Milton Caniff - the prints

Caniff would routinely give or send these out to fans. Hand colored and dedicated by him. I am not sure if he actually did the coloring or his assistants. From what I have read, he was always very mindful and appreciative of his fans. I like to think he did these all himself rather than passing it on to assistants but I have never heard any anecdotes to suggest either scenario.

Update

I recently purchased the Milton Caniff contents of an estate of a photographer who worked with Caniff from 1946 to 1954. You can see and read a bit more about this in the Caniff Photo gallery I have. I believe this photographer was involved in the making of some of these prints as there are photos of the prints and blank prints in different formats (with and without signatures) and with measurments and notes written on them. A reference source on Caniff mentions that these items were made by Caniff as character references and to be used in promotional material and the coloring and sending to fans was more of a secondary source.

My print collection has grown. I am always actively looking for new ones and willing to trade duplicates I have with others too. The prints I have come from a few sources. The largest source is the Milton Caniff reference files by way of Shel Dorf who was a long time Caniff assistant. The second largest source was this photographer's estate files from his grand daughter and the rest of the prints were acquired from various sources including fans and ebay. If you have any of the prints I don't have, please let me know and perhaps we can work something out or at least I can ask you for a scan for reference. I hope to put all of these into an article in the future.

2018- update. I just added another 20 or so prints. They came from Eric H who was an early fan and in the past did late night viewings of serials for San Diego in the early years. Many artists would attend these. Caniff was looking for some reference pictures for Judith Anderson and was unable to locate some. Shel Dorf reached out to Eric and Eric was able to help with several items. A year later at San Diego Caniff thanked Eric and handed him an envelope as a thank you asking him not to open it until he got home. Inside was a lovely dedicated illustration and many of the unusued prints you see that were recently added. The prints are great and a passion of mine but adding the history and provenance to them adds another layer of appreciation.