RUBE GOLDBERG - ALEX RAYMOND - MILT CANIFF

RUBE GOLDBERG - ALEX RAYMOND - MILT CANIFF

 

ALEX RAYMOND

October 2, 1909 - September 6, 1956

 

Alex Raymond was one of the most influential American newspaper comic artists of all time. He is widely praised for his realism, beautiful and elegant depictions of women and clever use of black and white. With his space opera 'Flash Gordon' (1934) he redefined the science fiction genre, while his post-war detective strip 'Rip Kirby' (1946) stood out for its contemporary realism and cosmopolitan look and feel. Raymond's other (co-)creations 'Secret Agent X-9' (1934) and 'Jungle Jim' (1934) have also become classics. Despite his relatively short career - Raymond died in a car crash at age 45 - he has left a lasting mark on comic book realism, together with his contemporaries Hal Foster, Milton Caniff and Burne Hogarth.

 

Early life and career

Alexander Gillespie Raymond was born in 1909 in New Rochelle, New York, into a family of Irish-American descent. His father was an engineer who worked in the Woolworth Building, and strongly supported his son's artistic talents. Although Raymond showed an early interest in drawing, he held several jobs to support his family after his father passed away in 1922. He dropped out of high school in 1928 and became an order clerk with a brockerage firm in Wall Street. In the evenings, he took a course from the Grand Central School of Art. His career as a stockbroker was cut short when the economic crisis hit the USA in 1929. Raymond worked as a mortgage salesman for a while, but eventually chose to further pursue his artistic ambitions. By 1930 he started assisting his former neighbor Russ Westover, the cartoonist of 'Tilly the Toiler'. He initially served as an errand boy, but eventually got some small lettering and background art tasks. Westover introduced Raymond to King Features, the syndicate related to William Randolph Hearst's media empire. He was hired as an assistant artist in the King Features bullpen in 1931. In the evenings he helped Chic Young with his comic strip 'Blondie'.

 

He joined Young full-time in late 1931, and continued to work on 'Blondie' until early 1933, shortly after Blondie and Dagwood's wedding. Also in late 1931, he began assisting Chic Young's younger brother Lyman Young on 'Tim Tyler's Luck'. In 1932 and 1933, he ghosted both the daily and Sunday installments of 'Tim Tyler', after which his talent was truly recognized by King Features manager Joseph V. Connolly. Competing syndicates had launched several popular newspaper comics in the previous years, so Hearst's company had to strenghten their position in the market. This resulted in Raymond debuting no less than three major comic strips in January 1934. 'Flash Gordon' was Hearst's answer to the popular feature 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century' (1929) by Dick Calkins and Phil Nowlan at the John F. Dille Company, 'Jungle Jim' had to compete with United Feature's 'Tarzan' by Rex Maxon and 'Secret Agent X-9' stepped in on the wave of popular crime features initiated by Chester Gould's 'Dick Tracy' (1931) at the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate.

 

Flash Gordon

Of all these creations, 'Flash Gordon' has become the most iconic. It made its debut as a Sunday page on 7 January 1934, and continued to run in newspapers until 2003. It has also inspired a great many movie adaptations, TV and radio serials, comic books and merchandising lines. Raymond's Jules Verne-type space opera headed for thrills right away. Already on the first panel, humanity is threatened by a strange new planet approaching planet Earth. A flaming meteor torn loose from the comet shoots down the transcontinental flight which boards "Yale graduate and world-renowned polo player" Flash Gordon and the beautiful Dale Arden. Gordon heroically parachutes himself and Dale to safety, but the two are quickly captured by Dr. Hans Zarkov. The desperate scientist takes the two coincidental bystanders with him on a suicide mission to crash his rocket into the approaching comet. And this is only the first Sunday page! Gordon overpowers the mad scientist, but can't prevent the rocket from crash-landing on the mysterious planet Mongo, which is ruled by Ming the Merciless (the name says it all). It is the beginning of a long saga filled with strange creatures, intriguing landscapes, futuristic cities and machinery and highly imaginative science fiction, accompanied of course by tireless heroics of the title hero.

 

Most of the early stories have Flash acting as a resistance leader against the ruthless leader Ming, while finding allies in Prince Barin from the forest kingdom of Arboria, Prince Thun of the Lion Men, Prince Vultan of the Hawkmen and other more noble leaders. Ming's daughter Princess Aura initially takes after her father, but is reformed by her love for Flash, and later for Prince Barin. Flash, Dale and Zarkov finally return to Earth in July 1941, after learning from an upcoming new world war, initiated by the fascistic Red Sword organization. While Raymond's timing for this storyline seems impeccable, our heroes have already overthrown the fascists and returned to Mongo by January 1942. This was only a month after the Pearl Harbor attack, which plunged the U.S. into World War II. Alex Raymond crafted his plots in a steady collaboration with pulp writer Don Moore, who served as a ghostwriter. They came up with the most extraordinary worlds and creatures, which Raymond brought to life with his skillful brushwork. Getting his visual inspiration from leading magazine illustrators like Matt Clark, Franklin Booth and John LaGatta, Raymond managed to bring character into his settings through his strong sense of realism and unique use of perspective. From the lush landscapes of Mongo to the egocentric splendor of Ming's environment - Raymond was one of the first artists who made science fiction "believable". With his masterful renderings of sensual women as more eye candy, 'Flash Gordon' quickly surpassed his predecessor in popularity. As Checker's Mark Thompson wrote in his foreword for the publisher's first 'Flash Gordon' collection (2005), Raymond "brought the worldwide public into the visual age of science fiction".

 

Jungle Jim

Raymond was assigned to fill a full page in the Sunday newspapers. To accompany 'Flash Gordon', he and Don Moore came up with the "topper" 'Jungle Jim'. Although it was meant as a competitor for the 'Tarzan' strip, this adventurous saga was set in South-East Asia instead of Africa and starred a big-game trapper instead of a jungle hero in loincloth. The hero was named after Raymond's cartoonist brother Jim Raymond, and can be considered a fictional rendition of real-life adventurer/writer Frank R. Buck, the author of 'Bring 'Em Back Alive' (1930). The initial stories dealt with regular genre villains like pirates and slave traders, but the feature took a war-themed direction at the beginning of World War II. 'Jungle Jim' is one of the few Sunday companion features to become a classic in its own right. During the 1940s it's popularity justified its transformation into an independent Sunday page, apart from 'Flash Gordon'. In the post-Raymond period, 'Jungle Jim' has also received comic book series with original stories published by Standard Comics, Dell Comics, Charlton Comics and Dynamite Entertainment.

