MORE CANIFF RARITIES

During WWII, Milton Caniff drew Male Call exclusively for Camp Newspaper Services.  Another well-known G.I. strip was Will Sansone's "The Wolf."  Perhaps fallen into obscurity was "Bernie Blood" by cartoonist Gill Fox.  Fox is best known to comic book fans for his work at Quality Comics, both as an editor and artist on Plastic Man and others.  Caniff and Sansone had a couple of crossovers, so Fox saw that as an opportunity to borrow Miss Lace to meet his character.  As of 6/27, this strip was still on Ebay for $395.  Below is another Bernie Blood giving some friendly advice.

Sticking with WWII, here's the only instance I'm aware of where Caniff drew Hitler.  This is one of many posters of the era warning folks to shut up because you never know who might be listening.  This poster is ultra rare, but I think the National Archives has one.

Milton Caniff answered many letters and requests for drawings with prints as he hadn't enough time to do individual drawings.  What he did do frequently is hand-color the prints.  This is the earliest example I've seen of this practice, from around 1936.

Someone was selling this wire photo of Poteet Canyon, Steve's ward/cousin.  It's the article taped to the back that interested me.  The article is stamped Oct 7 1956, which was the debut year for Poteet.  I wonder how many cities ran this contest looking for Poteet's lookalike.

 

Dell Four Color is remembered as the comic series that had well over 1000 issues over 20 years.  Two of those issues (#44 and 101) featured "Terry & the Pirates", while 5 later issues featured "Steve Canyon" (recently reprinted here.  Sometimes forgotten is the original 25-issue series of Four Color that preceded it.  Here's a fun cover gallery.  Issue 9 of that first series was a "Terry".  While the interiors were strip reprints, the artist of this mediocre cover is unknown.  This scarce issue recently sold at auction for $250.