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Lessons Learned: Milton Caniff’s Dickie Dare

Submitted: October 18, 2011

Sean P. Connors

University of Arkansas Peabody Hall 304

Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701 sconnors@uark.edu

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Introduction

In December 1935 Milton Caniff finished his third story arch for Terry and the Pirates, a

comic strip he’d begun drawing a year earlier at the behest of Captain Joseph Medill Patterson,

then publisher of the New York Daily News. In the intervening weeks the strip’s heroes had

tangled with a greedy miner bent on protecting his business interests in the rural Chinese

countryside. As the story neared its climax, Normandie Drake, Pat Ryan’s tempestuous love

interest, was wounded in a gunfight. Though he’d spurned her advances prior to that point, Pat

now visited Normandie in the hospital and asked for her hand in marriage, a decision the strip’s

audience must surely have welcomed after having followed their unrequited love story for

weeks. Unfortunately, their union was destined to be short-lived. Questioning Pat’s motives,

Normandie’s wealthy aunt drugged her niece, had her secreted aboard a ship, and set sail with

her in the middle of the night. When Pat learned of her abduction, he vowed to pursue her. In

the story’s final installment, published on December 19, Chauncey Drake, Normandie’s uncle,

informed Pat that the economic disparities between the couple were too great to overcome. “You

probably think Normandie is different,” he cautioned. “Maybe she is. I thought Mrs. Drake was

too! Well, that’s my story! Now, do as you please” (Caniff, 2007: 237). When, in the strip’s

final panel, readers encountered the silhouetted image of a grief-stricken Pat standing alone

beneath a moonlit sky, they would have known that he didn’t intend to pursue her.

By the time the aforementioned story reached its conclusion, Milton Caniff’s ability to

use the medium of comics to construct action-filled adventure stories that held readers in

suspense had improved considerably. Whereas he’d experimented with cinematic conventions in

the past, his execution of them was decidedly more polished now, and his growing control over

the chiaroscuro technique, coupled with his commitment to artistic realism, lent his strips a sense

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of atmosphere that was often palpable. Speaking to the growth Caniff’s work experienced

during this stage of his career Maurice Horn (1976/1970) wrote, “In many ways this is ‘Terry’s’

most interesting period, as we witness, almost day by day, the maturation of Milton Caniff’s

talent and the evolving of his unique style” (n.p.). By the end of 1935, Caniff was well on his

way to becoming a master cartoonist.

It has been said that Terry and the Pirates “provided the vehicle for Caniff’s maturation

as both an artist and as a storyteller” (Caswell, 1990: n.p.). It was not his first comic strip,

however—that distinction belongs to Dickie Dare, a lesser-known series that debuted on July 31,

1933 and continued under Caniff’s direction through 1934. Yet with the notable exception of

Robert C. Harvey’s (2007) comprehensive and impeccably researched Meanwhile…A Biography

of Milton Caniff, few comic art historians have considered the role Dickie Dare played in

shaping Caniff’s development as a cartoonist. Those that have tend to underestimate its

importance, as evidenced by Horn’s (1976/1970) specious assertion that while the growth Terry

and the Pirates experienced between March and June of 1935 marked “the debut of an important

artist (his previous efforts are of little significance)” (n.p.).

Rather than signaling a departure from his earlier work, Terry and the Pirates is better

understood as having extended storylines, characters, and artistic techniques that Caniff first

experimented with when he worked on Dickie Dare. According to Marschall (1986), “Milton

Caniff’s great trademarks line up in a row in Dickie Dare. Adventure is present, with hardly

concealed relish; humor—what Maurice Horn has termed Caniff’s charm—is there too; and

characterization, perhaps the element that his legion of imitators found it hardest to appropriate,

is there from the start” (p. vi). As will be seen, the time Caniff spent drawing Dickie Dare

deepened his understanding of sequential storytelling and made it possible for him to hone both

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his drawing and storytelling skills, the result of which benefitted him considerably when he

began drawing Terry and the Pirates, the comic strip that would eventually earn him critical and

commercial success.

Caniff’s Path into Comics

Milton Caniff was born in Hillsboro, Ohio on February 28, 1907, the son of John William

and Elizabeth Burton Caniff. In the early years of his childhood Caniff’s father, who worked as

a printer, relocated the family to California during the winter months. It was in California that

Caniff had the opportunity to appear in movies as an extra, an experience that imbued him with a

“theatrical virus” that would remain with him throughout the rest of his life (Adams, 1946: 13).