 

Secret Agent X-9

'Secret Agent X-9', Alex Raymond's third comic strip, made its debut a few weeks after 'Flash Gordon' and 'Jungle Jim', on 22 January 1934. King Features Syndicate had managed to hire Dashiell Hammett to write an original daily comic strip, starring an unnamed government detective. As the nation's top author of hard-boiled detective novels, Hammett was surely a crowd puller, whose work could easily compete with Chester Gould's 'Dick Tracy'. Raymond proved to be capable of visualizing the seedy underworld as well. After crafting four storylines, Hammett left the feature and was replaced by Don Moore and then by 'Saint' author Leslie Charteris. To keep up with the workload of producing six daily strips and two Sunday features, Austin Briggs was brought in to assist Raymond on 'Secret Agent X-9'. Raymond however left the strip on 16 November 1935 to fully concentrate on 'Flash Gordon', 'Jungle Jim' and his ambitions of becoming a magazine illustrator. 'Secret Agent X-9' continued to run in newspapers until 10 February 1996; from 1967 onwards under the title 'Secret Agent Corrigan'. Artists who have drawn the feature after Raymond were Charles Flanders (1935-1938), Nicholas Afonsky (1938), Austin Briggs (1938-1940), Mel Graff (1940-1960), Bob Lubbers (1960-1967), Al Williamson (1967-1980) and George Evans (1980-1996). The later stories have been written by Max Trell (1936-1945, under the King Features house-name Robert Storm), Mel Graff (1945-1960), Bob Lubbers (1960-1967), Archie Goodwin (1967-1980) and George Evans (1980-1996).

 

RUBE GOLDBERG

Reuben Garret L. Goldberg (July 4, 1883 - December 7, 1970) was an American cartoonist. The Reuben Award of the National Cartoonists Society is named after Rube Goldberg, who earned lasting fame for his Rube Goldberg machines, complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. In 1948 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning.

 

Goldberg graduated from Lowell High School in San Francisco in 1900 and earned a degree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904. Goldberg was hired by the city of San Francisco as an engineer, however, his fondness for drawing cartoons prevailed, and after just a few months, he quit the city job for a job with the San Francisco Chronicle as a sports cartoonist. The following year, he took a job with the San Francisco Bulletin, where he remained until he moved to New York City in 1907.

 

He drew cartoons for several newspapers, including the New York Evening Journal and the New York Evening Mail. His work entered syndication in 1915, beginning his nationwide popularity. A prolific artist, Goldberg produced several cartoon series simultaneously; titles included Mike and Ike, Boob McNutt, Foolish Questions, Lala Palooza and The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club.

 

Professor Butts

 

While these series were quite popular, the one leading to his lasting fame involved a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. In this series, Goldberg drew labeled schematics of the comical "inventions" which would later bear his name. In 1995, "Rube Goldberg's Inventions," depicting Professor Butts' "Self-Operating Napkin," was one of 20 strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative U.S. postage stamps. The "Self-Operating Napkin" is activated when the soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C) which throws cracker (D) past parrot (E). Parrot jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and lights automatic cigar lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K) which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M) and allow pendulum with attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin. After-dinner entertainment can be supplied with the simple substitution of a harmonica for the napkin.

 

Rube Goldberg

Later in his career, Goldberg was employed by the New York Journal American and remained there until his retirement in 1964. During his retirement, he occupied himself by making bronze sculptures. His work appeared in several one-man shows, the last one during his lifetime being in 1970 at the National Museum of American History (then called the Museum of History and Technology) in Washington, D.C.. Goldberg died at the age of 87; he is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

 

In addition to his 1948 Pulitzer Prize, he received the National Cartoonists Society Gold T-Square Award in 1955, their 1969 Reuben Award and their Gold Key Award (posthumously in 1980).

 

Rube Goldberg machine

 

A Rube Goldberg machine is a complex apparatus that performs a simple, easy task in an indirect and convoluted way. The best examples of his machines have an anticipation factor, as the machine makes slow but steady progress toward its goal.

The term also applies as a classification for a generally over-complicated apparatus or software. The corresponding term in the United Kingdom is "Heath Robinson" (machine or contraption), after the British cartoonist with a similar focus on odd machinery. The term "Rube Goldberg machine" first appeared in Webster's Third New International Dictionary with the definition "accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply."

 

Rube Goldberg's inventions are a unique commentary on life's complexities. They provide a humorous diversion into the absurd that lampoons the wonders of technology. These satires of man's ingenuity resonate in modern life for those seeking simplicity in the midst of a technology revolution. Goldberg's machines can also be seen as a physical representation of the pataphysical, carrying a simple idea to a nonsensical, ornamented extreme.

 

Comics have given many now-familiar words and phrases to the English language — "Dagwood sandwich" from Blondie, "goon" and "jeep" from Popeye, "yellow journalism" … from The Yellow Kid, to cite but a few. But only one cartoonist has enriched our linguistic heritage by the donation of his own name. Even people who have never seen the work of Rube Goldberg know what a "Rube Goldberg device" is. Nor is that the only phrase that contains his name. Not as many people know about The National Cartoonists' Society's Reuben Award. But of those who do, a great majority know who it was named after, and who designed the zany-looking statuette — the NCS's first president, Reuben Lucius Goldberg.

 

Goldberg was born on the Fourth of July, in 1883. He showed an early interest in cartooning, but like many later-famous artists, was discouraged by his parents, who preferred he prepare for a more practical way of making a living. They figured he could use his drawing ability in a lucrative career in engineering, and to that end, got him enrolled in the University of California's College of Mining. He graduated in 1904 as a full-fledged mining engineer.

 

Like Gelett Burgess before him, Goldberg did very little with his engineering degree before moving on to his true career. After six months of boredom, he took a job in the art department of The San Francisco Chronicle. At first he mostly tidied the place up (and allegedly, while emptying wastebaskets, figured out what had happened to his own earlier cartoon submissions), but soon became one of the Chronicle's sports cartoonists. He moved to The San Francisco Bulletin in 1905, replacing Thomas A. "Tad" Dorgan (Silk Hat Harry), who had gone to New York to make his fortune. Goldberg followed Dorgan in '07, when he moved to The New York Evening Mail. It was there that he started on the road to fame with his regular feature, Foolish Questions, in which he would suggest silly answers to such annoyingly obvious queries as "Windy, isn't it?" and (said by a hotel clerk) "Do you want a room, sir?" This Goldberg original was echoed decades later in Mad magazine's regular feature, "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions", by Al Jaffee.

