Yes, Mickey couldn’t help it. The toys hit the shelves in Walmart. He discovered the silly superhero junior highschool romance thing first on Pinterest, then on YouTube. Miraculous, the Adventures of Ladybug and Cat Noir. The silly thing is on Netflix now too.
So, why would a goofy old man like me be interested in a thing like this… a thing aimed at an audience of pre-teen girls? That’s disturbingly creepy, isn’t it?
Well, I never claimed to be cool. I was an English teacher for 31 years. Cool was never an option.
And I collect dolls… erm… action figures… uh… well, I might as well be honest. I have more Barbies than G.I. Joes. I have a hoarding disorder fixated on 12-inch dolls. And when I saw this doll for less than 15 dollars at Walmart, I had to buy it. And it has the other super hero, Cat Noir right beside it. Both under 20 dollars so they fit under the 20 dollar limit. And both together only cost 30 dollars, so it fits under the 50 dollar per month limit as well. Those collecting rules are important in saving me from my own juvenile regressive self and helps me have enough money to buy food all month long.
The people in the store don’t look at me funny. I am not the only old man buying toys and dolls in Walmart. I am just the only old man there not buying for his grandkids. I don’t have any grandkids yet, and my own kids are definitely older than the toy-wanting stage. The people would be far more disturbed if they knew I was now struggling with the question, “Do I preserve these dolls mint-in-box? Or do I take them out and play with them?” And if you have read any of my lunatic “he-plays-with-dolls” posts, you probably already know how that one will turn out.
People might also be deeply disturbed to know that I have already watched two episodes of Miraculous, and (shudder) liked them in spite of the moronic romance and love-triangle bull poop. I can’t promise that I will not watch more and turn away from this new filthy habit. The stories are stupid villain-of-the-week stuff. But the CGI animation is brightly colored, smooth, and highly interesting… to the point that I and any available chimpanzees or monkeys will be enthralled with it. Oh, and pre-teen girls too. I won’t go into the connections between those things.
I could probably spend a lot of words telling you more about how this cartoon is set in Paris, France, and how Marinette and Adrien, the secret identities of the two superheroes above, are both in love with each other, but don’t realize it because neither one knows the secret identity of the other. But I won’t. This post is not a review of the cartoon show. This post is a goofy commentary celebrating the fact that I bought myself two more dolls, and now must somehow rationalize that weird, compulsive act.
The baseball player in the upstairs sitting room where nobody sits, once spent an entire winter at the bottom of the swimming pool. That’s why his blue uniform turned a bit putrid green. He stays in this room with my Wish-nik Troll from 1967 and the Winkie Soldier from Oz, who is naturally green in the face and never took a swim.
Milt Caniff
My 1967 Captain Action Steve Canyon action figure.
I have always been a deeply devoted fan of the Sunday funnies. And one of the reasons I read the comics religiously was the work of Milt Caniff. His comic strips, Terry and the Pirates, Male Call, and Steve Canyon set a standard for the age of action comics and adventure strips.
I read his comics in the 1960’s and 1970’s and always it was Steve Canyon. But this, of course, was not his first strip. I would discover in my college years the wonders of Terry and the Pirates. When Caniff started the strip before World War II, he set it in China, but actually knew nothing about China. So he did research. He learned about people who became oriental hereditary pirate families and organizations. He learned to draw authentic Chinese settings. His comedy relief characters, Connie and the Big Stoop, were rather racist parodies of Chinamen and were among the reasons that the original strip had to mature into his later work in Steve Canyon. But perhaps the most enduring character from the strip was the mysterious pirate leader known as the Dragon Lady.
Steve Canyon is a fascinating study in the comic arts. When he left the Terry and the Pirates strip in 1946, it went on without him. It was owned by the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News distribution syndicate, not Caniff himself. Steve Canyon would change that. He created it and owned it himself, making Caniff one of only two or three comics artists who actually owned their own creations. Canyon started out as a civilian pilot, but enlisted in the Air Force for the Korean War and would remain in the Air Force for the remainder of the strip. Some of the characters in the strip were based on real people. His long-time friend Charlie Russhon, a former photographer and Lieutenant in the Air Force who went on to be a technical adviser for James Bond films was the model for the character Charlie Vanilla, the man with the ice cream cone. Madame Lynx was based on the femme fatale spy character played by Illona Massey in the 1949 Marx Brothers’ movie Love Happy. Caniff designed Pipper the Piper after John Kennedy and Miss Mizzou after Marilyn Monroe.
I am not the only cartoonist who was taken with the work of Milt Caniff. The effects of his ground-breaking work can be seen to influence the works of comic artists like Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, John Romita Sr., and Doug Wildey. If you are anything like the comic book nut I am, than you are impressed by that list, even more so if I listed everyone he influenced. Milt Caniff was a cartoonists’ cartoonist. He was one of the founders of the National Cartoonists’ Society and served two terms as its president in 1948 and 1949. He is also a member of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
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Filed under action figures, comic strips, commentary, inspiration
Tagged as comic art, comic strips, Milt Caniff, Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates