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."

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