Before Terry AND the Pirates...

 ORIGINS:

THE ROOTS OF

MILTON CANIFF -- HIS FIRST PUBLISHED STRIPS

by Rick Marschall

In 1925 Milton Caniff of Dayton, Ohio, was a senior at Stivers High School. He was torn between his creative muses, cartooning and the theater. Young Caniff pursued a dual path until he graduated -- he was an actor in the senior class play "Going Up," about an aviator's romance; and he drew cartoons for the school newspaper.

His major contribution was an ongoing strip starring two students, Chic Woozle and Noodles Dingle. It was a humor strip featuring gags and, about half the time, school activities: sports, plays, trips, etc. Chic and Noodles was the awful eponymous title.

Stivers High School began its life in 1908 as Stivers Manual Training School. It has merged with other schools and had its building renovated, and had its named changed from Stivers High School to is today known as Stivers School for the Arts. Milton Caniff is its most famous graduate, and Milt occasionally paid homage to his alma mater, calling it "St Ivers" in his strips. The school honored its alumnus by naming an adjacent street "Milton Caniff Drive."

 

When Milt attended Ohio State University the next year he continued both activities, and progressed in talent and notice. In a story he recounted many times, he besought one of his heroes, the local political cartoonist with a nation reputation, Billy Ireland. The cartoonist's supposed advice: "Stick to your inkpots, kid. Actors don't eat regular." He acted in campus plays, but also signed up for the mail-correspondence cartooning course, the Landon "School."

In my collection I have a rare reprint book he produced at his own expense, collecting the Chic and Noodles strips. It was in the style and format of reprints books of a few syndicated strips -- Mutt and Jeff; Bringing Up Father; TAD's Silk Hat Harry; Roger Bean; Doings of the Van Loons. I also have, and will reproduce material from here in Yesterday's Papers, Milt's college yearbooks (he was Art Editor) and a bookplate he designed.

But here is the cover and three strips from his "professional debut," the Chic and Noodles book. R C Harvey, in his ponderous cinderblock of a biography, nonetheless devoted only a couple paragraphs to Chic and Noodles (spelling it Chick and Noodles in its first reference) and sharing only three strips.

Three strips here, too: one with a self-caricature of Milt (in his mustachioed role in the school play); and a strip in which the two characters unsuccessfully try to outwit a Black sleeping-car porter. Within 10 years Milton Caniff would be depicting other ethnic stereotypes -- and much more: action, adventure, pretty girls, danger, and exotic locals -- in Terry and the Pirates.