'' Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune '' is an American action/adventure comic strip created by

Roy Crane Royston Campbell Crane (November 22, 1901 – July 7, 1977), who signed his work Roy Crane, was an American cartoonist who created the comic strip characters Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer. He pioneered the adventure comic strip, establi ...

that was syndicated by

Newspaper Enterprise Association The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary news ...

beginning on Sunday, July 30, 1933. The strip ran for more than five decades until it was discontinued on October 1, 1988.

Characters and story

Originally, Captain Easy was a supporting character in the daily comic strip ''

Wash Tubbs ''Wash Tubbs'' is an American daily comic strip created by Roy Crane that ran from April 14, 1924 to 1949, when it merged into Crane's related Sunday page, ''Captain Easy''. Crane left both strips in 1943 to begin ''Buz Sawyer'', but a series of ...

'', which focused on the adventures of the zany Washington Tubbs II. On February 26, 1929, Crane introduced taciturn toughguy Captain Easy, who soon took over the strip. On July 30, 1933, Crane launched ''Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune'' as a

Sunday page The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in most western newspapers, almost always in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies. The first US newspap ...

starring Easy. Captain Easy was a chivalrous Southern adventurer in the classic adventure-hero mold. After a series of globe-trotting adventures, Easy enlisted in the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, afterwards becoming a private detective.

Sunday strips

The Sunday adventures were initially unconnected to those of the ''Wash Tubbs'' strip and dealt with Easy's adventures prior to meeting Tubbs. They are considered a ''tour-de-force'' by Crane, who crafted layouts intended to be seen as a coherent whole rather than a disparate collection of panels. Comics historian

R. C. Harvey Robert C. Harvey (May 31, 1937 – July 7, 2022) was an American author, critic and cartoonist. He wrote a number of books on the history and theory of cartooning, with special focus on the comic strip. He also worked as a freelance cartoonist. ...

described Crane's

innovation: :On Sundays, Crane concentrated on Easy, and these pages soon absorbed him. The art chores on the dailies were assigned to others in the NEA bullpen so that Crane could pour his imagination into the weekly installments of Easy's adventures. Crane loved the spacious potential of the Sunday page—as would any graphic artist; and he spent most of his energy here rather than on the less visually challenging dailies. And on the Sunday pages, Crane did some of his finest work. Since he was drawing for the addition of color, Crane shaded these pages very little, so his artwork here is refined to its unembellished essence. And in its essence, Crane's work demonstrates the marvelous precision and telling efficacy of a line so simple it seems naive. But appearances in art are as often deceiving as they are in life. The simplicity of Crane's linework is the ultimate sophistication of irreducible economy, the absolute in purity of graphic expression. :Crane's Sunday pictures are carefully, lovingly, drawn, every panel composed to tell the story while sustaining the illusion of time and place. And the pages themselves are artful designs, irregular albeit nonetheless pleasing patterns of panels rather than uniform grids. But these layouts are not simply designs: they were devised to give visual impact to the story. When Crane drew Easy at the brink of a cliff, he gave depth to the scene by depicting it in a vertical panel that is two- or three-tiers tall. When Easy leads a cavalry charge or paddles a canoe down a lazy river, the panel is as wide as the page, giving panoramic sweep to the scene depicted. Unfortunately, in 1937, the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate, which employed Crane and owned the strip, introduced a new policy requiring Sunday pages designed so the panels could be rearranged into different formats. Crane then turned the Sunday pages over to his assistant

Leslie Turner Leslie Turner (December 25, 1899 - March 2, 1988) was an American cartoonist and writer who produced the adventures of ''Captain Easy'' for more than three decades. Biography Early life and education Born in Cisco, Texas, Turner grew up fro ...

so he could concentrate on the

daily strip A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays. Bud Fisher's ''Mutt and Jeff'' is commonly regarded as the first daily c ...

. The Tubbs and Easy characters were owned by NEA, and in 1943, Crane abandoned his strips and exited NEA to begin ''

Buz Sawyer ''Buz Sawyer'' is a comic strip created by Roy Crane.Ron Goulart, ''The Funnies : 100 Years of American Comic Strips''. Holbrook, Mass. : Adams Pub, 1995. (pp. 149-50) Distributed by King Features Syndicate, it had a run from November 1, 1943 to ...

'', a strip he owned outright. Crane's last daily ''Wash Tubbs'' strip ran on May 29, 1943.

After Roy Crane

After Crane's departure, Turner took control of the strips, with his assistant Walt Scott drawing the Sunday page. Easy was in the Army by that time, and Tubbs had an increasingly unimportant role, so both daily and Sunday strips displayed the name ''Captain Easy'' in 1949 (with ''Wash Tubbs'' fading away). Scott drew the Sunday strip until 1952, when Turner took it over with inks by assistant Bill Crooks. began ghosting the Sunday page in 1960. Turner continued to draw the daily strip until he retired in 1969, with his last credited daily strip running January 17, 1970. Following Turner's departure, the strips passed to his assistants, Bill Crooks (art) and Jim Lawrence (story). The pair produced both the daily and Sunday strips from January 19, 1970, to May 23, 1981. When Lawrence left in May 1981, the Sunday page ended. Mick Casale joined as the new writer, and he and Crooks produced the daily strip until it was discontinued on October 1, 1988. Before the Sunday ''Captain Easy'', there was a short-lived ''Wash Tubbs'' Sunday third, which began with gags featuring Tubbs and later puzzles for children. It ran from 10 May 1931 to 9 July 1933. Captain Easy appeared in one strip.

Reprints

Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy were featured in Big Little Books during the 1930s. They also appeared in Dell comic books from 1936 (Captain Easy, as early as ''The Funnies'' #1, October 1936 cover date) and 1937 (Wash Tubbs, as early as ''The Comics'' #1, March 1937 cover date) into the 1940s. Almost the entire 1924–43 run of Crane's strip was reprinted in ''Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy'', an 18-volume black-and-white series featuring biographical and historical commentary by

Bill Blackbeard William Elsworth Blackbeard (April 28, 1926 – March 10, 2011), better known as Bill Blackbeard, was a writer-editor and the founder-director of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art, a comprehensive collection of comic strips and cartoon art ...

. With production, design and strip restoration by

Bhob Stewart Robert Marion Stewart, known as Bhob Stewart (November 12, 1937 – February 24, 2014) was an American writer, editor, cartoonist, filmmaker, and active fan who contributed to a variety of publications over a span of five decades. His articles a ...

, this series was published by

NBM Publishing Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing Inc. (or NBM Publishing) is an American graphic novel publisher. Founded by Terry Nantier in 1976 as Flying Buttress Publications, NBM is one of the oldest graphic novel publishers in North America. The compa ...

on a quarterly schedule from 1987 to 1992. Fantagraphics Books has reprinted all of the ''Captain Easy'' Sundays by Roy Crane in color, in four volumes edited by Rick Norwood.Roy Crane, ''Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips 1933–1935 (Vol. 1)'', Rick Norwood, editor, Fantagraphics Books, 2010, A fifth volume featuring the best of the daily strip is planned.

References

External links

''Captain Easy''
at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Archived
from the original on April 9, 2012.

Sources

* Strickler, Dave. ''Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924–1995: The Complete Index.'' Cambria, California: Comics Access, 1995. {{ISBN, 0-9700077-0-1 1933 comics debuts 1988 comics endings Adventure comics American comics characters American comic strips Comics characters introduced in 1929 Comics spin-offs Easy, Captain Fictional private investigators Fictional United States Army personnel Fictional World War II veterans