 

It was in 1914 that Goldberg created the series that brought him lasting fame — a series that was inspired by his academic studies. Recalling the so-called "Barodik", an incredibly complex contraption for determining the mass of our planet, cooked up by Goldberg's analytical mechanics instructor, Professor Frederick Slate, Goldberg drew a convoluted and highly improbable "Automatic Weight-Reducing Machine" for the Evening Mail.

 

Many syndicated features followed, some of which, including Boob McNutt, Lala Palooza and Mike & Ike (They Look Alike), became reasonably well known in their own right — but he continued to create his unlikely engineering stunts for the duration of his cartooning career. They became such a part of American culture, that in 1995, in company with Little Nemo in Slumberland, Barney Google, Li'l Abner and several other immortal newspaper comics, they were commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp.

 

Goldberg became an editorial cartoonist in 1938, when The New York Sun hired him to fill that position (which, by the way, had been vacant at the Sun since 1920). His political cartoons were distributed nation-wide by The Bell Syndicate (Mutt & Jeff, Sad Sack). The one he drew for the July 22, 1947 edition, about the world on the brink of nuclear destruction (back when that was a new topic), won a Pulitzer Prize in '48.

 

By the time he was 80 years old, Goldberg grew tired of cartooning. Instead of retiring, however, he embarked on a new career as a sculptor — and, typically, excelled at it. In fact, it was for his humorous sculpture that, in 1967, he finally won the award named after him.

 

Rube Goldberg died in 1970, revered by his peers in the cartooning community for his lifetime of extraordinary achievement.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/395...

 

www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=49858

 

davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html

 

www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/

 

www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/10/18/lich...

 

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DECONSTRUCTING ROY LICHTENSTEIN © 2000 David Barsalou

 

MILT CANIFF

The King of the Comic Strips

 

Milton Caniff

From The Early Years To Terry and the Pirates

Milton Caniff, to most comics fans, will always be regarded as the major leading light of the syndicated comic strip. He was a pioneer of a visual style of story telling that's widely imitated but seldom achieved, establishing innovations that would become a yardstick for all that followed in his footsteps. No major comics artists today remain untouched by his influences.

 

Milton Caniff was born on February 28, 1907 in Hillsboro, Ohio. His art career began in a significant way when, as a young boy, he discovered a trunk containing drawings by the early newspaper cartoonist, John T. McCutchen. "This was my first inspiration as an artist in wanting to draw pictures at all, " Caniff would recall. The trunk discovery was significant in another way, in the kind of coincidence that usually only happens in fiction, because years later McCutchen helped to launch the famous Terry and the Pirates!

 

It's likely that Caniff would have become a cartoonist without the trunk. From the very beginning he displayed a talent for art that was amply displayed in school journals and by the eighth grade he had already had a cartoon published in a local paper. By high school he was already freelancing for a newspaper art department, and by the time he reached college Caniff was providing art on the side for the Dayton Journal, the Miami Daily News, and the Columbus Dispatch, while still finding time to attend classes and participate in theatrical productions.

 

After graduating college Caniff found full time work at the Dispatch, spending nights working on a few abortive comic strip attempts. The new job only lasted a short time when the Depression struck, forcing the Dispatch to downsize.

 

Caniff's unemployment only lasted a short while; fortunately the Associated Press of New York had noticed clippings of the young artist's work and offered him a job. The timing was right; Caniff arrived in the Big Apple just in time for 1932's Presidential campaign, and his published portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared in papers all across the country, his first national exposure. While at AP the artist met a fellow worker who would equal his own success as a cartoonist, Al Capp. (Appropriately enough it was on April Fool's Day.) The two men became life-long friends and when Capp left the unfunny strip he had been assigned, Mr. Gilfeather, Caniff inherited the feature, turning it into the more palatable The Gay Thirties.

 

In addition to the single panel feature on life in America, Caniff was given a multi-paneled adventure strip to work on, Dickie Dare. The strip began in July 1933 and featured Dickie's daydreams of fighting along side Robin Hood and his Merry Men, hunting treasure with Long John Silver, and adventuring with Robinson Crusoe. Caniff lasted a year on the strip, which was to continue on until the late fifties, capably handled by Coulton Waugh and his wife, Mabel "Odin" Burvik.

 

Caniff had gotten a better offer from Colonel Patterson of the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate in the fall of 1934. The new job offer came about thanks to another cartoonist who had noticed Caniff's clippings, John McCutchen, the same artist who drew the inspirational cartoons that Caniff had discovered in his mother's trunk!

 

Patterson had been looking for something similar to Dickie Dare, and exotic adventure strip that featured a leading adult and a youthful sidekick. Caniff filled that bill with Terry and the Pirates, which first appeared on October 22, 1934. The continuity opened with the story of Terry Lee, an American boy, his adult pal Pat Ryan, and a clever Chinese servant named Connie, "chief cook and philosopher." The three set out for an abandoned treasure mine but soon find themselves stranded and penniless in a China swarming with brigands, warlords, and hostile Japanese troops.

 

Caniff's early work on the strip was good enough for the times but crude in comparison to what would come later. A big boost in his evolution as an artist came from teaming up with another young comics legend, Noel Sickles, the artist on the AP Scorchy Smith strip.

 

The two men, who had once shared a studio in Ohio, worked in tandem, writing and drawing for each other's strips, in the process developing a novel and time saving method for indicating detail, using a impressionistic brushwork technique known as "chiaroscuro." The technique became Caniff's trademark. As Jules Fieffer once said, "Black is Milton Caniff's primary color."

 

Caniff's mastery of light and dark, his talent for action scenes and camera angles, and his flair for dramatic storytelling all contributed to the popularity of Terry and the Pirates. Another strength of the strip has been its reliance on realism.

 

Caniff realized that potential fan interest must be immediately captured in a strip's first year. "Since a person must read the balloons to get the story," Caniff once said, "I thought I could catch them with vivid color and illustrations rather than straight cartoons. This meant that there'd have to be absolute authenticity."

 

Caniff worked long hours to achieve his goal, consulting with experts in every field. In one sequence involving an amphibious invasion, Caniff dug into thirty-eight books in order to nail down such details as to what military hospitals looked like and whether or not Japanese bombers veered to the right or left when launched from aircraft carriers.

