Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon - The Complete Dell Comic Book Series

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Every once in a while I’ll mention what I like to call a “drop everything” book, a collection which immediately sores to the top of my reading list, even edging out other reading project I may already have started. Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon (collecting all of the Dell Four Color comic books to feature Steve Canyon under a single cover) is not one such book, at least I didn’t think it was. Nevertheless, I found it difficult to put down.

Art-wise, the seven comics collected in this volume span a seven year period, and the art changes a bit. It is not known to what extent Caniff contributed to the Dell Comics Steve Canyon. It is suspected that he oversaw the first one extensively, and inked all of the Steve Canyon faces. Although he certainly would have okayed them, later issues were likely drawn by assistants. No matter. They all look very much like Caniff’s own work.

Structure-wise, my favorite is probably the first. You can tell it’s laid out by a newspaper cartoonist. Just as every individual daily and Sunday strip have its own rhythm of build-up, climax and pay-off, so too does each individual comic book page of Four Color #519. Story-wise, the early ones deal with undercover missions (to such exotic locales as South America and India); later ones deal more overtly with missions for the Air Force and test flights. Character-wise, the first story introduces the teenage “Tuck” Tucker, who is featured in every story and eventually joins the Civil Air Partrol and becomes a pilot himself.

The stories are chock-full of danger, excitement and romance, (Dell Comics didn’t participate in the CCA), and the stories are more like those one would have found in the more adult-oriented Steve Canyon newspaper strip than in a 1950s-era comic book.