Customer Reviews

Meanwhile...: A Biography of Milton Caniff, Creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon

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--"Meanwhile" is an examination of an entire art form that sadly has fallen, not just out of favor, but by the wayside entirely.

R.C. Harvey, one of the most well-respected authorities on the history of the newspaper comic strip has written the definitive, even monumental, study of Milton Caniff and his work.

Actor Robert Culp referred to Milton Caniff as "immortal" and after reading this fascinating volume, you can understand why.

Mr. Caniff, if he didn't invent the adventure newspaper strip, certainly refined and defined the parameters for generations afterwards.

Not just an accomplished artist, Mr. Caniff was also a consummate story-teller. His influence can still be seen in many forms of media, nearly twenty years after his death.

Through Mr. Harvey's biography (he began writing it before Mr. Caniff passed away), the reader gets to know Milton Caniff as an unassuming workaholic who fit the classic mold of American patriot.

The sections devoted to Terry and the Pirates (and his most iconic creation, Lai Choi San, The Dragon Lady) and Steve Canyon are very illuminating, particularly to students of comic-strip art.

It's hard to realize now the impact the newspaper comic-strip had on the American culture from the 1930s through the 1950s, and Mr. Caniff's work was always held as the standard by which all others strived to attain.

"Meanwhile" is a great book. It's one of the few that I have read in the last few years that I have referred back to within days of finishing it.

This is a classic book about a classic artist whose contributions to American culture need to be rediscovered and celebrated.

Thank you, Mr. Harvey.

I've just received my book from Amazon yesterday, so I haven't been able to complete it as yet, but upon opening the box I was staggered by the sheer size of the volume. Very few books fulfill the promise of their covers; "Meanwhile" does just that, and more. Paging through the contents I was pleased at the abundance of art included from all stages of Mr. Caniff's career. Milt Caniff's exciting brushwork and facility at crafting mesmerizing stories have always held me spellbound, and been an inspiration to me for many years in my career as an artist.

Mr. Harvey has done the magical; fleshing out the biography of an icon of the golden era of comic strips and not simply chronicling Mr. Caniff's life, but also taking us behind the scenes and into Milt's mind. It's all here: How Milt worked, what inspired him, the real people who were the models for his characters, the real world of syndicated comic strips.

Folks, this is as close to the excitement of time travel as you'll ever get, a reminder of why people waited with eagerness for the daily paper to drop upon their front doorstep in the years before DVDs and home entertainment centers so that they could catch the latest installment of their favorite newsprint heroes. As a previous reviewer so aptly stated, this is an artform that has fallen by the wayside and been forgotten. Today's comics are disposable jokes, akin to the old Joe Bazooka throwaways inside the bubblegum wrappers.

This book contains treasure, and would be worth the price of admission at twice its cost. There is a reason why Milton Caniff was called the "Rembrandt of the Comic Strip", and the story is inside "Meanwhile".

And one more thing in closing. Milt did this all by himself. No assistants to ink his pencils, no "factory" of interns to rubberstamp the same old hash every week, it was just Milt Caniff and his imagination and brushes and ink-stained hands.

As cartoonist biographies go I daresay that there has never been, and will likely never be, another of the length and depth of R.C. Harvey's "Meanwhile...". Coming in just shy of a four digit page count it could scarcely be otherwise. Even more so when you consider that the impressive heft of the tome is not substantially padded with photos and art. To be sure the book is indeed well illustrated, but only with visual aids directly related to the narrative -- there are no long reprints of Caniff's strips here or lengthy portfolios of miscellaneous art.

It is the nature of any successful cartoonist that they spend the bulk of their life hunched over a drawing board, endlessly skrith-skratching away. This is not the sort of lifestyle that would seem to lend itself to a lengthy biography. When we consider that there are plenty of well-rounded biographies of political figures, film stars, activists, people whose lives are filled day by day with the fodder of the biographer, that manage to tell their stories in a shorter page count, we have to wonder just what in the world Harvey is on about in a page count that rivals the King James Bible.

I for one certainly approached the book with trepidation. I've been a fan of Harvey's work for years, but my enjoyment of his work is tempered with the caveat that he is on occasion guilty of going over the top. When he goes into critical analysis mode he is always perceptive and thoughtful, but he can also beat a horse within an inch of its life. I was concerned that here Harvey would be shooting the works, analyzing Terry, Steve and their creator ad nauseam.

That fear, I'm happy to say, was completely groundless. Despite the enormous page count this book is, wonder of wonders, a tightly written narrative. In the tradition of classic biography, what critical analysis there is is grounded in the opinions that Caniff himself discussed with Harvey and others in interviews. Given that Harvey says the book in its original form was some 700 pages longer (!) than the final revision, I'm guessing that any extended author's analysis fell victim to the editor's red pen. If so, the book is better for it.

