The Press: Escape Artist

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While still an insignificant Sig, Caniff imitated John Held Jr., tried editorial cartoons for the Columbus Dispatch. He was jobless in 1932 when the Associated Press Feature Service beckoned him on to New York.

Caniff's dear, dead A.P. days will never be beyond recall. In the artists' bullpen on Madison Avenue, where Alfred Gerald Caplin (now Al Capp, creator of Li'l Abner) was also fenced in, Caniff launched a "kid strip" called Dickie Dare. A.P. artists got $60 to $85 a week and the greenest hand had to block out "the damn crossword puzzles." "They wouldn't even tell us how many papers were using our stuff," Caniff complains. "They were afraid we'd get big ideas."

A Lady Pirate. One day in 1935 brown-haired Mollie Slott, mother-hen of the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News Syndicate, marched in to the late Captain Joseph M. Patterson, the P. T. Barnum of the U.S. comic strip. "There's a young chap in my office," she told him, "with a letter from John McCutcheon." Patterson groaned: "What, another fraternity brother?" Said Mollie: "But this is the one who does Dickie Dare" Her sons had sold her on Dickie, and she had given the boss a batch of the strips to look at.

Patterson stalked out to her office, stared coldly at Caniff and asked: "Ever do anything on the Orient?" Caniff hadn't. "You know," Joe Patterson mused, "adventure can still happen out there. There could be a beautiful lady pirate, the kind men fall for. . . ." In a few days Caniff was back with samples and 50 proposed titles; Patterson circled "Terry" and scribbled beside it "and the Pirates."

Better than any other press lord, the moody genius of the Daily News knew how to make the modern mass-circulation daily an attractive grab-bag, with prizes to please either sex and every taste. Critics might object that newspapers should be newspapers, and censure anything else in them as a regrettable defection from duty. But Patterson recognized that readers wanted something that was part almanac, shopping guide, magazine and variety show as well as news bulletin board. Like U.S. radio, the press dealt in news, entertainment and commercials; the amount of each might differ, but the ingredients were the same. Patterson's mixture called for health hints and horoscopes, patterns and etiquette, advice for the lovelorn and tips on the horses—and compelling, habit-forming comics. Most of the strips that helped his lusty tabloid grow were named by him (Dick Tracy, Orphan Annie, Moon Muttins, etc.), often after a thoughtful thumbing of the telephone book. All the artists felt his sensitive, shrewd touch. From Caniff he wanted adventure, suspense, and pretty women.