Thursday Story Strip Day.
I mentioned Walt Scott and how he took over the Sunday version of Captain Easy when Roy Crane left to do Buzz Sawyer. He doesn't do well in the history books and indeed, his version of Easy is nothing compared to Crane. But he does have a nice clean style and a great sense of design. And his girls aren't too shabby either. And at least this version is still an adventure strip. When Leslie Turner too over the Sundays (after doing only the dailies alongside Scott on the Sundays) he turned it into a sort of gag strip (very well drawn, though). I don't think Scott did these until Turner took over. His own strip The Little People started in 1952, so he couldn't have done both. As you can see, these Sundays should be seen in color, not in the crappy black and white microfiche form I have here. I have included a couple of color scans of my own, where you can see how lovely the colors were. Same goes for The Little People, by the way. I have many samples of it's fifteen year run, but very few of those work in black and white and clogged-up grey.
2 comments:
Thanks for sharing these Ger! I haven't seen many of the non-Crane Easy! You are correct though it pales compared to Crane but some nice drawing in there! I can see the syndicate playing up Easy but I always wished they kept him teamed with WASH TUBBS! Their 'chemistry' was one of the factors that made the 30s strips so fun!
Scott's style was too different from Roy Crane's or Leslie Turner's. He just couldn't cut this kind of half-serious, half-cartoony look. He did marginally better than Mel Graff, who was also spectacularly unsuited for this general look and feel.
Leslie Turner was, technically speaking, a better draftsman than Crane, but he never quite met Crane's knockabout energy, or his skill as a compelling storyteller.
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