So what exactly does lurk between the distantly separated covers of this volume? Well, Harvey was lucky enough to be tapped by Caniff himself as his offical biographer in the early 80s. This afforded the author with ample opportunity to question his subject at great length. While Caniff was, as Harvey relates, not a particularly forthcoming interview subject, by dint of persistence the author eventually ended up with a treasure trove of Caniffiana. The book is, as we might expect given the size, an impressively complete chronicle of Caniff's life and the times in which he lived. However, completeness doesn't necessarilty translate to interest-sustaining or entertaining, and that's where Harvey's book truly amazes. I've read plenty of long form biographies where it got to the point that I was rooting for the subject to kick the bucket to cut the narrative short. That's not the case here. While I couldn't say that every single page is riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, Harvey does an expert job of keeping the reader involved and interested all the way through. Any reader who is at least moderately interested in comic strips, even those not particularly fans of Caniff, will undoubtedly find the book fascinating.

Speaking of being a fan of Caniff, I should admit that I am not numbered in that legion. Of course I recognize Caniff's importance in the history of comic strips and the artistry of the two strips for which he is most famous. However, I think Caniff's writing is far too precious, heavily laden with hokey slang and tortured vernacular that I find grating and distracting. His subject matter, primarily military adventure, is just not my cup of tea. His cartooning, after a relatively short but glorious period in the early 40s when he was first influenced by Sickles' innovation of chiaroscuro comic strip illustration, later takes things too far for my taste, turning the strip into a series of ink-blots (not entirely Caniff's fault, of course - the comic strip was shrinking more rapidly than he could adjust his art style to suit, finally ending up so small that no one, not even Caniff, could possibly do a realistically rendered adventure strip).

The point is that you don't need to be a Caniff fanatic to thoroughly enjoy the book. I recommend it not only to the ardent Terry or Canyon fan, but anyone with more than a passing interest in the art and business of the comic strip in America. Caniff's story is, after all, the history of the adventure comic strip in particular, and the newspaper comic strip in general. Harvey does a superb job of weaving all the various aspects of the story of American comic strips into the narrative. We see Caniff marketing his comic strips (and find out just how tireless a promoter he was), we see him coping with the miniaturization of his daily and Sunday spaces, we gain a deep understanding of the relationship between the creator and syndicate. We learn one cartoonist's reaction to the unforgiving daily deadline pressure, and how assistants and ghosts can become indispensible in the process of producing a strip that doesn't have the luxury of relying on simplistic art and daily gags. We learn the intricacies of producing an integrated daily and Sunday storyline, a balancing act that is one of greatest tests of skill that any writer could ever face. We see one cartoonist's bold reaction to the demonization of his art form when accused of being, bizarrely, a cause of juvenile delinquency. We see how a cartoonist deals with the use, and misuse, of his creations in other media like movies and television.

I have only a few minor criticisms of the book, most worth mentioning if only so that this review doesn't seem utterly slavish in its support. First, the book is divided into just nine epic length chapters. It would have been more reader-friendly had it been broken up into more manageable chunks that could be read at one sitting. And although there are illustrations throughout the book, usually well-placed to coincide with the related narrative, each chapter ends with a gallery of additional illustrations. These sections would have been better broken up and dispersed throughout the text, if only to relieve the long stretches of type-dense pages.

The narrative flow drags a bit for a hundred pages or so near the end of the book. By this time Caniff was constantly being lured away from his drawing board by an endless procession of accolades and honors from every organization under the sun. Harvey unwisely devotes a considerable amount of space to the details. This section, while it does have occasional interesting points, could have been considerably shortened. If the purpose was to show that Caniff was revered by his peers and his fans, well, that wasn't much of a secret anyway.

Finally I have to question Harvey's use of invented conversations. In the first half of the book the author occasionally uses a device where he stages a conversation, usually set in Caniff's favorite watering-hole, in which we eavesdrop on a group of cartoonists shooting the bull. Harvey uses the device to impart some information in a presumably more entertaining method than dry prose. The device falls flat, though, because the conversations are stilted and too obviously staged for our benefit. And although Harvey makes no secret that the conversations are his own inventions, in a scrupulously researched work otherwise factual throughout I found these passages somehow discomforting from the standpoint of journalistic ethics. Call me a stick in the mud.