 

Caniff read every book he could find the Orient, becoming more concerned with the problems China faced from the Japanese invaders, predicting in his strip that an inevitable conflict would break out between the U.S. and Hirohito's Imperial forces.

 

Pat and Terry shared the strip with an intriguing cast of supporting characters. To name just a few, there was Captain Judas, Burma, Big Stoop, Chopstick Joe, Dude Hennick, Cherry Blaze, Cue Ball, and one of the greatest of femme fatales, The Dragon Lady, who often played both sides of the fence. Caniff was a master of characterization; readers really got to know and care about many of his cast.

 

This point was amply illustrated in a famous 1941 episode, the death of Raven Sherman. A full week of continuity passed as Raven, wounded by the treacherous Captain Judas, slowly ebbs away on a lonely trail in China until finally, "as it must to every one," she dies. And then, as Caniff says, "The roof fell in!" Caniff was flooded with flower deliveries, mock memorial services, petitions of condolence signed by disparate groups as factory workers and entire colleges, as well as a lot of irate letters. For years afterwards the cartoonist would continue to get black-edged cards on the anniversary of Raven's death. Proving that perhaps, as Caniff put it, "the impacts of both picture and words drives more deeply into human awareness than any anthropologist has yet cared to note."

 

Perhaps so. But Caniff also noted that Raven was killed in October 1941. "If it had happened two months later, nobody would even remember her name today." Milton Caniff, to most comics fans, will always be regarded as the major leading light of the syndicated comic strip. He was a pioneer of a visual style of story telling that's widely imitated but seldom achieved, establishing innovations that would become a yardstick for all that followed in his footsteps. No major comics artists today remain untouched by his influences.

 

Two months after Milton Caniff's famous death-of-Raven sequence, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States' role in the Second World War had begun. Caniff had depicted Japan's aggression in China (as well as Japanese-Nazi collaboration) in Terry and the Pirates years before war broke out. "There was no general realization of impending war between Japan and the United States," said Caniff, "but anyone who could read newspapers could put it together. The Sino-Japanese war just served as a beacon for future sequences. I foresaw a terrific struggle for the Allies."

 

Terry joined in that struggle, having finally grown to young adulthood, and got his wings, becoming a pilot in the air force in China. Pat Ryan, his buddy and mentor, was phased offstage to join the Navy, replaced by another father figure, Colonel Flip Corkin. With the change Terry Lee finally became the sole lead in the strip bearing his name, but the "Pirates," like Pat Ryan, also disappeared.

 

Caniff stepped up the wartime action, with Terry occasionally joining forces with his old nemesis, the Dragon Lady ("tough as a hash-heavy top sergeant"), as well as a new friend in the strip, the very hip, wise-cracking Hot-Shot Charlie.

 

Terry and the Pirates soared in popularity during the war years, thanks to Caniff's storytelling and his incredible attention to detail (once buying film reels from the Army Signal Corps to check on a detail about aircraft carriers). Voluntary informants, readers from around the world, aided the artist. Men and women in the armed services provided invaluable information on anything thing from logistics to military uniforms. Caniff returned the favor by designing countless logos and insignias, designing a large number of instruction manuals and posters, and winning numerous citations from the Navy, War, and Treasury Departments.

 

If Terry and the Pirates helped the war effort by informing and entertaining the civilians, Caniff's Male Call did wonders for the guys in uniform. The strip, which ran uncensored in service newspapers, was heavy on cheesecake and featured the voluptuous Miss Lace, a kind of volunteer Morale Officer, who did her best to cheer up the men, usually by dressing in very low-cut outfits.

 

The strip's popularity peaked during the war years. During that time Terry had been adapted to radio and comics, and in 1940 James W. Horne directed a movie serial version (in the 1950s there was also a Terry TV series). After the war ended Caniff ran into contractual problems with his syndicate and went over to King Features, with a hefty salary increase and the added bonus of owning whatever strip he created. On December 29, 1946, the last of Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates appeared. George Wundar inherited the strip, which would continue on (in some years inked by E.C. artist George Evans) for another 25 years, finally folding in 1973. In 1995 Tribune Media Services resurrected Terry, which was written by Michael Uslan and illustrated by Greg and Tim Hildebrandt, later replaced by comics veteran

Dan Spiegle.

 

Steve Canyon, Caniff's new strip, debuted on January 7, 1946, opening simultaneously in 125 papers throughout the country, a unique distinction for a new strip, but understandable given Caniff's reputation. Steve was a compulsive hero ("the kind of guy who doesn'tlike to see people kicked around"). As Caniff described him in a Time magazine interview, Canyon was intended to be a "sort of modern Kit Carson, the strong silent Gary Cooper plainsman type. He'llhave lots of gals, one at every port."

 

Canyon was to be, in Caniff's words, "a picaresque novel," like Cervantes' Don Quixote; a traveler moving from one adventure to the next, accompanied by a friend the hero can talk to (and talk to the reader). In this case, Sancho Panza turned out to be a scrappy oldster, Happy Easter. Caniff also decided to bring in another Terry figure, the teenage Reed Kimberly -- after all, if Steve ever settled down to married life, Caniff needn't abandon any boy-meets-girl plot riffs.

 

Canyon did meet a lot of women. Many of them, like the cold-blooded Copper Calhoun (a nasty version of Daddy Warbucks), Cheetah (a totally amoral bargirl who would steal Reed's heart and then cheerfully step on it), the hapless Summer Olson (hopelessly in love with Steve and always abused by Ms. Calhoun, her employer), and cousin Poteet Canyon (a teenage version of Happy Easter). "Ninety-five percent of the interest in any fiction is what happens to the women, not what happens to the men," Caniff believed.

 

Like many other comic strip adventurers, Steve Canyon went on to become a Cold Warrior with the advent of the nineteen fifties, reentering the air Force after the outbreak of the Korean war. Steve found time between adventures in various Third World hotspots to finally marry Summer Olson in 1970 and after the Vietnam war became entangled in a number of marital problems that eventually resulted in a separation.

 

The Vietnam war also caused a number of problems for the strip itself, as the mood of the many Americans was definitely not in tune with military adventures. And as newspapers around the country began to shrink the panel size of their strips to make room for all-important advertising, Caniff's strip, like most realistic strips, began losing its effectiveness. As the aging Caniff began experiencing health problems, he was forced to drop penciling chores, which were then handled by Dick Rockwell (nephew of illustrator Norman Rockwell) and concentrate on writing and inking it.

