Richard Sidney Yager (October 23, 1909 – July 22, 1995)[1] was an American cartoonist most famous for his work on the Buck Rogers comic strip during its heyday in the mid-20th century.

Yager also dreamed up many of the feature's most beloved characters, notably "Admiral Cornplaster", the mischievous little green alien who could climb walls and hang from ceilings thanks to his vacuum-cupped hands and feet.

Many of Yager's contemporaries developed an overly slick technique that transformed drawings into little more than photographs drained of incipient movement and life.

During this phase of his career Yager also took over the daily Buck Rogers strip — both art and storyline; he was assisted by Len Dworkins from 1951 to 1956.

[5] After having been read by millions of people every day for decades,[6] the Buck Rogers strip fell on hard times after Yager's departure.

After leaving Buck Rogers Yager created a new Sunday only comic strip entitled The Imaginary Adventures of Little Orvy in 1959.

The strip remained popular but shortly before it was to enter its fourth year, Yager received an offer to take over the Sunday Grin and Bear It page from George Lichty.

From the early 1960s until the mid-1980s Yager also produced the Cappy Dick's Young Hobby Club page for children, which had a wide national syndication as well.

In the late 1940s Yager also illustrated noted psychologist Albert Edward Wiggam's Let's Explore Your Mind daily feature for the National Newspaper Syndicate.

His expert scrimshaw work was featured in William Gilkerson's seminal book entitled The Scrimshander, which was originally published in 1978.

[7] He was accomplished at the piano as well, and he entertained friends and relatives with popular tunes from the 1920s and 30s played in his unique improvised stride style.

As many of the early astronauts had cited the Buck Rogers comic strip to be a major influence on their dreams of going into space, Yager was a guest of NASA for the launch of Apollo 11, and was interviewed for a TV news show on splashdown day.

The librarians noticed this 10-year-old kid checking out every book on comics and sitting there reading the ones that were reference-only, so they asked if I wanted to meet a real cartoonist and they arranged it.