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Posted: |
Dec 28, 2019 - 1:12 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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Mr. Hamill, reminiscing of something when he was all of 11:
"In 1947, Caniff, as announced, left Terry to another artist, George Wunder, and started Steve Canyon in the Daily Mirror. There was a great burst of publicity. Caniff appeared on the cover of Time. The Mirror did a series of ads building up to the debut of the new strip. I learned that Caniff was Irish-American too, from Ohio; had gone to college; wanted to be an actor; came to New York to work for the Associated Press, where he drew a strip called Dickie Dare, and went on to do Terry in 1934 for the Daily News. He was syndicated in more than four hundred newspapers and now lived in a beautiful house in New City, New York. The photographs of the studio showed a room that was larger than our entire flat. I saved all this publicity, starting at Caniff's face, looking at examples of his work going back to childhood, and then, from the first great Sunday page, clipped every Canyon strip until I went into the navy in 1952."
"That first Sunday page of Steve Canyon dated January 18, 1947, was as good as any movie. For five panels, we don't see Canyon's face, but his character is established by various people who greet him on his way into an office building. An Irish cop thanks him for stopping off to see his sister in Shannon; the doorman thanks him for sending a souvenir from Egypt to his son; a blind newsdealer, called only 'sarge,' and obviously a war veteran, thanks Canyon for backing him up in setting up the newsstand; a flower girl offers him a carnation for his buttonhole, but when he turns her down he says that she and her mother are due for a movie on him; the elevator girls stammer a hello and say that for him, they won't wait for a full car. So we know immediately that Canyon is a good, generous man, a world traveler, thoughtful, personal, attractive to women. We see his face for the first time in the sixth panel; it's lean, and there's a black streak in his blond hair. Wearing a checkered overcoat. he opens the door with his company's name on the glass: Horizons Unlimited....In the final panel, Copper Calhoun, with sleek black hair, the arched eyebrows of the Dragon Lady, a long cigarette in one hand, says: 'I want that man!!...Get him!'"
"I loved this and sat down to labor over a long letter to Caniff, telling him how great it was and how I wanted to be cartoonist too. A few weeks later a package arrived in the mail from New City. Inside was a note from Caniff himself, a copy of a brochure he'd written for aspiring cartoonists, 'A Guide for an Armchair Marco Polo,' and a colored picture of Steve Canyon. I was hooked. If Terry belonged to my mother first, Steve Canyon was mine from the start. On the street, nobody else cared much about my obsession, so this became another part of my secret life."
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