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...