The family returned to Ohio for good in 1919 and took up residence in Dayton. An avid member

of the Boy Scouts, Caniff submitted illustrations for the Scouts page—a regular feature in the

Sunday newspaper—the result of which eventually earned him a position as an office boy in the

Dayton Journal’s art department.

After graduating from high school, Caniff enrolled as an art student at Ohio State

University. Shortly after arriving in Columbus he took a position working for the Columbus

Dispatch’s art department where he drew “pictorial theater-reviews; sketch-commentaries on

season events and news oddities; and illustrated stories in the magazine section” (Adams, 1946:

24). It was while working for the Dispatch that Caniff met Billy Ireland, the acclaimed editorial

cartoonist. When Caniff entertained the prospect of leaving cartooning to pursue a career in the

theater, Ireland is said to have instructed him, “Actors don’t eat regularly, kid, so stick to your

ink pots” (Harvey, 2002: 234). He did.

Upon graduating from college in 1930, Caniff went to work for the Dispatch full time.

Later that year he married Esther Parsons, his high school sweetheart, and the couple settled

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down to begin their life together. Unfortunately, Caniff lost his job soon after, a victim of the

Great Depression. To supplement his income, he and Noel Sickles, a fellow artist he knew from

the Ohio State Journal, embarked on a business venture drawing commercial art. Though he

couldn’t have known it at the time, his relationship with Sickles would have a profound influence

on his artistic career. In the years to come the pair would share another studio, this one in New

York City, and Sickles, who was by then drawing Scorchy Smith, would introduce Caniff to “the

chiaroscuro technique, the use of a brush and ink to define light and dark elements” that would

one day become his hallmark (Horak, 1994: 72).

Before any of this could happen, however, fate had to intervene. It did so in the form of

L.A. Brophy, head of the Associated Press’s Central Division in Chicago, and a former employee

of the Ohio State Journal who’d followed Caniff’s burgeoning career at the Dispatch with

interest. Unbeknownst to Caniff, Brophy had secretly begun forwarding examples of his work to

the AP offices in New York City. Like other news syndicates at the time, “the AP, originally

devoted exclusively to distribution of news by wire, had learned that comics and other features

were equally important to newspaper circulation, and had begun endeavoring to develop such

elements” (Adams, 1946: 28). As a result of Brophy’s persistence, Caniff was offered a position

in the Associated Press’s bullpen.

When Caniff arrived in New York City the 1932 presidential campaign was just

beginning to take shape. His first assignment with the Associated Press required him to draw

portraits of the 35 men who’d been nominated for president and vice-president. One of those

drawings, a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, was published in newspapers throughout the

United States. Later, Caniff was given the opportunity to draw a panel cartoon, Puffy the Pig.

When Al Capp left the Associated Press, Caniff inherited Mister Gilfeather, another panel

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cartoon. He reworked the cartoon’s central premise, and eventually rechristened it The Gay

Thirties. Finally, in 1933, Caniff was given his first opportunity to draw a comic strip—Dickie

Dare.

When it debuted in 1933, Dickie Dare followed the exploits of a young boy whose

overactive imagination led him to embark on adventures with well-known literary characters. By

1934, however, Caniff would revise the strip’s premise. Dickie was given an adult companion,

the adventure writer “Dynamite” Dan Flynn, and the pair set forth on a series of adventures that

took them around the globe. When the strip caught the attention of Captain Joseph Medill

Patterson, the publishing giant who’d launched the careers of several well-known cartoonists,

Caniff was given the opportunity to draw a strip for the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News

Syndicate. Given the commercial success of Tarzan and Flash Gordon, Patterson encouraged

Caniff to try his hand at another adventure strip, albeit one set in the exotic Chinese countryside.

When Caniff submitted a list of prospective names for the strip’s title character, Patterson placed

a check beside “Terry” and penciled in the addition, “and the Pirates.”

