Milton Arthur “Milt” Caniff was born in Hillsboro, Ohio on February 28, 1907. He moved with his parents in 1919 to Dayton, Ohio where his lifelong association with cartooning and newspapering would begin. In early 1921, he enrolled in a Cleveland-based correspondence course on cartooning, and that summer took his first newspaper work: as a part-time apprentice to Fred Appel, the art director of the Dayton Journal. The 15-year old Caniff worked after school let out on weekdays and all day on Saturdays during the school year, and would continue this throughout high school, working full time summers, seven days a week. As he learns the newspaper trade in the production rooms of the Journal he is also receiving his first classroom art education, becoming active socially, and sees his first cartoon work, a strip called Chic and Noodles published regularly in his school paper.

In 1925, Caniff enrolled in the fine arts school at Ohio State University, immediately landing another part-time newspaper job, thiss time with the Columbus Dispatch. Upon graduation in 1930, he accepts a full-time position with the paper and marries his longtime sweetheart Esther “Bunny” Parsons. In 1931, Caniff began a commercial art business with fellow cartoonist and college chum, Noel Sickles. In 1932, the newspaper laid Caniff off, and after a brief diversion as a publicity man for a traveling theater troupe, he devotes all his attention to he and Sickles business.

This was to be short-lived, as he is offered a job in the art department of the Associated Press Feature syndicate in New York.