a formidable punch in the face—she could be friendly and even somewhat forward herself with G.I.s who approached her with respect, and she never lacked for male attention. One strip describes Miss Lace as "sorta every G.I.'s chick ... you might run into her on a pass into town almost anywhere ... Darwin, Belfast, Algiers, Kunming, Boston, Fort Worth, Seattle, Kodiak, Indianapolis ... wherever you hope to have a good time." [[File:Lace Male Call.jpg|right|thumb|500px|Milton Caniff's "Miss Lace", the central character of Male Call. This later drawing by Caniff post-dates the strip, and is more risque than military censors would allow during Male Call'''s original run.]] Almost no details were offered about Miss Lace's backstory, and she even point-blank refused to divulge to anyone whether "Lace" was her first or last name. She traveled, and apparently lived with, an unnamed Asian maid who was a very occasionally recurring character; where Miss Lace came from or how she maintained her lifestyle was never addressed. It was strongly implied, however, that Miss Lace was quasi-magical, a fantasy willed to life to help American soldiers win the war. Particularly sympathetic to enlisted men, she could suddenly appear at dances or in trenches, and was seemingly impervious to the realities of combat or of war material shortages. In the final strip, published after the war, Miss Lace left a note saying her mission was accomplished. She then simply vanished, never to be seen again. Comics historian Don Markstein described the Male Call characters: Miss Lace herself was inspired by Norman Pett's comic strip Jane, published in the British tabloid The Daily Mirror from 1932 to 1959. Caniff would first produce a strip that was done with line drawings only, and no heavy inks. This would then be sent to the military censor who would either approve it, send it back with suggested changes, or in a dozen or so instances over the course of strip's history, reject it outright. Once approved, a stencil would be made of the line drawn copy, and the original sent back to Caniff, who would then apply more inks. The stencil version would be sent to camps which ran their local paper off on mimeograph machines, while the inked version would go to those that had actual newspaper presses. Caniff had said that he invested nearly as much time into each weekly Male Call installment as he did a week's