Because his contract with the Associated Press had yet to expire, Caniff drew Dickie

Dare and Terry and the Pirates simultaneously for a period of time.1 Ironically, due to an oddity

in his contracts, he was temporarily forced to go without compensation for either strip. Recalling

this moment later in his career he explained:

When I was finishing up on Dickie Dare, it was running in the New York Sun, and I was

paid on acceptance, and that was six weeks lead time. When I started Terry and the

Pirates I was paid on publication, which was a full six weeks lead time; four weeks

dailies. I was caught in between. I had strips running in the New York Sun, and the New

York News, and I couldn’t pay my rent. (Harvey, 2002: 117)

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At the time of its inception, Terry and the Pirates bore a distinct resemblance to Dickie

Dare, a fact that comic art historian Robert C. Harvey has noted. “Although Caniff always

credited Patterson with suggesting the basic formula for Terry,” wrote Harvey (1994), “it’s clear

that Terry was but another incarnation of Dickie Dare” (144). From a narrative standpoint, the

two strips were remarkably similar. Both followed the exploits of adolescents who,

accompanied by adult companions, embarked on rollicking adventures that pitted them against a

rogue’s gallery of villains. Indeed, had Caniff not altered the color of his characters’ hair,

readers might easily have mistaken Terry for Dickie. Pat Ryan bore a distinct resemblance to his

predecessor, Dan Flynn, as well, both in terms of his physical appearance and his temperament.

Nevertheless, there were discernable differences between the two comic strips from the start.

From the moment of its inception, Terry was the better strip, a result of the lessons that Caniff

had learned while drawing Dickie. Indeed, Caniff later described Dickie Dare as “a sort of

warm-up for Terry” (Harvey, 1994: 117). As will be seen in the sections to follow, the time he

spent drawing Dickie deepened Caniff’s understanding of sequential storytelling and sharpened

the drawing and storytelling skills he brought to Terry and the Pirates, the result of which

enhanced the latter strip’s quality from the start.

Dickie Dare: July 31, 1933 – May 7, 1934

Though Caniff is known for his treatment of mature themes and complex storylines in

comic strips such as Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon, Dickie Dare was initially written

for a younger audience. Between July 31, 1933 and May 7, 1934 the strip’s premise was simple:

Dickie Dare, an exuberant adolescent with an overactive imagination and a passion for reading,

accompanied characters he met in works of literature on fantastical adventures. In the strip’s

inaugural episode Dickie was introduced to Robin Hood. When the pair ran afoul of the Sheriff

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of Nottingham, they found themselves in a swashbuckling fight and were forced to make a

daring escape. In subsequent episodes Dickie repelled pirates and cannibals alongside Robinson

Crusoe, helped Aladdin rescue a princess, fought with General George Custer at the Battle of

Little Big Horn, rescued Sir Lancelot from the clutches of the evil Morgana Le Fay, and thwarted

the efforts of Captain Kidd to abscond with a ship full of gold.2

From a writing standpoint, the early Dickie Dare stories were relatively unremarkable. If

robust characterization marked Caniff’s later work, it was seldom evident in his earliest

narratives. He rarely allowed his characters’ personalities to emerge in their interactions with

one another, the result of which occasionally left them feeling stilted and lifeless. The villains

Dickie encountered, thoroughly sinister monsters, were hardly any more convincing. Action,

rather than characterization, drove these early stories, and Caniff’s characters were hurriedly

swept from one predicament to the next by a torrent of action.

The narrative structure that Caniff exploited in Terry and the Pirates—the story of a

young boy and his adult companion who undertook a series of adventures and battled ruthless

villains—was evident in Dickie Dare from the beginning. The two strips were different,

however, in that Dickie was initially given a new adult companion at the conclusion of each

adventure. As noted, he fought alongside Robin Hood and repelled cannibals with Robinson

Crusoe in the earliest strips, an arrangement that was problematic on at least one level—despite

being the strip’s title character, Dickie was relegated to a supporting role in its storylines.

That is, while he contributed to the action, the stories more often than not revolved around the

literary figures with whom he traveled. To some extent this was understandable. The character

couldn’t have been expected to upstage Robin Hood, for example. Nevertheless, because he was

confined to a role as a sidekick, Dickie was rather bland. His dialogue, riddled with

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colloquialisms as it was, didn’t help matters any. When Dickie met Aladdin in a story that began

on October 11, 1933, however, Caniff finally gave him the opportunity to emerge as a strong

character in his own right.

If Robin Hood and Robinson Crusoe were oversized personalities, the lovesick Aladdin

was pathetically indecisive, the result of which gave Dickie the latitude he needed to take on a

greater role in the strip’s storyline. His newfound sense of independence was evident in a strip

that appeared on October 30, 1933. Having fallen in love with a princess, Aladdin asked Dickie

to travel to the palace on his behalf and solicit the king's permission to marry his daughter.

