Wash Tubbs / Captain Easy by Roy Crane (No. 25)

Wash Tubbs / Captain Easy (1924-1943)

by Roy Crane

REVIEW BY TOM SPURGEON:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

Wash Tubbs is the best adventure comic of all time for one reason and one reason only: it moved. Cartoonist Roy Crane kept the soap opera, character interaction and romance in his strip to a minimum, perhaps sacrificing a larger audience and legacy in the process, but leaving more room for the straight-ahead action he did best. And what action! Fistfights could last for days, pursuers could chase the lead characters over miles of lovingly-drawn countryside, and characters had few qualms about not only scooping up a gun if one was available but using it. Crane's style, a mix of cartoon and fine-line drawing, was perfectly suited for the task at hand.

The vehicle for all that action was slow in developing. Wash Tubbs was originally a domestic continuity about the romantic travails of its namesake lead. The strip later became a kind of adventure-comedy, as Tubbs, and soon enough, too-similar pal Gozy Gallup, practiced hijinks and farcical comedy in a number of locations across the world. Things finally fell into place with the arrival of soldier of fortune Easy (in typical Crane fashion, he made his debut by breaking down a door). With Easy providing the muscle and a sense of mystery, and Tubbs providing a combination of earnest support, comedy relief, and a second avenue for romantic entanglements, the two spent several years exploring the then wider world in a variety of fast-paced adventures.

As fodder for the stories, Crane drew on his own past as a seaman, a career he gave up to enter newspaper illustration in the early '20s. But details were only important when the story called for verisimilitude - as in the well-regarded whaling sequence in which Easy and Tubbs are forced into service on a sailing ship. More than the plain facts, Crane captured a sense of travel and freedom that is uniquely American, during perhaps the last decade when one could thrill to faraway shores, endless escapes, and the eventual victory promised two square-shooters.

ALEX TOTH:
(from an interview conducted in 1979/1980, printed in The Comics Journal #262, 2004)
My appreciation of simplicity - truth in line art and tone - eventually led me to Roy Crane's Wash Tubbs / Captain Easy and his later Buz Sawyer / Rosco Sweeney strips (and all the comic books which reprinted them). Roy was an inspiration for [Noel] Sickles as well as [Milton] Caniff, remember - and he has become my own, too. Roy kept vitality, life, action, humour, expression, expressive body attitudes and pictorial elegance, simplicity, honesty, design, interest, patterns, continuity and surprises, lovely girls and distinct, identifiable secondary characters and authentic worldwide locales and settings, props, language rhythms, customs and costumes constantly running through these strips. Never a dull moment - and always much visual and storytelling fun! He was the epitome of adventure strip cartoonists! A simple, humble man, too! I miss him. We all do.

FURTHER READING:

The Roy Crane Papers at Syracuse University

The Comics Journal #302: Roy Crane Interview Excerpt