Milton Caniff, Terry And The Pirates, And Steve Canyon

The definitive biography of the legendary creator of "Terry and the Pirates" and "Steve Canyon."
Milton Caniff was one of the most influential American cartoonists of the 20th century. He rose to prominence during World War II when he took the characters in his "Terry and the Pirates" strip into the war. The trenchant pragmatic patriotism of the strip warmed the hearts and steeled nerves on the home front as well as the battlefront (one of his strips was read into the Congressional Record.) He went on to create "Steve Canyon," which was syndicated from 1947 to Caniff's death in 1988.
"Milton Caniff, Terry and the Pirates, and Steve Canyon: Meanwhile… " traces Caniff's life from the cradle to the grave, marking the milestones in the development of the comic strip that Caniff established. Caniff reshaped the medium and set standards by which all storytelling strips were subsequently judged. Although Caniff adapted to changing fashions, he is best known for innovations such as his impressionistic chiaroscuro drawing style that suggested reality economically with shadow rather than with detail; creating many colorful characters, including the stalwart Pat Ryan from Terry and the Pirates, Burma the shady lady, and, most memorable of all, the Dragon Lady, a beautiful but mysteriously menacing pirate queen who turned Chinese patriot during the War; and enhancing the melodrama of adventure strips by making character development integral to the action-packed plots.
While "Milton Caniff" provides a biography of Caniff and analyzes his storytelling techniques, it also serves as a history of the medium and reveals the inner workings of the syndicate business (at which Caniff was asexpert as he was at cartooning). The book traces Caniff's life from the cradle to the grave, and examines the artistic innovations and work routines of a nationally distributed cartoonist whose career was central the development of the artform, marking along the way the mi