Crane, Roy

Cartoonist. Royston Campbell (Roy) Crane, Jr. was the creator of Washington Tubbs II, an adventure strip first published in 1924. His next creation, Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune, was introduced into the strip in 1928 to protect the non-swashbuckling Tubbs on his adventures. Captain Easy soon eclipsed Tubbs in the story and became the hero of his own Sunday cartoon strip in 1933. In 1949, the Tubbs name was dropped from the daily strip. Crane's last adventure strip was Buz Sawyer, the story of a hard-hitting naval pilot who fought for democracy during World War II and was in naval intelligence afterwards.. Crane was born November 22, 1901, in Abilene, Tex.; died in 1977.

Royston C. Crane (1901-1977), known as Roy Crane, was an American cartoonist. He was the creator of the long-running newspaper comic strips Wash Tubbs/Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer .

Crane, son of Judge and Mrs. R. C. Crane, was born in 1901 in Abilene, Texas, and grew up in Sweetwater, Texas. He attended Hardin-Simmons University in 1918 and the University of Texas from 1919 to 1922, later studying briefly at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In 1924, he started the comic strip, Wash Tubbs, for the Newspaper Enterprise Association in Cleveland. Later he introduced another character, "Captain Easy", into the strip, for whom the Sunday version was ultimately named. In 1943, Roy Crane left NEA to launch his new creation, Buz Sawyer, for King Features Syndicate in New York. Both Crane creations eventually ran well into the late 1980s.

Crane was honored with the prestigious Reuben Award by the National Cartoonists Society in 1950. He was also awarded the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honor the navy can bestow on civilians, from the United States Navy for his fictional adventures of Buz Sawyer . In 1961, he received the Silver Lady Award from the Banshee club-a group of artists, editors, and writers in New York. Mr. Crane was honored with a Doctorate of Human Letters from Rollins College. He established the Roy Crane Award in Arts at the University of Texas to encourage independent achievement in creative writing, art, music, and drama in January 1965. Roy Crane died in 1977.