The Press: Not for Kids

In a way, the 162 newspapers that signed up for Milton Caniff's new comic strip were buying a pig in a poke. But publishers, who don't buy comics for the fun of it, were sure that it would be a prize porker. They felt certain that the man who made Terry and the Pirates, the best drawn U.S. comic strip, could do it again. Last week Caniff finally told them a little about his new comic (to start Jan. 13): it would be called Steve Canyon and "it isn't a kid's strip."

Getting set on characters, plot and locale, and leaving plenty of elbow room for years of future plotting, was a carefully thought out job. Hero Steve Canyon will look something like an older Terry ("I'll never mention his age") but, says Caniff, there's a difference: "Steve Canyon's been around . . . this guy might have been in love a dozen times." Steve's aviation taxi service covers the globe (slogan: "You furnish the reason, we'll furnish the ride"). Caniff gave his hero a roving job so that he could work in all the exotic backgrounds he wants; after a "decent interval," Steve Canyon can even go to Terry's China, on which Caniff—who has never been there—has built up an elaborate filing system of old National Geographies, airline schedules, etc. Canyon's enemies will be business crooks instead of routine badmen.

"He's a sort of modern Kit Carson, the strong silent Gary Cooper plainsman type. He'll always be broke—else why would he take all these queer jobs? He'll have lots of gals—one at every port. Naturally one of the problems will be to keep him single. I want to make him one of those guys that's sloppy as hell in his flying clothes, then can get dressed up in the evening and look like $700,000,000."

For woman trouble there'll be Steve's secretary, a tasty Samoan dish named Feeta Feeta. Harder to handle will be Copper Calhoon, "not exactly a good girl, yet within the legal limits. She's the daughter of a Wall Street wolf and just as tough as her old man. It's much easier to make a gal a baddie than a goodie. My plots are complicated. You've got to read it every day so that you'll know what happens. Make it so they can't stand it."