Come evitare di segnalarlo ai sei followers rimasti?
La si farà un po’ sottogamba, pensando che circa la metà di questi tre l’ha già incocciato (il libro) a San Diego, alla Comic-Con, perché almeno questi tre si trovano già lì.

© aventi diritto per le immagini.
In Milton Caniff Conversations, one of the giants in the history of American comic strips talks about his life and his craft in more than a dozen interviews that were conducted from 1937 to 1986, a period that embraces almost the entire span of his career producing the nearly legendary Terry and the Pirates (1934-1946) and his post-World War II masterpiece, Steve Canyon (1947-1988). For some telling tales about the master, click here.
O meglio, questo è il luogo tramite il quale l’acquisto si può fare, sia del libro che di tutti gli altri, su Gordo, Winsor McCay e così via.

Affascinante questa descrizione che Harvey fa della vita di Milt:
I started interviewing him in March 1984 at his East 45th Street studio in New York. He lived in the same building, commuting every day from his apartment on the 30th floor to 5E on the fifth floor, a tiny one-bedroom apartment. In the bedroom, a twin bed for napping was jammed in among numerous filing cabinets. The livingroom was his studio. The walls were hung with framed original drawings, his own sometimes but mostly those of Noel Sickles and other artists. He propped his drawing board against a worktable in the middle of the room, facing a couch against the opposite wall. At his back were bookcases filled with ready reference. I sat at his left with my tape recorder silently spooling away on the top of a two-drawer filing cabinet next to the drawing board. As he talked, answering my questions, he drew. He never just sat. He was always drawing. And that’s when I noticed his hands. They were not the hands of an artist: they were large and square, chunks of bone and sinew, no tapering at the wrist whatsoever. And like most artists, when he drew hands, he used his own as models.
Beato Enrico Fornaroli, che in quegli stessi anni incontrò Caniff.

Nel libro, Caniff Conversations…
there are long interviews conducted by such cartooning luminaries as Jules Feiffer and Will Eisner in which Caniff discusses how he developed the famed chiaroscuro drawing style as well as his passion for realism in every detail, both visual and narrative, and his relationships with other cartooning greats like Al Capp (Li’l Abner) and Noel Sickles (Scorchy Smith) and Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon). Few of the interviews and commentaries in this volume are likely to have been seen or read by many because most of the material has been gleaned from difficult-to-find publications not in general circulation. Caniff’s status as a spokesman for the military in general and the Air Force particularly, for instance, is attested to by interviews with reporters from military magazines and newspapers.

Il riferimento a Hugo Pratt è scontato (e anche piuttosto vecchiotto).
Questi e altri personaggi sono stati fonte d’ispirazione grafica per il papà di Corto Maltese: le loro somatiche, il modo di impaginare gli elementi compositivi delle vignette, la pennellata ricca e necessariamente sintetica (ma efficace).

Lo rivelano anche le immagini sotto che, con un doppio CLIC sopra, si possono esaminare al meglio.

Chi volesse conoscere i personaggi della serie Terry and the Pirates, sotto trova un compendio della folla che ne ha popolato le vignette, con tanto di legenda.
A seguire, un’insolita illustrazione con i characters di Steve Canyon.

Chi desidera vedere il grande Caniff al lavoro può farlo con questa stroboscopico-calidoscopica ripresa in diretta (un po’ noiosa per chi non conosce bene l’Inglese e non è interessato direttamente ad approfondire la personalità del Maestro) dove si vede il grande fumettista che disegna in diretta Dragon Lady per il suo fan Charlie Roberts. Nel frattempo conversa del più e del meno con Shel Dorf, che va pesantemente ringraziato (vedi
http://www.ShelDorfTribute.com), anche se si ha un po’ l’impressione che abbia abbandonato la telecamera da una parte e questa abbia proseguito a girare senza controllo. Meglio così, intendiamoci…

I video sono stati girati l’11 maggio 1983.