When Dickie arrived at the palace, however, he was treated with contempt by another suitor, and

forcibly removed from the premises by the king’s guards. Sometime later, when an anxious

Aladdin asked, “Ho, Dickie! What news? Do I marry the princess?” Dickie angrily responded,

“We’ll come to that later! Right now I got a bone to pick! Where’s that magic lantern?”

(Marschall, 1986: 27). From that moment on he, rather than Aladdin, dictated the story’s action.

Dickie would continue to assert himself over the course of the next few months. Despite

being cast as Custer’s subordinate in a subsequent episode (a necessity given his standing as a

bugler in the military), he was allowed to undertake dangerous scouting missions and fight

alongside the doomed general at the Battle of Little Big Horn. In another episode in which he

met King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Dickie embarked on a journey to rescue

Sir Lancelot, who’d been taken prisoner by Morgana Le Fay. When Merlin questioned his

ability to carry out such a dangerous mission, a defiant Dickie angrily instructed Arthur, “Don’t

let this second rate Houdini get you mixed up!” (Marschall, 1986: 64). Later, after he’d found

Lancelot, Dickie devised a plan that enabled the knight to escape Morgana’s castle unscathed.

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In a subsequent story arch that ran between April 6 and May 5, 1934 Dickie found

himself pitted against the infamous pirate Captain Kidd. The latter installment is particularly

noteworthy in that for the first time in the strip’s short history Caniff left its namesake to his own

devices. That is, rather than fight alongside a better-known literary figure, Dickie instead relied

on his own wits to thwart the antagonist he faced. Yet while this made it possible for Caniff to

develop the character more fully, there was a downside to Dickie’s newfound independence—the

aforementioned stories were highly improbable. No matter how dire the circumstances, one

seldom sensed that the strip’s hero faced real danger, the result of which detracted from Caniff’s

ability to sustain suspense. Though Dickie had taken on a greater presence in the stories, he was

far from believable. How was it possible that a young boy performed feats that eluded grown

men, moreover men like Sir Lancelot? Worse, the strip’s stories were predictable. Then again,

how could they help but be? They were based, after all, on well-known works of fiction that

many of Caniff’s readers would have read. As Harvey (1994) explains, because Dickie “was

dreaming himself into traditional juvenile literature, all the readers knew how the stories would

end” (144).

Many of the challenges that Caniff faced during this period of his career are attributable

to the fact that he was learning to control a medium—and thus a form of storytelling—that was

new to him. Prior to undertaking Dickie Dare he’d drawn panel cartoons for the Associated

Press. When he made the transition to comic strips, however, he faced an entirely new set of

challenges, a fact he acknowledged later in his career. “The stuff I’d been doing was quite

simple. The Gay Thirties, a panel, was quite simply drawn… So, when I went into the strip

thing, I really had to bear down” (Harvey, 2002: 90). That he struggled to do so was evident

from the start.

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Comic strips use word and image to construct meanings that surpass those either could

convey alone. According to Harvey (1994), one “measure of a comic strip’s excellence is the

extent to which the sense of the words is dependent on the pictures and vice versa” (9). So far as

the early Dickie Dare strips were concerned, text and image seldom functioned in the sort of

symbiotic relationship Harvey envisions. More often than not Caniff allowed the written word to

carry the narrative load. Indeed, one cannot help but notice a preponderance of text in these

early strips.

When he first began drawing Dickie Dare Caniff seldom seemed comfortable with white

space. Quite the opposite, he appears to have felt pressed to fill every square inch of his panels

with ink. Though his drawings were elaborate, they often served decorative, rather than

narrative purposes. Backgrounds were rendered in considerable detail, but rarely contributed to

the story’s meaning or atmosphere. While Caniff’s use of blacks was attractive, his experiments

with shading often seemed frenetic. This was particularly evident in the Custer series, the panels

of which occasionally took on a dark, grainy texture due to Caniff’s overreliance on hatching and

cross-hatching.

Caniff’s lack of experience with sequential storytelling created additional problems

related to composition and timing. In a strip that appeared on August 21, 1933, Robin Hood and

Dickie, having been identified by the Sheriff of Nottingham, fled to another part of the castle. In

the strip’s opening panel the pair stood side-by-side as an assailant, unbeknownst to them, scaled

the castle wall directly behind them (see Figure 1). As the villain prepared to strike in the second

panel, Dickie lunged at him from the side. Given his position in the opening panel, and

considering the amount of time that would have passed between the two points in the narrative,

this would have been physically impossible. Nor was this the only problem.

