AND
OTHER ADVENTURES
THE BEST
OF
CAPTAIN EASY
WASH TUBBS
AND
First Washington Tubbs II daily comic strip, 1924.
the editor and publisher wish to thank the following for their invaluable help:
Roy Crane Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries
Bill Blackbeard
Terry Nantier
Germund von Wowern
Fantagraphics Books, 7563 Lake City Way NE, Seattle, Washington 98115 | Editor: Rick Norwood. Editorial Liaison: J. Michael Catron. Design: Tony Ong. Art Restoration: Paul Baresh and Preston White. Associate Publisher: Eric Reynolds. Publisher: Gary
Groth | Hurricane Isle and Other Adventures: The Best of Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs copyright ©2015 Fantagraphics Books. All Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy strips copyright ©2015 United Feature Syndicate, Inc. “A History of Lickety Whop” ©2015 Ron Goulart.
“Introduction” and “Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy Episode Guide” copyright ©2015 Rick Norwood. | Thanks to Terry Nantier for his permission to reprint art from Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy, published by NBM. | Some illustrations and photographs in this book
were provided by Germund von Wowern and by the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce material must be obtained from the publisher. | To receive a free color catalog of comics, graphic
novels, prose novels, and many classic newspaper strips such as Peanuts, Popeye, Prince Valiant, Dennis the Menace, and Buz Sawyer, call 1-800-657-1100 or visit www.fantagraphics.com. | ISBN: 978-1-60699-809-0 | First Fantagraphics printing: March 2015 | Library
of Congress Control Number: 2014954770 | Printed in China by Forwards Group.
Next page: Undated early drawing of Wash Tubbs by Roy Crane.
AND
OTHER ADVENTURES
THE BEST
OF
CAPTAIN EASY
WASH TUBBS
AND
Edited by Rick Norwood
CONTENTS
A History of Lickety Whop by Ron Goulart..................................................v
Introduction by Rick Norwood ...................................................................vii
Hurricane Isle, February 23, 1928–June 6, 1928 ...........................................1
Arabia, July 30, 1928–December 12, 1928..................................................33
Kandelabra, April 11, 1929–July 6, 1929 ....................................................73
Desert Island, February 6, 1930–June 7, 1930 ............................................99
The Phantom King, June 9, 1930–October 29, 1930 ................................135
Down on the Bayou, March 12, 1931–July 25, 1931 ................................177
The Transalpina Express, August 13, 1931–November 21, 1931 ...............217
Devil’s Island, June 9, 1932–August 3, 1932 .............................................247
Whales, April 24, 1933–August 30, 1933..................................................264
Okefenokee, June 13, 1935–July 24, 1935 ................................................302
Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs Episode Guide by Rick Norwood ..............317
An Afterword in Pictures ...........................................................................318
About the Authors .....................................................................................322
Bull Dawson, circa 1930.
A HISTORY OF LICKETY WHOP
BY RON GOULART
influenced by the movies and, like the movies, he started adding sound —
Pow! Plop! Wham! Lickety Whop!
But Crane was still vaguely dissatisfied. In a late 1928 sequence, Wash
and his then-sidekick, Gozy, have to rescue Princess Jada from a desert kidnapping. Aided by a harem servant, they bring it off. Crane’s brother-in-law
chided him — “He told me you shouldn’t have a eunuch save them.’’
In the spring of 1929, Crane introduced a tough, two-fisted hero in
the person of Captain Easy. “Since this brother-in-law of mine suggested it,
I used him as a model,’’ Crane said. In a relatively short time, Easy became
the star of the daily and landed a full-page Sunday of his own, which Wash
didn’t initially appear in at all.
When Roy Crane, age 23, began doing his Wash Tubbs strip in 1924, he
had no notion that he was creating one of the major adventure strips of the
20th century. In fact, he once told me he wasn’t exactly certain what he was
doing. Washington Tubbs II started as a gag-a-day strip about a short young
go-getter who worked in a grocery store. Soon running out of usable gags,
the young cartoonist thought he might add continuity. “The problem was
what to do … ideas like DeBeck or The Gumps.”
Finally, he decided on converting to humorous adventure. For the
next four years, he took his diminutive hero to romantic places around the
globe. His drawing improved, as did his staging, and he taught himself to
draw pretty women, which remained one of his lifelong talents. Crane was
An autobiographical article by Roy Crane from the Youngstown (OH) Telegram, May 10, 1927.
v
In the sequences you’ll find in this compilation, you’ll learn about
some of Wash’s pre-Easy adventures, learn why Captain Easy is a captain,
and watch poor Wash assume his new and perennial role as a second banana.
