One hundred years ago one of the greatest adventure comic strips by one of the greatest cartoonists debuted – Washington Tubbs II by Roy Crane first appeared on April 14, 1924.
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While the promo above tells us to “Watch For The Adventures” there was no thrilling action at the start.
Don Markstein explains that Washington Tubbs II was gag-a-day comedy:
There weren’t any successful adventure comic strips when Washington Tubbs II debuted on April 14, 1924, unless you count a few satirical melodramas like Hairbreadth Harry and Thimble Theatre. And Wash Tubbs (as the strip was soon renamed) wasn’t an adventure strip either, at that point — it was just a series of gags about a girl-crazy young clerk in a grocery store.
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After a couple months Roy Crane introduced some mystery continuity into the strip. By the end of 1924 Wash had become a young world traveler with women still the objective. Getting Wash out of the grocery store improved the strips “ratings.” Putting Wash into dangerous situations also helped, but something was missing.
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Back to Markstein:
Wash was a little guy, and not much good in a fight. Crane tried a couple of scrappier sidekicks, March McGargle and Gozy Gallup, before introducing the scrappiest of all, Captain Easy, on May 6, 1929. Easy made a more credible match for big, beefy Bull Dawson, who had been Wash’s arch-enemy since 1926, than any character that had gone before him. Easy was soon an indispensable part of the Tubbs daily strip, and gradually, over a period of decades, became its lead character — as well as the main object of Dawson’s hatred.
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And so Wash Tubbs was reborn into the greatest adventure comic strip of the 1930s or any other decade.