I was recently gifted with the eye-opening event of having my own personal soap bubble of beliefs, dreams, and hopes popped by an angry, dyspeptic orangutan. Yes, he got elected to the most powerful position of leadership on the planet Earth. And, as I was hurt in the fall from my rudely popped bubble, I began to think about the nature of the bubbles we live in and plot my evil revenge.
You see, people all live in bubbles of perception. There are limits to what you can see, hear, learn, accept, believe, and understand. Those limits are the walls of the soap bubble we create for ourselves in the empty warehouse of our own mind. I know I have just revealed that what I am talking about is completely metaphorical, but all you people out there who live in literal-minded, practically impenetrable bubbles need to be reminded that metaphorical truth is still truth.
In politics, there now seem to be two main classes of bubble that exist separately and prevent many people from seeing and understanding the perceptions of many other people. There are conservative bubble people. There are also liberal bubble people.
Conservative is supposed to mean that they like what they currently have and want to preserve it. I include here not just possessions, but values, goals, religions, hopes, and dreams. Liberal traditionally means that they are dissatisfied with what they currently have and want change. Looking at this construct carefully reveals that anyone who is liberal should be seeking change, but once they have it, should then become satisfied and change into a conservative. Similarly, if they are conservative, but things change into a new set of things that they don’t like, they should become liberals. But in our political system, these labels have become set in stone. And I should warn you, putting stone letters on a soap bubble will invariably pop it. Conservative bubble people have added concrete mix to the walls of their bubbles to harden it, so that it won’t pop. Liberals have done the same. Though, I believe Republican conservative bubble people have somehow found a concrete mix that, when it hardens, makes it impenetrable by facts, science, and logic. Not to be outdone, though, liberals have added bizarre chemicals to their mix that makes their bubbles impenetrable by feelings, emotion, and religion. The collective effect of all this bubble-fixing is that all bubble people’s bubbles have become dark and no longer transparent. You cannot see through them.
It is no wonder that when liberals look at conservative bubbles they think, “These people are just selfish, money-hungry, and evil, and will do anything for a profit. They don’t care what’s best for everybody.”
Conversely, conservatives look at liberal bubbles and think, “They are unfeeling control freaks who want to take away our freedom to do what we believe in. They want to tell us what we can do. They are trying to take away our rights.”
So, humorist and crack-brained nitwit that I am, I have come up with an evil plan to undo this opaque-bubble nightmare. I intend to look inside lots of bubbles and find ways to make them more transparent again. I also intend to invite everyone I know, and everyone who reads this, to do the same. That should help.
But I should warn you, I am not the only one looking to manipulate bubble people. There are a bunch of rich and cynical folks out there too who are busy playing billiard games with a majority of the fossilized opaque bubbles . Once bubbles start popping, more people will be hurt.
Catch a Falling Star 
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.
1 Comment
Filed under action figures, comic strips, commentary, inspiration
Tagged as comic art, comic strips, Milt Caniff, Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates