By Milton Caniff (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 0-87816-026-4 (hc) ISBN: 0-87816-027-2 (sc)
As well as being one of the greatest comic strip artists of all time, Milton Caniff was an old-fashioned honest American Patriot, from the time when it wasn’t a dirty word or synonym for fanatic. The greatest disappointment of his life was that he was never physically fit enough to fight. But during World War II he not only continued the morale boosting Terry and the Pirates newspaper strip seven days a week, he also designed art, brochures and posters (unpaid) for the War Department and made live appearances for soldiers and hospital residents. But even that wasn’t enough.
Again unpaid, he devised a comic strip that could be printed in the thousands of local military magazines and papers around the world. Originally using characters from Terry he swiftly switched (for reasons best explained in Robert C Harvey’s wonderful Meanwhile… a biography of Milton Caniff (ISBN: 978-1-56097-782-7) to a purpose built (and was she built!) svelte and sexy ingénue that would titillate, amuse but mostly belong to the lonely and homesick American fighting men away from home and under arms.
Funny, saucy, racy but never lewd or salacious, Miss Lace spoke directly to the enlisted man – the “ordinary Joe†– as entertainer, confidant and trophy date, building morale and giving brief surcease from terror, loneliness or boredom. Although comparisons abound with our own Jane (created by Norman Pett in 1932, she ran in the Daily Mirror until 1959 and was famously reputed to lose her clothes whenever the war effort needed a boost – always resulting in huge Allied successes), Miss Lace was different. She spoke to and with the soldiers, and she wasn’t in normal papers. She was simply and totally theirs and theirs alone.
Long out of print, this complete collection of strips and articles is a fascinating insight into a forgotten world and a parlous time, and a beautiful example of the humorous talents of a truly great American.
Male Call © 1987 Milton Caniff. Collection © 1987 Kitchen Sink Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved.