Roy Crane
Encyclopedia
Royston Campbell Crane who signed his work Roy Crane, was an influential American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
cartoonist who created the comic strip characters Wash Tubbs
Wash Tubbs
Wash Tubbs was a comic strip created by Roy Crane that ran from April 14, 1924 to January 10, 1988.Initially titled Washington Tubbs II, it originally was a gag-a-day strip which focused on the mundane misadventures of the title character, a bespectacled bumbler who ran a store. However, Crane soon...
, Captain Easy
Captain Easy
Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune was an action/adventure comic strip created by Roy Crane that was syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association beginning on Sunday, July 30, 1933...
and Buz Sawyer
Buz Sawyer
Buz Sawyer was a popular comic strip created by Roy Crane and highly regarded by comic strip historians. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, it had a long run from November 1, 1943 to 1989. The last strip signed by Crane was dated 21 April 1979....
. He pioneered the adventure comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
, establishing the conventions and artistic approach of that genre. Comics historian R. C. Harvey
R. C. Harvey
Robert C. Harvey , popularly known as R. C. Harvey, is an author, critic and cartoonist. He has written a number of books on the history of the medium, with special focus on the history of the comic strip, and he has also worked as a freelance cartoonist.Harvey describes himself as having created...
wrote, "Many of those who drew the earliest adventure strips were inspired and influenced by his work."
Born in Abilene, Texas
Abilene, Texas
Abilene is a city in Taylor and Jones counties in west central Texas. The population was 117,063 at the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Abilene Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a 2006 estimated population of 158,063. It is the county seat of Taylor County...
, Crane grew up in nearby Sweetwater
Sweetwater, Texas
Sweetwater is the county seat of Nolan County, Texas, United States. The population was 11,415 at the 2000 census.-History:Sweetwater received a U.S. post office in 1879. The Texas and Pacific Railway started service in 1881, with the first train arriving on March 12 of that year, beginning...
. When he was 14, he took the Charles N. Landon
Charles N. Landon
Charles Nelson Landon , also known as C.N. Landon, was an illustrator for The Cleveland Press, art director for the Newspaper Enterprise Association and art editor of Cosmopolitan...
correspondence course in cartooning. He initially attended college at Hardin-Simmons University
Hardin-Simmons University
Hardin–Simmons University is a private Baptist university located in Abilene, Texas, United States.-History:Hardin–Simmons University was founded as Abilene Baptist College in 1891 by the Sweetwater Baptist Association and a group of cattlemen and pastors who sought to bring Christian higher...
in Abilene and later the University of Texas
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania on February 19, 1852. There are over a hundred chapters and colonies at accredited four year colleges and universities throughout the United States. More than 112,000 men have been...
Fraternity. At 19, he studied for six months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. His early work history was a checkered one, including pitching tents for a Chautauqua
Chautauqua
Chautauqua was an adult education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with...
, a seaman's berth and a stint riding the rails. In 1922, he began his newspaper cartooning career on the New York World
New York World
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...
, where he assisted H. T. Webster. Crane was also influenced by the work of cartoonist Ethel Hays
Ethel Hays
Ethel Hays was an American syndicated cartoonist specializing in flapper-themed comic strips in the 1920s and 1930s. She drew in an art deco style. In the later part of her career, during the 1940s and 1950s, she became one of the country's most accomplished children's book illustrators.-Early...
, especially in the drawing of women.
Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy
In 1924, Crane approached Charles N. LandonCharles N. Landon
Charles Nelson Landon , also known as C.N. Landon, was an illustrator for The Cleveland Press, art director for the Newspaper Enterprise Association and art editor of Cosmopolitan...
, an editor at the Newspaper Enterprise Association
United Media
United Media is a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by The E.W. Scripps Company. It syndicates 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core business is the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association...
. Landon and Crane discussed a strip titled Washington Tubbs II about a diminutive goof employed at a grocery store. With the title shortened to Wash Tubbs
Wash Tubbs
Wash Tubbs was a comic strip created by Roy Crane that ran from April 14, 1924 to January 10, 1988.Initially titled Washington Tubbs II, it originally was a gag-a-day strip which focused on the mundane misadventures of the title character, a bespectacled bumbler who ran a store. However, Crane soon...
, the strip debuted April 21, 1924. After four months, Crane tired of the gag-a-day format and sent his pint-size hero hunting for a treasure buried somewhere on a South Pacific island. The strip then evolved into a rollicking adventure yarn, with Crane introducing innovations in storytelling, sound effects and layouts, as noted by pop culture historian Tim DeForest:
- Though played mostly for laughs, the storyline contained a notable element of danger as well... Crane was developing strength as an artist that added to his already strong figure work. He had an eye for detail, paying close attention to background and to the overall layout of each panel. He was an innovator in the use of lettering, using bold type and exclamation points to enhance the emotions already expressed by his character design... It was Crane who pioneered the use of onomatopoeic sound effects in comics, adding "bam," "pow" and "wham" to what had previously been an almost entirely visual vocabulary. Crane had fun with this, tossing in an occasional "ker-splash" or "lickety-wop" along with what would become the more standard effects. Words as well as images became vehicles for carrying along his increasingly fast-paced storylines. Following Wash's initial adventure, the strip reverted to a dependence on gags for a time. But Wash had acquired a taste for travel and adventure.
