Steve Canyon

Steve Canyon
Steve Canyon (1950)
Author(s)	Milton Caniff
Current status / schedule	discontinued
Launch date	January 13, 1947
End date	June 4, 1988
Syndicate(s)	Field Enterprises / King Features Syndicate
Genre(s)	Adventure
Preceded by	Terry and the Pirates

Steve Canyon was a long-running American adventure comic strip by writer-artist Milton Caniff. Launched shortly after Caniff retired from his previous strip, Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon ran from January 13, 1947, until June 4, 1988, shortly after Caniff's death. Caniff won the Reuben Award for the strip in 1971.

By 1946, Caniff had developed a worldwide reputation for his syndicated Terry and the Pirates. However, the rights for the strip he had created, written and drawn (for Chicago Tribune newspaper syndicate editor Captain Joseph Patterson), were entirely owned by the syndicate. Seeking creative control, Caniff negotiated with Field Enterprises for a new strip on which he could retain ownership.Steven Canyon was "marketed and distributed by King Features, which was subcontracted as Field's selling agent". Caniff's popularity meant that sixty clients agreed to run Steve Canyon before publication. The last Caniff episode of Terry and the Pirates appeared in December 1946, and then George Wunder took over the strip. Caniff's new strip, Steve Canyon, debuted in 168 newspapers. In the 1950s, the strip was enormously popular, and Caniff and Steve Canyon appeared on the covers of both Time (1947) and Newsweek (1950).

Many strip creators before and since employ uncredited assistants or ghost artists, and Caniff was no exception. In 1952, he hired comic book artist Dick Rockwell (nephew of famed illustrator Norman Rockwell) as his assistant. While Caniff scripted and drew the main characters, Rockwell penciled and inked secondary characters and backgrounds. Rockwell continued on Canyon until Caniff's death on May 3, 1988. The last syndicated Steve Canyon strip was a tribute to Caniff in two panels, one drawn by cartoonist Bill Mauldin, the other containing the signatures of 78 fellow cartoonists.