The Press: Double Take

Four years ago, Cartoonist Milton Caniff gave up his Terry and the Pirates to draw a brand-new comic strip around a handsome, tough character named Steve Canyon. Last week readers of Steve Canyon and Terry (now drawn by George Wunder) were having a hard time keeping the strips apart. Both Steve and Terry, returned to active service as Air Force officers, were in the process of making air rescues of American troops cut off in Red territory in the Korean war. Both rescues were complicated by pretty, willful females—Canyon's by Dr. Deen Wilderness and Terry's by Nurse Spray O'Hara.

Though Wunder's Terry was running about two weeks behind Caniff's Steve in story plot, no one complained of plagiarism. Since comic strips are drawn weeks before publication, both Wunder and Caniff explained that plots have to be "safe" enough to survive any last-minute turns in the war. And what could be safer, in advance or retreat, than a daring rescue?