These are all picayune little quibbles, though. Harvey's work is, quite simply, a masterpiece of biography. He has set the platinum standard by which all future cartoonist biographies will be judged. Most, likely all, will be found wanting in comparison. It is one thing to produce a thick book, and not necessarily a good thing at that. It is an entirely different thing that Harvey has achieved here. He has produced a work of lasting merit, eminently readable, brimming with meticulous research, a work that must be atop the required reading list of every cartooning fan and cartoonist.

First, some truth in reviewing. I have known Bob Harvey since we worked together on our college newspaper, and I have long admired his writing skills. We correspond occasionally, and see each other about every two years. And yes, I paid for my copy of Meanwhile...
That said, Harvey has written a fine, highly readable book, and a great one for anyone interested in comic strips and particularly Caniff's great creations, Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. Indeed, you can think of Meanwhile... as two books in one: A long biography of Caniff and a short history of American comics in the 20th Century. Caniff's career spanned the high and ebb tides of newspaper comic strips, particularly the era of high-adventure strips. And that is no coincidence. Caniff helped pioneer that variety strip and he raised it to an art form. Indeed, I think Harvey demonstrates that Caniff, in his own right, ranked with such icons of American popular culture as George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, and Humphrey Bogart.
Meanwhile... is not a perfect book. It is long, occasionally repetitious, and in need of judicious editing. Detail is important in nonfiction writing, especially biography. But Harvey, at times, overdoes it. I, for one, could do without a full-page listing of the books on Caniff's shelves or seemingly endless reprinted letters praising him. And as a nonfiction writer, I disagree with the author's decision not to footnote the book extensively.
When I raised these thoughts with Harvey, his return e-mail delved into what he sought to accomplish with the book.
Just as every novelist wants to write the Great American Novel, I wanted to write the Great Biography of an American Cartoonist. Having a suitable subject, Caniff, I next pondered how to achieve my next goal, which was to make the reader "live" Caniff's life as Caniff led it, or some such. I wanted to enable a reader to experience what it was like to be Caniff, to be "a cartoonist." One of the ways I thought a reader's experience of reading, of getting into another world--of being "a cartoonist"--could be intensified was to give the reader verbal information that would engage his or her imagination. As you read, you imagine the things the words are naming; the more concrete those things are, the more imagining you do, the more intensely you experience the "world" of the book you're reading. So when Caniff moves out into "the country" on South Mountain Road [in Rockland County, N.Y] in the 1930s, I scoured around to find out what the vegetation would be along South Mountain Road--what sorts of trees and bushes abounded there and so forth. And when I found out, I put those trees and their undergrowth into the book. In the chapter covering World War II, I quote lots of the letters that Caniff received--because he said somewhere that getting letters was the way he connected to the outside world, the world beyond his studio.... Now you know why I put them all in there.
Harvey, more than most authors, largely succeeds in fulfilling his ambitious goal.
Surprisingly, Caniff emerges from the pages of Meanwhile... as a writer first and an illustrator second--a stunning conclusion, considering Caniff's great innovations in comic strip art and his obsessive attention to detail and accuracy (whether military metals, weapons, or Asian clothing) that won him the admiration of his fellow cartoonists and shows in art galleries.
Harvey argues persuasively that what first carried Terry and the Pirates and later Steve Canyon was not just Caniff's superb craftsmanship and his inventive approach to illustrating, but his talent for plotting his story lines and writing dialogue. Caniff created memorable characters of depth and personality with the deft hand of a short story writer, so much so that some readers believed that Pat Ryan, the Dragon Lady, and Happy Easter actually lived and breathed. As the author puts it: "In fact, he [Caniff] enhanced our experience of his adventure stories by giving his protagonists enough personality to be fully human without complicating them beyond easy recognition: we like them, and because they are conventional, we know they are each `one of us.' And our identification with them engages and holds our interest."
In his analysis of what made Caniff extraordinary, Harvey describes in detail many stories lines of Terry and Steve Canyon (worth the price of the book alone) to emphasize the elements that encompass the development and growth of Caniff's career and talent. The reader is drawn along through Harvey's synopsis, not just by Caniff's story line, but by the author's own talent for making the descriptions intriguing. He is aided by a large number of reprinted strips, which enliven the book and illustrate the many points he makes. Reading them together, you see clearly the evolution of Caniff's writing and illustration skills over the years, as well as the growing depth of his main characters.
Caniff was Midwest born and raised, and he the never lost the sense of patriotism, honor, moral principals, humility, and striving for success that characterized so many people from that part of the nation during his formative years. His environment nurtured him. As Frank Stanton, a Caniff friend throughout their adults years, told Harvey: "It was during his days in Columbus that he developed three sets of central skills essential to his sensational success as the creator of Terry and Canyon: story teller, artist, and actor. He is remarkably efficient in each, and each of these skills reinforces and enhances the other two in his work. It is a rare combination in a rare guy."
--Patrick Young
.