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Place Figure 1 about here

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In the second panel Robin spotted his would-be-attacker over his right shoulder. Yet in

the third panel, at the moment Dickie tackled the man, Robin viewed the action from his left. As

drawn in the preceding panel, Dickie’s momentum would surely have carried him and his

opponent past Robin, forcing him to view the action from his right. An even more substantial

problem arose in the strip’s final panel. At the moment Dickie tackled the assailant in the

preceding panel, two additional figures could be seen scaling the castle wall in the background.

In the fourth panel, however, Robin—having not only secured the attacker, but also carried him

(above his head nonetheless) to the castle wall—prepared to drop him on top of the two men—

neither of whom had yet managed to breach the wall! Problems of this sort were not uncommon

in these early days. Characters inexplicably changed locales from one panel to the next, and

narrative events often seemed to exist outside of the logic of time. Yet despite these

shortcomings, there were occasionally glimpses of the master technician Caniff would become.

Though he would eventually be known for his skillful deployment of cinematic

conventions, Caniff seldom varied his use of camera angles or perspective in the early days of

Dickie Dare. He did, however, experiment with manipulating panel sizes for dramatic effect. A

strip that appeared on February 14, 1934, the apex of the Custer series, attested to his growing

ability to execute this technique effectively. Having reduced the size of the opening panel,

Caniff devoted the remaining space to one large panel, the result of which made it possible for

him to offer readers a panoramic view of the Battle of Little Big Horn (see Figure 2). The results

were striking. Moreover, an absence of text, a relative rarity in these early days, allowed the

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image to perform a narrative function. Beginning in the left-hand portion of the panel the reader

encountered a pitched battle as soldiers and Indians fought one another to the death. At the

panel’s center, Caniff used a break in the action to create a momentarily lull. His ability to

manipulate the reader’s gaze was particularly impressive. By brushing Custer’s uniform with

ink, he managed to bring the beleaguered general to the forefront at the precise moment of his

death. Further to the right, as the action resumed, readers spied Dickie who, momentarily

stunned by Custer’s death, was oblivious to the impending danger he faced at the hands of a

would-be-attacker who, tomahawk raised, appeared just over his left shoulder. Given the strip’s

cliffhanger ending, readers would surely have found it difficult not to purchase a paper the

following day.

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Place Figure 2 about here

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The preceding strip showed Caniff at his finest in these early days—victories of this sort

were sporadic, however. More often than not Dickie reflected the efforts of a novice cartoonist

struggling to come to terms with a form of storytelling that was still new to him. Changes,

however, were on the horizon. By April 1934, Caniff had grown dissatisfied with the formula

he’d created for Dickie Dare. Beginning with the final installment of Dickie’s battle with

Captain Kidd on May 7, the strip would undergo a radical transformation.

Dickie Dare: May 8, 1934 – December 1, 1934

Hints of the changes that were to come in Dickie Dare surfaced not long after Dickie

concluded his adventure with Captain Kidd. Having realized (yet again) that his adventure was

nothing more than an elaborate fantasy he complained, “I read these swell stories, an’ get such a

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thrill outa thinkin’ I’m part of ‘em. Then—Blooie—I’m not!” (Marschall, 1986: 81). His lament

likely echoed Caniff’s own growing dissatisfaction with the direction the strip had taken. His

decision to base his stories on well-known works of literature had given rise to an unexpected

problem: his readers knew how they would end (Harvey, 1994:144). Caniff’s admiration for

Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs—the story of a youthful protagonist who, accompanied by the older

and more dashing Captain Easy, traveled the world in search of adventure—may also have

contributed to his growing dissatisfaction with the strip. In an essay he co-authored with Jules

Feiffer Caniff recalled, “I didn’t really get grabbed and hog tied by Crane until he introduced

Captain Easy. Right up to the very end of his tenure I wondered about the background of

Captain Easy. He was such a good character” (Harvey, 2002: 249). Whatever Caniff’s rationale,

one thing is certain—beginning with the introduction of “Dynamite” Dan Flynn on May 8, 1934,

Dickie Dare underwent a radical transformation.

Caniff shrouded Flynn’s introduction in mystery, a decision that was potentially

influenced by his experiences in the theatre. Readers learned of Flynn’s exploits long before

they met the character. On May 8, Dickie’s mother informed Dickie that Flynn, a childhood

friend, was “as swashbuckling as any of your story book friends” (Marschall, 1986: 81). The

following day his father characterized Flynn as a “glamorous figure” who, having served in the

war, “started vagabonding around the world writing stories of his adventures” (Marschall, 1986:

81). Though the car carrying Flynn arrived in the strip on May 10th, Caniff prolonged his

introduction for still another day.

