Roy Crane pioneered the action-adventure comic strip with Wash Tubbs.  The character Tubbs started out as bumbling grocery store clerk but Crane decided he didn’t like the gag-a-day format and started sending Tubbs off on protracted adventures.  Captain Easy, soldier of fortune, a secondary character in the strip, was better suited to this format and Crane developed a new Sunday strip centered around him.

These Sunday strips have been reprinted by Fantagraphics Books, well reproduced in four large-format books.  Crane’s drawing style is just serviceable and his adventure tales a bit bland and formulaic at times, but it’s a genial strip, fairly diverting and important historically.

Worth a look, especially in the gorgeous Fantagraphics reprint editions.

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