The Press: Buck's Luck

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For the "priceless-to-science" body of Laika, the Russian dog still orbiting in Sputnik II, rival spaceships battled grimly last week with every weapon still unknown to science. The futuristic dogfight took place in Buck Rogers, the comic pages' oldest and highest-flying extraterrestrial strip, which was launched into newspaper space 29 years ago by Chicago's National Newspaper Syndicate. A perennial hero to the space-gun set, Buck Rogers is flying higher than ever after falling from a prewar apogee of 136 client dailies in 1935 to a postwar perigee of 43 papers in 1956.

As soon as Sputniks I and II joined Captain Rogers in outer space, editors across the U.S. started signing up in droves for the daily and Sunday strip. By last week 154 U.S. dailies and some 100 foreign papers in 18 languages were hitched to Buck Rogers' spaceship. The syndicate is already feeling crowded by man's real-life advance into space. Sighs Artist Rick Yager, Buck's longtime (16 years) copilot, who works eight weeks in advance: "It's getting pretty hard to think up things that the scientists can't possibly build—right away, that is."