 

Although ill heath couldn't keep the artist from the drawing board, he finally succumbed to lung cancer in 1988. Steve Canyon survived him by several weeks, after 41 years of continuity. Caniff's awards, which included two Reubens for his two strips, were numerous but the last Steve Canyon, dated June 4, was a final, wonderful tribute: it was two panels, one drawn by the legendary war cartoonist Bill Mauldin, the other signed by 78 fellow artists of the field he loved. Milton Caniff will be long remembered.

--Steve Stiles

www.stevestiles.com/caniff1.htm

www.stevestiles.com/caniff2.htm

 

Milton Caniff

 

Birth nameMilton Arthur Paul Caniff

BornFebruary 28, 1907

Hillsboro, Ohio

DiedMay 3, 1988 (aged 81)

New York City

NationalityAmerican

Area(s)artist

Notable worksDickie Dare

Terry and the Pirates

Steve Canyon

Awardsfull list

 

Milton Arthur Paul Caniff (February 28, 1907-May 3, 1988) was an American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.

 

Early life

 

Caniff was born in Hillsboro, Ohio. He was an Eagle Scout and a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. Caniff had done some cartoons for local newspapers as a teenager, while studying at Stivers School for the Arts. Shortly after matriculating at the Ohio State University, from which he graduated in 1930, Caniff began a career in journalism by applying to the Columbus Dispatch. There he worked with the noted cartoonist William "Billy" Ireland until Caniff's position was eliminated.

 

While at Ohio State, Caniff joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity, and later provided illustrations for The Magazine of Sigma Chi and The Norman Shield (the fraternity's pledgeship/reference manual).

 

Cartoonist

 

In 1932, Caniff moved to New York City to accept an artist position in the Features Service of the Associated Press. He did general assignment art for several months, then inherited a panel cartoon called Mister Gilfeather in September 1932 when Al Capp left the feature. Caniff continued Gilfeather until the spring of 1933, when it was retired in favor of a generic comedy in a panel cartoon called The Gay Thirties, which he produced until he left AP in the fall of 1934. In July 1933, Caniff began an adventure fantasy strip, Dickie Dare, influenced by series such as Flash Gordon and Brick Bradford.[1] The eponymous central character was a youth who dreamed himself into adventures with such literary and legendary persons as Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe and King Arthur. In the spring of 1934, Caniff changed the strip from fantasy to "reality" when Dickie no longer dreamed his adventures but experienced them as he traveled the world with a freelance writer, Dickie's adult mentor, "Dynamite Dan" Flynn.

 

In 1934, Caniff was hired by the New York Daily News to produce a new strip, Terry and the Pirates, the strip which made Caniff famous.[1] Like Dickie Dare, Terry began the strip as a boy who is traveling in China with an adult mentor and freelance writer, Pat Ryan. But over the years the title character aged and by World War II he was old enough to serve in the Army Air Force. During the twelve years that Caniff produced the strip, he introduced many fascinating characters, most of whom were "pirates" of one kind or another--Burma, a blonde with a mysterious possibly criminal past; Chopstick Joe, a Chinese petty criminal; Singh Singh, a warlord in the mountains of China; Judas, a smuggler; Sanjak, a lesbian; and then boon companions such as Hotshot Charlie, Terry's wing man during the War years; Connie and Big Stoop, a Chinese Jeff and Mutt (in stature) who followed Terry and Pat Ryan around the country; and April Kane, a young woman who was Terry's first love. But Caniff's most memorable creation was the Dragon Lady, a pirate queen; she was seemingly ruthless and calculating, but Caniff encouraged his readers to think she had romantic yearnings for Pat Ryan.

 

Lai Choi San, the Dragon Lady, Milton Caniff's most iconic character from Terry And the Pirates (©2006 by Tribune Media Services)

 

During the war, Caniff began a second strip, a special version of Terry and the Pirates without Terry but featuring the blonde bombshell, Burma. Caniff donated all of his work on this strip to the armed forces -- the strip was only available in military newspapers. After complaints from the Miami Herald about the military version of the strip being published by military newspapers in the Herald's circulation territory, the strip was renamed Male Call and given a new star, Miss Lace, a beautiful woman who lived near every military base on the planet and enjoyed the company of enlisted men, but not officers. Her function, Caniff often said, was to remind service men what they were fighting for, and while the situations in the strip brimmed with double entendre, Miss Lace was not, as far as she appeared in the strip, a loose woman, but she "knew the score." Far more so than civilian comic strips which portrayed military characters, Male Call was notable for its honest depiction of what the servicemen were up against: one strip showed Miss Lace dating a soldier on leave who had lost an arm; another strip had her escorting a blinded ex-serviceman. Caniff continued Male Call until seven months after V-J Day, ending it in March 1946.[2]

 

The year 1946 also saw the end of Caniff's association with Terry and the Pirates. While the strip was a major success, it was not owned by its creator but by its distributing syndicate, the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News, a common practice with syndicated comics at the time. And when Caniff was offered the chance to own his own strip by Marshall Field, publisher of the Chicago Sun, the cartoonist left Terry to produce a strip for Field Enterprises. Caniff produced his last strip of Terry and the Pirates in December 1946 and introduced his new strip Steve Canyon in the Chicago Sun-Times the following month.[1] At the time, Caniff was one of only two or three syndicated cartoonists who owned their creations, and he attracted considerable publicity as a result of this circumstance.

 

Steve Canyon

 

Like his previous strip, Steve Canyon was an action strip with a pilot as its main character. Canyon was originally portrayed as a civilian pilot with his own one-airplane cargo airline, but he re-enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War and remained in the Air Force for the remainder of the strip's run.

 

Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, although not gaining the popularity of Terry and the Pirates, nevertheless enjoyed greater longevity.

 

While Steve Canyon never achieved the popularity that Terry and the Pirates had at its height as a World War II military adventure or the cult fame Terry generated over the years, it was a successful comic strip with a greater circulation than Terry ever had. A short-lived Steve Canyon television series was produced in 1958, marking the height of the strip's fame. The title character's dedication to the military (Steve Canyon was often termed the "unofficial spokesman" for the Air Force) produced a negative reaction among readers during the Vietnam War, and the strip dropped in circulation as a result. Caniff nonetheless continued to enjoy enormous regard in the profession and in newspapering, and he produced the strip until his death in 1988. The strip was continued for a couple months after he died, but it soon expired, too, in June 1988.