With the introduction in 1929 of the raffish soldier of fortune, Captain Easy
Captain Easy
Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune was an action/adventure comic strip created by Roy Crane that was syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association beginning on Sunday, July 30, 1933...
, Crane heightened the spirit of adventure and later created a Sunday strip
Sunday strip
A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...
focusing on Captain Easy. NBM's Flying Buttress Classics Library reprinted the complete run of Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy in a series of 18 volumes. Bill Blackbeard
Bill Blackbeard
William Elsworth Blackbeard , 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 from American newspapers...
's introductions to these books contain biographical and critical material.
Buz Sawyer
World War II rendered the comic-opera settings of Tubbs' adventures frivolous, and the strip took on a new tone. In 1943, an offer from Hearst's King Features SyndicateKing Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...
persuaded Crane to jump ship and create a more realistic comic strip, Buz Sawyer
Buz Sawyer
Buz Sawyer was a popular comic strip created by Roy Crane and highly regarded by comic strip historians. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, it had a long run from November 1, 1943 to 1989. The last strip signed by Crane was dated 21 April 1979....
. He left Wash Tubbs in the hands of his assistant, Leslie Turner
Leslie Turner
Leslie Turner , known to his friends as Les Turner, was a syndicated comic strip writer-artist who produced the adventures of Captain Easy for more than three decades....
, a boyhood friend who had shared the hobo life with him.
Crane, an excellent draftsman despite his deceptively cartoonish style, introduced more illustrative shading techniques to the daily comics page. He progressed from line drawings with crosshatching to grease pencil on textured paper, then to Benday Dots
Benday Dots
The Ben-Day Dots printing process, named after illustrator and printer Benjamin Henry Day, Jr., is similar to Pointillism. Depending on the effect, color and optical illusion needed, small colored dots are closely spaced, widely spaced or overlapping. Magenta dots, for example, are widely spaced to...
and finally to Craftint doubletone paper. The Craftint paper, when brushed with chemical solutions, revealed either one or two layers of diagonal shading. Under Crane's brush, the technique yielded scenes of dramatic atmosphere, such as junglescapes fading into the misty distance. As he had done with Wash Tubbs, Crane traveled to various locations to research his plot lines and visuals. According to Crane: "In using benday, at first I thought in terms of blacks, grays, and white. Years of indifferent results and frustration followed. Gradually, black became less important. Today white is not just something to bring out the color of black... on the contrary, black is something to bring out the color of white".
Crane progressively relinquished his cartooning to assistants, and he died in Orlando, Florida
Orlando, Florida
Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...
in 1977.
Today, Buz Sawyer has been resurrected digitally as one of the vintage strips in King Features' emailed DailyINK subscription service.
Awards
Crane was awarded the National Cartoonists SocietyNational Cartoonists Society
The National Cartoonists Society is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops...
's Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year in 1950, and their Story Comic Strip Award in 1965, both for Buz Sawyer. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
in 1969.
In 1965, he established the Roy Crane Award in the Arts at the University of Texas to encourage excellence and creativity in the arts among undergraduate and graduate students. In 1980, this award was given to Berkeley Breathed
Berkeley Breathed
Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed is an American cartoonist, children's book author/illustrator, director and screenwriter, best known for Bloom County, a 1980s cartoon-comic strip that dealt with sociopolitical issues as understood by fanciful characters and through humorous analogies...
.
Further reading
- Goulart, RonRon GoulartRon Goulart is an American popular culture historian and mystery, fantasy and science fiction author.The prolific Goulart wrote many novelizations and other routine work under various pseudonyms: Kenneth Robeson , Con Steffanson , Chad Calhoun, R.T...
. The Adventurous Decade. Arlington House, 1975. (Reprinted by Hermes Press, 2004.) - Marschall, RichardRick MarschallRick Marschall is a writer/editor and comic strip historian, described by Bostonia magazine as "America's foremost authority on pop culture." Marschall has served as an editor for both Marvel and Disney comics, plus several syndicates.Marschall has written and edited more than 62 books on cultural...
. America's Great Comic-Strip Artists. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989. - Captain Easy: Soldier of Fortune, Rick NorwoodRick NorwoodRick Norwood is an American publisher, mathematician, comics historian and short story author.Born in Franklin, Louisiana, Norwood attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was one of four writer-editors of the early underground comic God Comics, along with Bill Osten, Durk...
, ed. Fantagraphics Books, 2010. (Sunday Captain Easy strips in color.)
External links
- Roy Crane Papers 1908-1977 at Syracuse University (primary source material)
- Papers of R. C. Crane, Sr. (artist's father) in Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University