In the early ’30s, many believed that World War I had made the world
safe for democracy. There was, to be sure, the Depression to worry about,
but the stage, the movies, and the comic strips often used light-opera settings. Crane said he loved the operetta locations he used in his strip. He
visited Europe in 1937 and apparently overlooked Hitler and an impending
Second World War. By the later 1930s, Easy was an FBI agent hunting down
Nazi agents, and Wash was married to the boss’s daughter.
One of the many artists Crane influenced was Floyd Gottfredson, who
drew the Mickey Mouse daily newspaper strip for several decades. Gottfredson said he found the animated Mickey too bland. So he and his writer modeled the comic-strip Mickey after the adventurous and small Wash Tubbs.
And for many years, Mickey was a sort of Wash with mouse ears.
Of the strips in this collection, Roy Crane did all the writing and drawing without benefit of assistants. That would come later.
Undated Roy Crane sketches.
vi
INTRODUCTION
BY RICK NORWOOD
For 20 years, from 1924 to 1943, Roy Crane wrote and drew the daily Wash
Tubbs comic strip. He then left to begin his second classic strip, Buz Sawyer.
It was on this newsprint stage that Roy Crane invented adventure comics.
When Steven Spielberg directed Raiders of the Lost Ark, he very consciously
imitated the mix of excitement and humor pioneered by Roy Crane.
This book collects the very best of those adventures. Most are from the
early 1930s. Before 1928, the funny papers featured the same pratfalls and
ethnic humor as vaudeville. There were no adventure comics, and comic
books hadn’t been invented.
The Wash Tubbs strip, like the later Sunday Captain Easy strip, was not
broken down into discrete stories, but was a continuous narrative from beginning to end. For this collection, I’ve selected the most entertaining and
dramatic adventures from the entire run, starting each where the real adventure begins, omitting the humorous interludes, and ending with a satisfying
conclusion. Since these sequences weren’t originally named individually, I’ve
invented descriptive titles for each, to help you find a particular adventure
that you may have heard of or remember. The same is true of the titles in the
accompanying episode guide.
With “Hurricane Isle,” the first story in this book, Crane tried something entirely new. In the strips leading up to “Hurricane Isle,” Crane produced a fairly typical comical sequence about con artists and a questionable
treasure map. But in the first week we see here, none of the strips has a gag in
the last panel. Instead, Crane introduces the first of many innovations — the
use of authentic detail to make the story real.
“Hurricane Isle” also introduces the first non-comedic villain in comics. Bull Dawson is not like the Mickey Mouse villain Black Pete. Bull is
more realistic, tough, and deadly. Comic strip villains had killed before, but
always with a certain humorous intent, their victims sprawled on their backs,
big feet in the air. Bull Dawson is cut from a different cloth.
Undated photo of Roy Crane.
“Arabia” is on almost everyone’s list of the best Wash Tubbs daily stories.
It shows great use of authentic detail, as in the fact that much of the Arabian
Desert is pebbles, not sand, and is a satisfying mix of humor and adventure.
“Kandelabra” introduces Captain Easy to the strip, and “Desert Island” features the return of Bull Dawson.
vii
Roy Crane original art. Thanks to Germund von Wowern.
In “The Phantom King,” the humorous buildup is inextricable from
the violent conclusion, so you can see for yourself how Crane would transition from gags to mayhem. In “Down on the Bayou,” we have a delightful
sense of the setting and discover some of Captain Easy’s backstory.
“The Transalpina Express” is the only purely humorous story I’ve included. How could I leave out Crane’s delightful drawings of dinky trains?
Contrast this Balkan war, played entirely for laughs, with the brutal battles
of “The Phantom King.”
“Devil’s Island” is another carefully researched yarn. Wash and Easy
wind up in the notorious island prison. In “Whales,” we see a snapshot of
the last days of the old whaling ships, set side by side with the factory whalers
that were turning the romance of whaling into a bloody business.
We return to the American South in the final tale in this volume, “Okefenokee.”
There are later Crane stories I love. “Mahogany” and “Return to Barataria” come to mind. But in the later part of Crane’s tenure on the strip, the
pressure of producing a strip a day, 365 days a year (with an extra strip on
leap years) took its toll, and Crane was forced to turn to assistants to meet
the unforgiving deadlines. Crane did not sign the strips drawn by lesser artists. A best of Roy Crane collection should naturally focus on Crane.
Here, then, carefully restored for you to enjoy, are 10 of the greatest
stories by one of the greatest comics writer/artists of all time.
1934 newspaper cartoon by Roy Crane.
viii
HURRICANE ISLE
FEBRUARY 23, 1928–JUNE 6, 1928
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