 

Recognition and awards

 

Caniff was one of the founders of the National Cartoonist Society and served two terms as its President, 1948 and 1949. He also received the Society's first Cartoonist of the Year Award in 1947, nominally for his new comic strip, Steve Canyon, but since the award covered work published in 1946, it embraced Terry and the Pirates as well. Caniff would be named Cartoonist of the Year again, receiving the accompanying trophy, the Reuben, in 1972 for 1971, again for Steve Canyon. He was also named to the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1988. He received the National Cartoonist Society Elzie Segar Award in 1971, the Award for Story Comic Strip in 1979 for Steve Canyon, the Gold Key Award (the Society's Hall of Fame) in 1981, and NCS has since named the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in his honor.

 

Caniff died in New York City.

 

Followers

 

Along with Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, Caniff's style would have a tremendous influence on the artists who drew American comic books in the first half of the 20th century. Evidence of his influence can be clearly seen in the work of comic book artists such as Jack Kirby, Frank Robbins, Lee Elias, Bob Kane, Mike Sekowsky, Dick Dillin,John Romita,Sr. and Johnny Craig to name just a mere handful.

www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/395...

 

www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=49858

 

davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html

 

www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/

 

www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/10/18/lich...

 

mass.live.advance.net/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-6/11...

 

web.archive.org/web/20030310054018/www.newmassmedia.com/a...

 

DECONSTRUCTING ROY LICHTENSTEIN © 2000 David Barsalou

 

Andy Uhrich

12 December 2008

 

Copyright, Legal Issues, and Policy

H72.1804

Prof. Rina Pantalony

 

Now We All Live in Negativland: The Normalization of Copyright Tomfoolery

 

In many ways both legally and culturally 1991 was a different world. Most obviously and essentially, it was before the rise of the World Wide Web and its transformative revolution in how information, creative expression and commercial products are distributed, experienced and sold. This was an economic world then, before the rise of Napster and file sharing with its, to say the least, shattering effects on the business model for the content industry. It was a legal environment before the 1998 expansions of copyright in the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Term Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which brought copyright into the on-rushing digital world, but in a way designed to benefit commerce at the expense of fair use. However, by then there were a steadily growing number of artists and musicians who were creating new works based on appropriated sounds and images. Not surprisingly this got a number of them sued for copyright infringement. In the fall of 1991 sound art pranksters Negativland were sued by U2’s record and publishing companies over the uncleared samples and allegedly deceptive packaging of Negativland’s single called, provocatively, U2. Re-examining, from the viewpoint of our current digital impasse, these entertaining but dishearteningly complicated legal wranglings allows for a critique of the content industries legal response to the digital culture, a study of the origins of the counter-response by the advocates of free culture and fair use, and a reinforcement of the virtue of a purposefully imprecise copyright law.

It might be tempting for some to look at this pre-Information Superhighway era with a glint of nostalgia, almost as a simpler fin de siècle time where copyright infringement was easy to enforce, record labels where free to charge whatever they wanted for their product, and they didn’t need to sue grandmothers and teenagers for illegal downloading. Copyright law mainly had the regulatory role of promoting a free economy by preventing content providers from ripping off each other’s protected materials. It essentially required the economic and technological base of the entertainment industry to create a copy that was exact enough to infringe and that was distributable on a mass scale. Consumers could only consume.

To be sure there had been some earlier disruptions in this one way, top down commercial model of distributing culture. While these new technologies afforded the public some ability to control how and when they experienced pre-packaged culture, through time shifting or creating a mix-tape for a friend for example, the imperfect nature of analogue reproducibility limited the extent of the impact of the use. The content industry was either forced to accept and eventually reap huge profits from them, i.e. home videotape recorders, or while widely complaining about the effects – the British Phonographic Industry’s easily ridiculed “Home Taping is Killing Music” ad campaign – rather easily absorbing the minor market effects. It took digital technologies, with their stunning ease of perfect reproduction, alteration, and immediate and widespread dissemination, to truly upset the balance between content provider and consumer. This has had the by now well documented , contradictory effect of turning the wider public into felonious pirates plundering the wealth of the unexpecting entertainment industry and into activated and creative producers of a new digital folk culture. It has also brought copyright out of the purely economic sphere into our day-to-day lives regulating how we interact and experience the world around us.

Over the last century artists have played the role of the canary in the coalmine on this issue both in conceptually locating the human impulse to manipulate the increasingly mediated cultural environment and through the development of the actual methods of doing so. For the former the obvious touchstone is Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the readymade. Duchamp asserted that the true artistic act was not the previously conceived of final artwork such as a painting or a sculpture, but the mental decision of calling something “art”. The artist makes an artwork from appropriating images, objects and ideas from the world around them and it’s the conceptual gesture of doing so that transforms them from the prosaic and the natural into the aesthetic. As Duchamp showed, it didn’t matter if the original object was a urinal, a bottle rack, or the Mona Lisa suggestively detourned with an added moustache. Everything is fodder: high art, popular culture and the utilitarian.

In 1972 artist, musician and provocateur Genesis P-Orridge took Duchamp’s concept of the readymade into the realm of the copyright with his performance and related book entitled Copyright Breeches. Besides creating a punningly humorous pair of oversized trousers emblazoned with dozens of copyright symbols, instead of merely declaring already existing objects art as per Duchamp, P-Orridge asserted his copyright over them in a declaratory act of peremptory claiming . While it was obviously farcical for P-Orridge to claim copyright over things which he has no proper and legal ownership, his piece criticizes the acquisitive nature of the artists and the way the business world exploits the creative works of others. Astutely, P-Orridge highlights how the concept of what has become to be known as intellectual property undergirds and conjoins both worlds. Further, whether purposefully or not, it augurs the clashes to come between free expression and copyright control.

Until the ease of digital technologies it required the skill and drive of the artist to create a work that would irritate a copyright holder enough to claim infringement. One couldn’t just cut and paste an image of Mickey Mouse to raise the legal wrath of Disney, but you had to be a talented enough cartoonist to draw and publish a satirical and patently offensive underground comic involving trademarked and copyright protected cartoon characters as the Air Pirates did in 1971 . Or you had to have the ability to paint like Roy Lichtenstein who subtly repurposed copyrighted images from trashy pulp comic books into intentionally vague but incredibly valuable pop art objects .

