Passing the Buck

Space cannot hamper nor ray gun faze his hero Buck Rogers, but last week Cartoonist Rick Yager admitted that he had surrendered to one of the lowest of earth-bound weapons: his editor's blue pencil. "Too much editing, too much criticism--I just couldn't create any more," explained Yager, whose last drawings for the National Newspaper Syndicate will be published this Sunday. Retorted the syndicate's President Robert Dille: "We're happy he quit."

Dille wanted Yager to plan his adventures well ahead, submit proofs in advance, stick to "scientific probability," and cut out flighty nonsense, e.g., mist-men who appear and disappear at will. "We argued and talked about it," said Dille, "and, believe me, there are times when a syndicate president would like to put an artist into orbit."

Cartoonist Yager, 46, is now negotiating with three syndicates on a new spaceman comic strip that he thinks will make Buck Rogers seem as obsolete as a caveman. "Buck Rogers' day is here," explained Yager. "So now a fellow has to think up things the scientists haven't got yet." In the divorce, National Newspaper Syndicate kept custody of Buck Rogers himself, who was created 29 years ago by Dille's father and taken over by Yager alone only in 1948. Dille will continue to peddle Buck's 25th century adventures to the post-Sputnik boom market of 154 U.S. dailies (TIME, Feb. 24). The new artist who will learn to live with President Dille's blue pencil: Murphy Anderson, longtime space-fiction cartoonist.

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