After a weeklong buildup, Dan Flynn finally made his debut on May 11, 1934. In the

opening panel Dickie and his mother watched in breathless anticipation as Flynn exited the car.

An open door, coupled with Caniff’s skillful use of shading, obstructed the character from view,

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however. To heighten the suspense, Caniff placed his camera, which took readers outside of the

house in the following panel, directly behind Flynn and Mr. Dare as they walked up the front

path. As a result it was not until the final panel that readers saw Flynn for the first time. An

attractive man with a shock of blonde hair, he oozed confidence. Years later, Caniff would

employ a similar strategy when he introduced another highly anticipated character—Steve

Canyon.

Having received permission from his parents to accompany Dan on his travels, Dickie

embarked on his first adventure. Shortly after the duo arrived in New York City they set sail on

a merchant ship aboard which they met Kim Sheridan, a social debutante who, disenchanted with

her standing in elite society, had left home to travel the world. Upon discovering that the ship’s

captain, a villain named Turpin, was using the vessel to smuggle weapons to support an uprising

against the French government in Algiers, the trio knew they were in grave danger. When Kim

forced the ship’s radioman to wire the French navy and apprise them of their situation, the

desperate Turpin abducted Dickie and abandoned the ship alongside Kuvo, the Arab chieftain for

whom the weapons were intended.

To rescue Dickie, Dan and Kim, in concert with the Foreign Legion, tracked Kuvo to his

lair in the desert. Disguised as a slave girl and accompanied by a French spy, Kim managed to

penetrate the fortress and pass the imprisoned Dickie a weapon. Before Dan could arrive with

the Foreign Legion, however, Kuvo learned of their plan and absconded, this time taking Kim as

his prisoner. After following Kuvo to his mountain fortress, Dan and Dickie undertook a daring

rescue mission during which they killed Kuvo, saved Kim, and captured Turpin. Safely out of

harm’s way, the trio made plans to travel through Europe together. Their reunion was short

lived, however. Before they could leave Kim’s father arrived with her fiancé in tow. After

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denouncing Dan as a gold-digger, he insisted that his daughter return home at once, effectively

ending the couple’s burgeoning romance.3

The aforementioned story was as improbable as any that had come before it. As was the

case in the past, Caniff’s villains were wholly evil figures void of any redeeming qualities. And

yet there was something different about the revised Dickie Dare. The story Caniff wove, though

melodramatic, possessed an air of sophistication not seen in his previous efforts. From an

authorial standpoint, he revealed his characters more gradually, allowing their personalities to

emerge in their interactions with one another. Moreover, his decision to assign Dickie a

supporting cast made it possible for him to develop a greater number of narrative threads, which

he subsequently developed into plots and subplots.

In the past Dickie had dominated the strip; between June 22 and June 30, however, he

appeared in only four of 28 panels. Later, between July 14 and July 24, Caniff alternated

between following three narrative threads: Dickie’s imprisonment; Kim’s decision to disguise

herself as a slave girl and rescue him; and Dan’s efforts to rescue both Dickie and Kim. By

shifting the story’s focus from one day to the next Caniff managed to lend the strip an air of

suspense. These were fast-paced stories that introduced readers to characters they cared about,

the result of which would have made them want to read on. Though Caniff would begin another

story arch before leaving Dickie Dare to begin drawing Terry and the Pirates, the results were

less impressive.

From an artistic standpoint, composition and timing continued to pose problems for

Caniff during this period. A particularly egregious error was evident on August 29, 1934 when

Dan found himself locked in battle with Turpin (see Figure 3). In the strip’s opening panel a

knife-wielding Turpin was seen lunging through mid-air at Dan, who lay prostrate before him on

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the ground. In the second panel Dickie and Kim, hidden in the bushes, watched Dan’s plight in

horror. Desperate to help his friend, Dickie reached for a rock in the third panel, and hurled it at

Turpin in the fourth. In the strip’s final panel the camera pulled back to reveal the rock at the

moment it struck Turpin who, miraculously, had yet to land on Dan. Once again Caniff’s story

appeared to ignore the logic of time. Nevertheless, problems of this sort were noticeably less

common. Caniff allowed his artwork to carry more of his narratives, and he began to experiment

with different cinematic conventions, a fact that was evident at the story’s conclusion.

