Yesterday the Peanuts Movie came to the dollar movie theater in Carrollton. And my two kids at home and me went to it. I invited my wife, but with the righteous indignation of a Jehovah’s Witness unshakable in her beliefs, she said, “Why would I want to go to a Christmas movie?” She associated it not with the beloved comic strip in the newspapers, but with the old Christmas special. And she would not be talked into it. It is a matter of faith, after all. Celebrating Christmas, naturally, loses you the chance to live happily ever after on a paradise Earth… after Jehovah God smites all the wicked people and all the deluded people who never worshiped him properly using his proper name, and also that rude postman my wife doesn’t particularly like. Of course, it is not a Christmas movie. The only Christmas part it has in it is a brief Christmas carol from the old TV special that Snoopy ruins. So God didn’t punish us for enjoying this movie… at least, not yet.
We unrepentantly enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed it as a culmination of more than 50 years of reading and laughing at Charles
Schulz’s satire of the uncertainties of childhood as they affect the whole of our adult lives. My kids loved it because it is an excellent cartoon that is filled with hilarious moments that trace directly back to the comic strip.
The central story is about Charlie Brown’s self doubts mixed with his never-ending crush on the little red-haired girl. In his own hesitant, hide-behind-the-bushes style, Charlie pursues her and plans how he might win her heart. In the comics, it never worked out. He always failed. He was always the lovable loser, and the red-haired girl never noticed.
I was inspired to write a poem about it because I could so deeply identify with his crisis of confidence. Here is that sappy poem;
Little Red-Haired Girl
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
That little red-haired girl, so cute, so nice
You only looked and looked from afar
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
You could’ve held her hand
You could’ve walked her home from school
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
She never got your Valentine
At least, you forgot to sign your name
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
No hope of marriage now, nor children
Happily ever after has now long gone
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
Now every love poem is a sad poem
And the world is blue and down
You never told her that you loved her…
You never told her that you loved her…
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
The main story is paralleled in Snoopy’s Red Baron fantasies as the movie goes along. The lady-dog-pilot, Fifi, is kidnapped by the Red Baron. Snoopy, the dashing, daring WWI pilot sets out in his Sopwith Camel dog house to rescue her. And after being foiled several times… he succeeds! And not long after, Charlie Brown himself succeeds. The little red-haired girl actually chooses Charlie Brown to be her summer pen pal project buddy. I should probably be outraged because in the comic strip she never knew he was even alive… But I loved the happy ending. Charlie Brown deserves it. I deserve it. I believe even Charles Shulz would be charmed by it if he were still alive to see it.
I apologize if I spoiled the movie for you, but it is something you should already know anyway if you ever read and loved the comic strip. It is not the surprises that make this movie work. It is the being true to a time-honored comic-strip and the bringing of it so completely and so beautifully to life. And my wife looked again at the movie trailers and decided she had been wrong about it being a Christmas movie. Maybe we are not doomed after all.
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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Tagged as comic art, comic strips, Milt Caniff, Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates