Captain Midi Is Not Himself

In many a newspaper shop the only things kept constantly under lock & key are the make-up man's mats of future comics, usually received from syndicates two weeks ahead of publication. What will happen in the next installment of a comic strip is one of newspaperdom's most carefully guarded trade secrets.

Last week a cat slipped out of the bag in 176 U.S., South American and Canadian newspaper offices: "Captain Midi," the spy currently in the foreground of boyish Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates, will soon be revealed as a masquerading woman. The cat-looser: a "profile" of Caniff in The New Yorker.

Faced with loss of suspense to a long-developing climax, Artist Caniff could do nothing about what was, in a sense, an involuntary copyright trespass. Said he: "My mistake. I thought the [New Yorker] story was to run a couple of weeks later than it did, and approved it. Funny thing--a lot of 'Terry' fans had already guessed 'Midi' was going to turn out to be 'Sanjak,' a woman character I haven't used for about four years."

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