Escape Artist

(5 of 7)

Keep It Crisp. "I didn't know how to draw women at first," Caniff, admittedly no anatomist, recalls. "Women are always harder to draw than men. And there's the nudity problem . . . you just have to know how much is in good taste. Once in a while, if I hadn't had a good-looking babe in the strip for a while, Patterson would send me a note saying how about bringing in the Dragon Lady or some other chick. And he used to hate it when the balloons were too long. ... I didn't agree with many of the things he did in his last years. He seemed to feel that in wartime there's a place for a newspaper that is the voice of the disgruntled—and he became that voice. But he was a great guy."

One of the few times Caniff ever preached to his readers was when he had Terry Lee win his wings in China. Terry and the readers got a long, stern graduation speech from his commander Flip Corkin on courage, skill and honor among airmen. That Sunday page was read into the Congressional Record. An aide showed it to Patterson, who growled: "Who does Caniff think he is, Robert Emmet Sherwood?" ("He had to go and name a playwright I admire," says Caniff.) Once Caniff, excited by the morale value of his strip, suggested that the Daily News be sent free to remote post exchanges. He got a curt no from Captain Patterson.*

Caniff seldom heard more than querulous peeps out of Colonel Bertie McCormick's Chicago end of the Tribune-Daily News axis. Sample: early in 1941 he was informed that Colonel McCormick "objects to Defense Bond stamps being used in the comics, so will you please refrain from using them." And once McCormick and Patterson, reading Terry together, came to a sequence where the lissome Burma was carrying on with a German named Keel. "Why," said the Colonel, turning to his cousin in alarm: "Burma is living with that man!"

"I'm sure," says Caniff, "that Patterson had known it for a long time."

Chained Seal. At 37, Milton Caniff was a widely imitated, $70,000-a-year success. His Terry strip was on the radio; a Douglas Fairbanks Jr. movie was in the works. Why give it all up? For a reason of his own, Caniff wanted more. In Florida, when he was 18, he was bitten by a mosquito and got phlebitis, an inflammation of the veins that made the Army—and insurance doctors—turn him down. Because of his quick-clotting blood, says Caniff, "even a bad bump on the leg could bump me off."

It made him more aware than most men of the nearness of death. He owned not a hair on Terry's head, and if he died his wife would get not a cent of Terry's future income. Like nearly every trained seal in his line, he was held prisoner by the "shop rights" system. Its major premise: comic strips are owned, not by their creators, but by the syndicates that sell them.

1. Why McCain Picked Palin
2. The Palin Pick: Bold or Disastrous?
3. McCain's Surprise Pick: Sarah Palin
4. Klein: Obama's Speech 'Very Tough'
5. McCain's Prickly TIME Interview
6. GM Recalling 944,000 Vehicles
7. Will Women Vote for Palin?
8. The Web's Word: Obama Is Not the Antichrist
9. Russia 'to Absorb' South Ossetia
10. Narrowing World Health Disparities