I've been waiting for R.C. Harvey to publish his biography of Milt Caniff ever since he casually mentioned it in the pages of his fine book, "The Art of the Funnies", over ten years ago. The resulting book is not only one of the finest comics oriented biographies but it's a great book in and of itself. I have to admit that after it arrived I was a little intimidated by it. It is after all a massive door stopper of a book and I left it sitting on my desk for a week before I finally cracked it open and began reading it in earnest. Despite its considerable length the pages flew by and I was soon at the end with the distinct feeling of disapointment at the prospect that it was over. Harvey literally transports his readers to an earlier age when there was no TV, no cable, no satelite, no computers and no internet. The general public got their entertainment by means of reading books and magazines, going to the movies, listening to the radio and reading the comics page in the local paper. The Great Depression was battering the country and war clouds were starting to appear over the skies of Eurpope and Asia. Out of those troubled times Milton Caniff became one of the greatest and most widely read storytellers of the age. This is his story and Harvey succeeds in telling it well.

This meaty slab of a book consumed a great deal of my attention over the course of two recent weeks. It doesn't usually take me that long to finish a reading job, but this one deserved the extra attention, for which all credit is due to R.C. Harvey, the respected comics scholar who labored over it for such a long time. Caniff, creator of TERRY AND THE PIRATES and STEVE CANYON and the acknowledged grand master of the now-all-but-defunct continuity adventure strip, deserved a big, sprawling biography detailing his many services to the profession and to American culture in general, and Harvey certainly delivers the goods with this blockbuster.

In many respects, this is the exact opposite of another recent cartoonist's biography, David Michaelis' SCHULZ AND PEANUTS. Harvey eschews psychological theorizing in favor of what he himself terms (in the Foreword) "a reportorial stance" -- just the facts, please. Not that the author's admiration for his subject isn't obvious at every turn. It helps that Caniff was a most admirable and honorable man who contributed massively to bucking up morale during WWII and later did yeoman service in support of the armed forces during the Cold War. Caniff's lush drawing style and trademark "snappy patter" set the pace in adventure strips from the late 30s, when TERRY AND THE PIRATES blossomed, through the late 60s. Harvey arguably denotes a little too much time to describing how Caniff (who left TERRY and the Tribune-News Syndicate for the Field Syndicate in the interest of gaining greater personal control over his work) developed and launched STEVE CANYON in the late 40s and not quite enough space to a completely thorough discussion of TERRY, but he hardly gives the latter short shrift.

The book is not without an element of artistic tragedy, in a manner of speaking. Caniff's smart-alecky humor and the joyful camaraderie displayed by his characters fit perfectly with the Zeitgeist of the 1940s, when America was forced to fight for its survival but managed to keep its sense of humor while doing so. In the 50s, however, Caniff may have committed a misstep when he turned Steve Canyon from a free-lance globetrotting pilot into a troubleshooter for the Air Force. In the Vietnam War era, it was all the easier to dismiss Caniff's old-fashioned patriotism as jingoism when the hero of the strip wore clothes provided by Uncle Sam. Caniff never really did recover from the loss of popularity he suffered during the late 60s and early 70s. By the time STEVE CANYON staggered to the line in 1988, Caniff was resorting to dream sequences and the like in an effort to capture at least a small portion of the old magic, to no avail. The comics medium had changed on the old master, and not for the better. Harvey's description of Caniff's final years is at once poignant, frustrating, and elegaic.

Be prepared to linger over these pages, but rest assured, it's definitely worth the time and effort.

"Meanwhile..." ismuch more than justa biography of MiltCaniff. It pro-vides an insight tocultural attitudesimmediately prior toWWII, during the war, and on into thelatter part of the20th Century. Whileit brings to lifethe creative geniusof Caniff, it alsoprtrays his abilityas a masterful bus-iness man followingsuccess upon successin the managemeentand promotion of hisproduct.I eagerly followedthe exploits of Ter-ry and the Piratesas a youth as wellas Steve Canyon dur-ing my Air Forcecareer and was fas-cinated with Caniff's pursuit ofaccuracy in portray-ing service life andthe role that theAir Force Associa-tion played in as-suring he was keptabreast of the lat-est developmentsthat might affectColonel Canyon.It is a book I willkeep on my referenceshelf and use often.

This is the definitive history of Milton Caniff's life as one of the greatest contributors to the art of the comics. It is well-written & complete in detail.