, or just seeing people. When we were in Paris, and at the restaurant there, a waiter waited on us. Harold kept looking at him, and got his pencil and made a sketch of him, and said, “There’s a story in that fellow’s face,” and he was in the script for long time.
FOSTER: Yes.
Mrs. FOSTER: What did you call him, the, he was the-
FOSTER: I don’t know, but he was a fusty-looking guy, never had his hair combed, and nothing fit. So I made him a squire to Sir Gawain, Sir Gawain was always a handsome-
Mrs. FOSTER: Served our soup with his thumb in it, you know [laughter].
SABA: Oh, I see.
Mrs. FOSTER: And then our younger son brought home a series of [photos], he was going in for photography. He’s one of those young fellows that goes from one thing to another. He brought home some candid shots that he had taken, and he had an enlargement–a head of a girl, remember her?
FOSTER: Yes.
Mrs. FOSTER: And the minute he looked at her, “Oh, can I have that, Arthur?” he said, “That girl’s got a story in her face,” well, maybe he didn’t know what the story was, but-
SABA: But there’s something inspiring.
Mrs. FOSTER: That made him think of something. And he used to write down, you had a little black book that, when you’d get an idea, you’d write it down in, and sometimes, enlarge on it. So when he first did that, everything reminded him. For instance, one of our friends' mother, the lady-in-waiting-
FOSTER: Oh, yes.
Mrs. FOSTER: Theresa.
FOSTER: Theresa Armstrong.
Mrs. FOSTER: Yes, what did you call her? Oh, she had been a lady-in-waiting, and she became a queen of Spain, queen of Sweden.
FOSTER: Oh, I said she used to come into the room like floundering ship.
SABA: That’s great.
FOSTER: She dominated everything.
Mrs. FOSTER: He’s used lots of people, but they never knew it.
💬 Hal Foster on romance and family in Prince Valiant, from The Comics Journal 102, September 1985
Mrs. FOSTER: …Once or twice Sylvan Byck complained, because you showed Aleta pregnant, that was in the days you couldn’t do those things in the comics, you know, no snakes.
SABA: But you did it anyway.
FOSTER: Yes.
Mrs. FOSTER: Well, he made her coat a little fuller, and that’s something I don’t know.
FOSTER: I showed her relaxing in the woods, laying on a downed tree.
SABA: I remember that.
FOSTER: The skunk comes along, and, of course, lets her have it, and she falls off the log. Shows that there’s no doubt about it that she’s pregnant.
Mrs. FOSTER: Well, first they said he should never get married.
FOSTER: Yep.
Mrs. FOSTER: Yes, no comic hero ever got married and survived. So he married Val off, and they shouldn’t..
FOSTER: Shouldn’t have children, no.
Mrs. FOSTER: Don’t make him a family man, you know.
FOSTER: She shouldn’t, his wife shouldn’t be anything but, follow him around like-what is a hero that, he went through different stars and everything and the girl followed him.
SABA: Flash Gordon?
FOSTER: Flash Gordon, yes, always with a girl.
SABA: Just following around, just sort of hanging on.
FOSTER: Yes. Well I thought that was indecent. No fellow is going to go from planet to planet, and have his girl, especially a good-looking girl, tagging along without having some ideas.
SABA: I think you’re right. Very chaste, aren’t they?
FOSTER: So, of course, I had Prince Valiant marry the girl, so that she’d be decent, and being a decent girl, and married, she should have children. They told me that a married woman, there’s no romance in a married woman and children, but-
SABA: What do they know?
FOSTER: Yes, I found out that people are not exactly what those in power in the comics think. … SABA: …I think that these people who say that there’s no romance in a family are just so wrong, and you showed how wrong they could be, because you showed how much a man and wife can love each other, and still be married and have children. It make it so human,-and so nice.
Mrs. FOSTER: Everybody was so delighted when-didn’t he throw her in a pond once?
SABA: I remember that one.
Mrs. FOSTER: Well, that was a way to treat a wife, you know, throw her in a pond. He says he’s always tried to do that. If he had some violence or anything like that, then for the next story, he’d try to make it light and with humor in it and everything.
SABA: Well, it makes it such a delightful picture of life, instead of a one-sided, just blood and thunder all the time, it shows what life is really all about, which is so many different sides.
FOSTER: Yes, you have to write the story the way you would compose music. You know, high notes and low notes. You have violence one week, and the next story will be the children and home, probably the adventure of one of the children. Then you can get into blood and thunder again.
Mrs. FOSTER: But every so often you have to remember you got two girls in there, you got to weave them into a story. And then we had more comment about the twins and the things, and when she cut her hair, wore the helmet and would be the tomboy and all that sort of thing. People around here, people who had children said, “Oh, that’s my daughter all over again, that’s just like my daughter.”
💬 Hal Foster on his upbringing in Canada, from The Comics Journal 102, September 1985
SABA: …Do you feel that your upbringing in Canada has had any particular influence on the kind of work that you do, or in any way on your life?
FOSTER: Oh, yes, greatly. It gave me all my backgrounds. I didn’t do very well in school. Of course, I always won a prize in drawing, but so many kids in school were better than I was at learning, I suppose that’s why I went to the outdoors. Halifax harbor was such a romantic place. Gosh, on a Summer day, look up the harbor, and the harbor is just covered with white canvas.
…
SABA: It seems you had a very great sense of romance, even very young, you always were more interested in the world of nature and life as it was being lived, rather than what was being taught in school.
FOSTER: Yes. I was fairly interested in history, because I lived where history was made–in Canada, Newfoundland, and Nova. Scotia. The kind of history that appealed to me.
When babies conspire against you.
Smitty, by Walter Berndt, from July 23, 1939.
💬 Hal Foster on the expressiveness of hands, from The Comics Journal 102, September 1985
FOSTER: …Now, if you’ll notice any other illustrator, any other illustration that you see, they’ll paint the face, and probably feet, and they’ll paint the hands, but the hands are useless, they’re not doing anything. They’re turned over too much, or they droop too much. Every expression on the face has to be confirmed by the hands.
SABA: That’s a very good point.
FOSTER: Yes. If a man is startled…
SABA: His hands will react.
FOSTER: Yes, he’ll show it in his hands.
I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.
Little Debbie, by Cecil Jensen, from June 4, 1953.
💬 Rick Marschall on comic strip reprint books, from The Comics Journal 100, July 1985
“…Complete works of great writers like Dickens and Twain are in every library, and every home library, but some day, there will be complete works of Segar and DeBeck, Caniff, people like that. There should be, and there will be.”
When you want to do crimes but you have to do it legit.
“Life’s Darkest Moment,” by H.T. Webster and Herb Roth, from May 6, 1953.