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Place Figure 3 about here

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When Kuvo’s men captured him, Dan found himself before a firing squad. On August

20, 1934 Dickie, traveling aboard an armored car supplied by the Foreign Legion, raced to Dan’s

rescue (see Figure 4). In the strip’s opening panel, Caniff placed the camera directly beneath the

oncoming truck, the result of which allowed him to emphasize the speed at which it was

traveling.

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Place Figure 4 about here

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Rather than appear rigid, a problem that had occasionally plagued his figures in the past,

the truck was alive with movement. Having used a medium shot to reveal a desperate Kuvo

reaching for his sidearm in the second panel, Caniff employed a long shot in the third, a rarity in

these early days. Looking down on the action from a high vertical angle, the camera pulled back

to reveal the truck as it skidded to a halt between Dan and his executioners. The cloud of dust

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that trailed behind it further reinforced the illusion of speed Caniff sought to create in the

opening panel. In the last panel, Caniff returned to a medium shot to reveal Dickie as he opened

the truck’s door and invited Dan aboard to safety.

When he depicted Turpin’s capture on August 24, 1934, Caniff employed a similar array

of perspectives and camera angles. The strip’s opening panel, a medium shot, revealed the

vehicle in which Turpin had fled the previous day at rest in a ditch beside the road. In the

background a silhouetted figure raced from the car toward the countryside. Using another

medium shot in the second panel, Caniff lowered the angle of his camera to depict Dickie and

Dan from behind as they raced after Turpin. In the subsequent panel the camera zoomed in to

provide a close-up of the frightened Turpin, a shot so seldom employed by Caniff in his early

days that it proved striking. His use of shadows in the first and third panels, though subtle, was

also noteworthy, as it hinted at the chiaroscuro technique he would later employ in Terry and the

Pirates. Finally, in the strip’s last panel, the cartoonist allowed readers to view the action from a

vantage point just behind Turpin. Because he stood on an incline, Dan appeared to tower over

the frightened villain, a fact that suggested that he, rather than his opponent, was in control of the

situation. Dan had gained the upper hand, and Caniff’s drawing communicated that idea. Thus,

when he tossed Turpin’s weapon aside and grimly exclaimed, “Go back and take care of Kim,

Dickie. I’m going to give this wise guy something he won’t forget for a good long time,” readers

knew he wasn’t kidding (Marschall, 1986: 111).

By July 1934 Caniff had begun to find his stride as a cartoonist. He’d also found a

formula that worked for him. A few months later he would take this formula and transpose it

onto Terry and the Pirates. As far as their personalities were concerned, Dickie and Terry were

essentially one in the same character. Likewise, “Dynamite” Dan Flynn, admired by men and

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adored by women, was an obvious precursor to the heroic Pat Ryan. Yet it is also possible to

recognize the forbearer of yet another popular Caniff creation in the aforementioned storyline.

Kim Sheridan’s character exuded strength and tenacity. When she met Dan and Dickie

for the first time she informed them, “I’m supposed to be a sweet little debutante. But the social

whirl made me dizzy! So I jumped off the merry-go-round” (Marschall, 1986: 88). Not long

after she proved that she was more than capable of fending for herself. When Turpin ordered her

taken prisoner on June 25, 1934, she used her feminine guiles to elude her captor and wire the

French navy for help. Later, when Kuvo took Dickie hostage, Kim volunteered to don the

disguise of a slave girl and rescue him. According to Horn (1976/1970), Normandie Drake,

another of Caniff’s strong female characters who appeared in the early years of Terry and the

Pirates, was “spoiled, capricious, headstrong, and unmistakably feminine (in contrast to the

cardboard appearance of Caniff’s earlier female characters)” (n.p.). His assertion fails to account

for the role Kim Sheridan played in Dickie Dare, however. Far from bland, Kim exuded many

of the qualities that readers would come to associate with Normandie. Moreover, her failed

relationship with Dan Flynn foreshadowed the unrequited love story to come between

Normandie and Pat Ryan in the early days of Terry and the Pirates. One cannot help but wonder

whether Kim would have resurfaced in another story had Caniff not left Dickie in the fall of 1934

to begin drawing Terry.