Similarly, new recording technologies like videotape recorders and samplers were originally expensive enough and required enough training to limit the possibility of copyright infringement by the wider public. But with each new technology artists were immediately devising new methods of capturing the world around them, subverting and transforming the images and sounds they appropriated in manners that could not avoid infringing copyrights. According to the apocryphal origin myth of video art, in the fall of 1965 Nam June Paik purchased one of the first home video recorders – the Sony TCV-2100. Right away Paik set about recording televised images of politicians, popular figures and rock stars off the air that he manipulated and distorted . He did this as a comment on the media landscape with its emerging cult of the celebrity and as raw material for creating his cathode tube paintings where the TV screen became a new electronic canvas.

In the music world, the release of digital samplers in the late 1980s transformed the ease with which artists and musicians could use previously recorded sound as a raw element for new compositions. DJs in the hip hop world used the new technology to dramatically expand on the previously turntable-based musical form into the creatively dense soundscapes such as Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back . In an example presaging the troubles of Negativland, in 1989 composer John Oswald was forced to destroy the copies of his Plunderphonics CD. The CD, which featured a cheeky collage of Michael Jackson’s head on the nude body of a woman which certainly played a part in the actions against Oswald, was a cut-up clashing jumble of samples from musicians such as Dolly Parton, Metallica, the Beatles, James Brown and Michael Jackson. Oswald’s composition is clearly an act of musical critique and commentary in the way it collapsed previously held critical notions on the differences in musical genres and styles. Oswald, who distributed the CD for free, was threatened by the Canadian Recording Industry Association to turn over the existing copies and master tapes or face criminal proceedings. Lacking the financial means to battle the CRIA in court, Oswald complied . In a manner which builds on P-Orridge’s concept of the interwoven nature of art and commerce in relation to copyright, after the Plunderphonics debacle Oswald was hired twice by the music industry to create remix CDs: one celebrating the 40th anniversary of Elektra records (label to Metallica, one of the artists on Plunderphonics) and a double disc re-imagining of the Grateful Dead’s psychedelic freak out jam “Dark Star” . This suggests that the underlying issue is not the act of manipulation of the copyright protected work that disturbs the content industry, but doing it without their permission.

Negativland used a similar technology to create the two songs on their U2 single. They sampled U2’s hit song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and mixed it with clandestine outtakes of a furious Casey Kasem swearing during an un-aired dedication to the very same U2 song. Packaged in a cover emblazoned with the letter U and number 2 and an image of the spy plane, Negativland released the single as a conceptual goof on the music industry, the nature of appropriation (does the band U2 owns the phrase U2 with its Cold War connotations?) and the not so deeply veiled insincerity of an industry predicated on the commoditization of emotional connections.

Within weeks of the single’s release, on storied underground record label SST, lawyers representing U2’s label and publishing company – but not the band themselves – filed a lawsuit requesting an ex parte temporary restraining order to halt Negativland’s “exploitation” of their record. The lawsuit alleges that the single constitutes “nothing less than consumer fraud” due to the cover’s oversized U and 2 “which is so deceptive as to create the false impression that the recording of is a genuine U2 record”. The lawyers accuse Negativland of violating §43(a) of the Lanham Trademark Act and of “attempt[ing] to usurp the anticipated profits and goodwill to which plaintiffs are entitled from the exploitation of recordings and musical compositions by U2” . Once again, the lawyers were protecting the profits of the label and publishing company, not the musicians in U2.

The second part of the complaint focused on Negativland’s unauthorized use of the song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The lawyers called it a “blatant case of copyright infringement” under §101 of the Copyright Act justifying the request for the restraining order and compensation . The judge agreed with the request and issued the temporary restraining order to SST and Negativland on September 5th with a hearing set for the 15th of October.

Reading the lawsuit now – from a non-legal standpoint it must be emphasized – reveals the absurdity of presenting the U2 trademark as one easily damaged. In fact, in the narrative that the lawyers furnish to establish Island and Warner-Chappell’s as legal exclusive rights holders to sell and publish U2’s music constantly mentions the overwhelming success of U2. They state that for 11 years Island records has been “manufacturing, marketing, promoting, advertising and selling millions of records by the enormously popular recording group known as ‘U2’” . They go on to recall that U2’s The Joshua Tree album, which included the song that Negativland sampled, sold over 5 million copies alone in the United States and that album was made even more important by its winning a Grammy . The lawyers relayed an account where one of the world’s most popular bands and brands, that has sold millions and millions of records, can be usurped by a band who has pressed ten thousand copies of an album that if not stopped would “flood the shelves of record stores with the infringing recording […] creating massive confusion among the record buying public” . “Thus, some unwitting consumers, upon purchasing and listening to the ‘U2 Negativland’ recording, might well conclude that U2 has made a poor quality and offensive recording, thus further unlawfully tarnishing the band’s reputation and image, and the enormously valuable “U2” name and mark” .

Clearly, this is a hyperbolic legal form of writing designed to make an overwhelmingly convincing point in court. The point of bringing this up is not to suggest that there is some cut off point of damages under which pirates and bootleggers can operate outside of the law or that the plaintiffs were outside of their right as copyright holders. Instead it is to highlight that the lawyers, who were not required to prove damages or that any unwitting customers actually purchased the Negativland record thinking it was the new U2 record to request compensation, developed a legal case that might prevail in court but in the public arena ended up making U2 the heavy and Negativland the aggrieved party. This tin ear for judging the public opinion would return in their policy of litigation that the recording industry levied on individuals accused of illegal downloading a decade later .

Similarly to the Oswald case, SST settled with Island and Warner-Chappell stating at the time that the $90,000 of losses and fines incurred by settling out of court would be significantly less than the expected $250,000 in legal fees that a defense would cost, regardless of whether they were successful or not . The label agreed to hand over all copies of the recording and refrain from in any way infringing on U2’s trademark or copyright. The settlement effectively gave Island Records the rights to Negativland’s recording.

Instead of what should have been the end of a rather unfortunate audio prank became even more tortuous as Negative decided to continue fighting for their cause in the public arena. First, they parted ways with their label as SST was insisting the band was responsible for all of the damages. They kept their case on the media radar via attempts to convince Island founder Chris Blackwell to release the record as a b-side to a U2 record since “interest in the single is higher than ever” , entreaties to Casey Kasem, and ambushing U2’s the Edge in an interview where they hit him up for a loan to pay off their legal fees and release a new record .

