Number 800
Wash Tubbs and Roy Crane
Cartoonist Roy Crane created the comic strip, Wash Tubbs, in 1924. Within a short period he transformed it into one of the very first continuity comic strips. Crane added Captain Easy to the cast in 1929 and the strip became a true classic.
Crane never worked for comic books, although his work was pasted up for several issues of Dell's Four Color series. This particular issue is #53, published in 1944, which reprinted Wash Tubbs strips from 1939 and '40. In this pre-War sequence Wash and Easy travel to a tropical island for the "secret of beauty." They find beauty, and they find the secret, and a few villains and fistfights along the way.
This is part 1; come back Friday for part 2.
Continued Friday...
4 comments:
Roy Crane is amazing. I recently finished reading the Fantagraphics volume and I am in awe. Thanks for more Crane!
Thanks, Simone. I have more Crane I'll try to show some time in the future.
I remember once reading about Charles Shultz speaking before a crowd of comic strip fans. He was naming his heroes and asked the crowd how many of them had heard of Crane and the crowd was silent.
Schulz (who was a bit shy but had a real appreciation for comics as an art and also had a dark sense of humor) said something like, "I don't think I care to speak to a crowd that claims to love comics and has never heard of Roy Crane."
Crane was a genius who was looked up to from a personal level by other geniuses.
I haven't heard the anecdote about Schulz but it sounds like something he would have said, and I agree with your statement, "Crane was a genius who was looked up to from a personal level by other geniuses."
Roy Crane's art influenced many cartoonists, but unfortunately appeals now to an esoteric bunch like us, and not the general public. I'm happy to do what I can to keep his work alive.
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