Conclusion

Recalling the first two years of Terry and the Pirates, Maurice Horn (1976/1970) wrote,

“Spontaneous generation is as foreign to art as to science. But the chief interest of these strips

lies in their historical value. Very simply they mark the debut of an important artist (his previous

efforts are of little significance)” (n.p.). Close examination of Caniff’s work on Dickie Dare,

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however, calls the legitimacy of this assertion into question. Far from insignificant, the time

Caniff spent drawing the strip enabled him to sharpen both his drawing and his storytelling skills,

the result of which contributed significantly to his development as a cartoonist.

In years to come Milton Caniff would continue to hone his craft, eventually earning

himself a reputation as one of the world’s foremost cartoonists. To be sure, Dickie Dare pales in

comparison to his later work. When it is examined closely, however, it is possible to see in

Dickie the seeds of Caniff’s future genius. When Captain Patterson asked him to draw an

adventure strip for the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News Syndicate in 1934, Caniff knew

that he had a limited amount of time to impress his employer and win new readers. Reflecting

on that moment later in his career he recalled, “I had set out to compete with Dick Tracy and

Orphan Annie and the other stuff. I wanted to do something loud and dramatic, and that’s why I

started to draw the thing as if each of the panels was an illustration for the Saturday Evening

Post. I wanted to make each one as carefully as possible, working out the light and shade and

the composition and have it believable” (Harvey, 2002: 64). As this article has hopefully made

clear, his experiences drawing Dickie Dare had prepared him for this moment. In Dickie, Caniff

had been given the opportunity to work though the challenges he faced as a newcomer to

sequential storytelling. Furthermore, his experiences drawing the strip equipped him with

valuable lessons he would draw on later when he began working on Terry. Indeed, it is not too

much to say that in the absence of Dickie Dare, Terry and the Pirates would not have emerged

as the impressive strip it did in such a relatively short period of time.

Endnotes

1. Dickie Dare continued to appear in newspapers after Patterson lured Caniff away from the Associated Press in 1934. Coulton Waugh, who finished a story Caniff had begun, would eventually make the strip his own.

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2. It is interesting to note the similarities between storylines in the early Dickie Dare strips and Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. Both strips featured protagonists that embarked on adventures that were the products of their own imagination. Likewise, both characters’ fantasies were inevitably disrupted by the intrusion of everyday life. In Nemo’s case, his dreams ceased when he fell out of bed or was awoken by his mother. Dickie’s adventures were only as long as the literary texts he read. To what extent Caniff was familiar with McCay’s work is uncertain. Nevertheless, the parallels are worth noting. 3. It is interesting to note the parallels between Flynn’s failed relationship with Kim Sheridan and the cessation of Pat Ryan’s relationship with Normandie Drake as described in the introduction of this article.

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References

Adams, John Paul. 1946. Milton Caniff: Rembrandt of the Comic-Strip. Philadelphia: David McKay Company.

Caniff, Milton. 1958. “Don’t Laugh at the Comics.” Cosmopolitan. Nov.: 44-46. Caniff, Milton. 2007. The Complete Terry and the Pirates: 1934-1936. San Diego: IDW

Publishing. Caswell, Lucy Shelton. 1990. A Tribute to Milton Caniff: An Exhibition at The Ohio State

University Cartoon, Graphic, and Photographic Arts Research Library, Oct. 3-Nov. 16. Columbus, Ohio.

Caswell, Lucy Shelton and George A. Loomis, Jr. 1980. Billy Ireland. Columbus, Ohio: The

Ohio State University Libraries Publications Committee. Harvey, Robert C. 1994. The Art of the Funnies. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Harvey, Robert C. 2002. Milton Caniff Conversations. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Harvey, Robert C. 2007. Meanwhile…A Biography of Milton Caniff, Creator of Terry and the

Pirates and Steve Canyon. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. Horak, Carl J. 1994. “The 60-Year Impact of ‘Terry and the Pirates.” Comics Buyer’s Guide

#1092. Oct. 21: 72-78. Horn, Maurice, ed. 1976/1970. Terry and the Pirates. Franklin Square, New York: Nostalgia

Press.

Marschall, Rick, ed. 1986. The Complete Dickie Dare. Agoura, CA: Fantagraphics Books.

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Biographical Statement:

Sean P. Connors is an Assistant Professor of English education in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Dr. Connors’ scholarly and research interests have led him to focus on multimodal literacy, as well as on the way readers construct meaning in their transactions with graphic novels.

Fig. 1 – Dickie Dare, August 21, 1933

Fig. 2 – Dickie Dare, February 14, 1934

Figure 3 – Dickie Dare, August 29, 1934

Figure 4 – Dickie Dare, August 20, 1934