In August of 1992 they released a magazine which compiled all the documents of the case – the original lawsuit, settlement, press clippings, letters and faxes between the parties, and the interview with the Edge – and a CD of an audio collage mixing together purposefully infringed copyright protected material and a treatise on fair use. SST immediately sued them for copyright infringement based on unauthorized publication of internal SST documents. The band and SST eventually settled out of court by allowing the label to release an essentially unauthorized live recording of Negativland and any parodies of Negativland if it so desired. Through a combination of relentlessly irritating Island records, appealing to U2’s better artistic impulses, and garnering the Irish band bad press over the suit Negativland had by the summer of 1994 convinced Island and U2 to return the offending recordings back to Negativland. While insisting that any contract indemnify U2 and Island from any legal actions that Kasem might take, according to U2’s manager Paul McGuinness the main condition for the return was “that you [Negativland] stop writing us” .

In 1995, Negativland released an expanding book version of the magazine that had earlier got them into legal trouble with SST. The book, Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 includes paper records that document the events after the earlier magazine and an appendix with essays on fair use, artistic appropriation, and the Supreme Court ruling on the 2 Live Crew Case. The book, with its in-depth paper trail of records from all sides, allows for a fascinating study of the legal and economic issues that result from copyright suits. Further, read from the vantage of the digital now, the book is a legal and cultural time capsule of a transitional era where just emerging technologies, which as the Negativland case shows were already roiling the legal waters, were on the cusp of completely transforming the relationship between producer and consumer.

Negativland and the book have played no small role in that transformation given their role in the free culture and fair use advocate groups that have arisen to counter what they see as the overreaching power grab by the content industry. Through the course of the book it is interesting to see Negativland adopting the tenets and cause of fair use whereas their original response was one of the freedom of artistic appropriation and first rights amendments. At some point after the lawsuits they became acquainted with Lawrence Lessig and the legal decision on the 2 Live Crew case ; both of which seems to have catalyzed their thinking on fair use and copyright. Without overplaying them or the books importance, it should be noted that their advocacy for fair use and their legal problems brought the issue to the underground independent culture, many of whom later became strong proponents of the freedom of artistic expression. An example of this would be someone like Carrie McLaren who at the time of the 1991 U2 Negativland lawsuit was a college radio music director and in 2002 curated the Illegal Art exhibit which featured work by Negativland and other artists stretching the boundaries of copyright . Negativland have continued their crusade against corporate control of expression; in 2003 they developed the sampling license for Creative Commons and just this fall Negativland member Mark Hosler lobbied members of Congress for copyright law revisions for the Digital Freedom Campaign .

In addition the book offers an opportunity to study a pre-Internet case of copyright infringement for the purposes of charting the origins and transformations of the current legal response by the music industry to the overwhelming flood of peer-to-peer copyright violations. One point that becomes quickly obvious regards whose benefits the lawsuits are designed to protect. As discussed earlier the lawsuit against Negativland was filed by U2’s record label and publishing company. Obviously, it is the norm in the industry for musicians to assign their label and publishing company the right of representation in legal matters, but seeing the business relationship laid out so starkly as it is in the lawsuit is revelatory. According to Eric Levine of Island Records: "record companies' primary assets are rights - copyrights, exclusive rights for recording services, names, trademarks etc” . So it’s not the actual songs or musicians that the music industry are selling, but the right to access and use them.

In both the Negativland case and the current lawsuits the goal of the content industry is to use its legal power to tamp down on behavior that it deems economically threatening. The content industry has the financial advantage of being able to pay for lawyers that Negativland didn’t and most defendants still don’t. Since the vast majority of these cases are settled out of court , this has the incredibly dangerous effect of limiting the discourse of copyright to one that favors corporate interests, as most cases do not reach the level of adjudication that might rule on issues such as fair use. This has the effect of criminalizing behavior that has not been proven so in court; it diminishes the presumption of innocence that the legal system is predicated on .

The entertainment industry’s campaign, while in no means effective , certainly shocks those on the receiving end of a lawsuit. When asked in 1995 if the lawsuit has forced Negativland to consider legal issues in a way that might limit their creativity, Hosler responds “Yeah, to some degree we probably will. It's just hellish to get sued” . In 2008, the mother of a college student who was sued for copyright infringement and was chastened by the $220,000 court ruling against Jamie Thomas said “I'm just so scared. I think we're just probably going to settle. I don't even want to go to court” . Stephanie Lenz, whose case is discussed below, states:

“[When recording home videos] I’m constantly thinking about what’s going on in the background, what’s on the TV, what’s on the CD player, the characters on my kid’s clothes, the characters on the toys they are playing with. I’m cognizant of what’s going of what’s going on at every step, instead of focusing on my kids, which is where my attention should be” .

 

One important lesson from the Negativland case is that while they were crushed into complying with the original lawsuit’s demands, in the end they essentially won. Through pleading their case in the media and doggedly pursuing U2 and Island Records Negativland got their supposedly illicit recordings returned to them. The results of that return contradict the lawsuit’s hysterical claims that allowing Negativland’s recording to be distributed would cause irreparable harm to U2’s image and record sale; clearly no such thing has happened. Negativland re-released the recordings in an expanded form in 2001 and has had absolutely no effect on U2’s market share or trademark.

While this example does not necessarily pertain to the lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharing, it is directly germane to the industry’s response of re-used and re-mixed copyright protected content that shows up, among other places, on YouTube. Yes, such behavior is unauthorized, but not only is there no proof of actual economic harm, but in this era of splintering audiences the content industry should instead take advantage of this new form of marketing. In the case of the Stephanie Lenz video where her infant son dances to “Let’s Go Crazy”, Prince and Universal instead of issuing a take down notice to YouTube could have leveraged the video and its audience by placing an ad for a new Prince album or a link to a site with a discounted mp3 of the now 24 year old song . Lenz, who is being represented by the Electronic Freedom Frontier, may not win her countersuit against Universal, but her case has resulted in a potentially significant ruling dictating that copyright holders must take into account issues of fair use and market impact before issuing take down notices .

That the economic and legal power resides with the content industry, but the social and moral power is with the public is just one of the ironies that the Negativland case unveils. Another is the fact that, as mentioned, the recordings were eventually returned to Negativland implying a fluid subjective nature to ascribing copyright infringement. These recordings are now available for free from Negativland’s website with a reproduction of the original cover or for sale in the expanded form from iTun

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