Buz Sawyer | |
---|---|
![]() Roy Crane's Buz Sawyer (November 28, 1943). This is the first Buz Sawyer Sunday strip. Sidekick Sweeney, who joined Buz in the daily strip adventures, was the central character in Crane's Sunday strips. | |
Author(s) | Roy Crane (1943–1977) Edwin Granberry (c. 1943–1983) Clark Haas (Sundays, late 1940s–1962) Al Wenzel (Sundays, 1962–1974) |
Illustrator(s) | Roy Crane (1943–1977) Henry G. Schlensker (1977–1983) John Celardo (1983–1989) |
Current status/schedule | Concluded daily & Sunday strip |
Launch date | November 1, 1943 |
End date | October 7, 1989 |
Syndicate(s) | King Features Syndicate |
Publisher(s) | Dragon Lady Press Manuscript Press Fantagraphics Books |
Genre(s) | Adventure |
Preceded by | Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy |
Buz Sawyer is a comic strip created by Roy Crane. [1] Distributed by King Features Syndicate, it had a run from November 1, 1943 to October 7, 1989. [2] The last strip signed by Crane was dated 21 April 1979.[ citation needed ]
During World War II, the adventurous John Singer Sawyer, nicknamed Buz Sawyer, became a Naval Aviator and flew as an ace Navy fighter and dive bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater where he had numerous adventures with his sidekick, enlisted Naval Aircrewman Roscoe Sweeney. [1] As a civilian in the post-World War II years, Buz became an oil company troubleshooter, traveling to far-flung locales. He married Christy Jameson on 13 December 1948, and their son Pepper was born in 1951. Buz rejoined the Navy in the 1950s and flew carrier-based reconnaissance attack jets over Vietnam during the 1960s.
Roy Crane was one of the innovators of the adventure comic strip. Wash Tubbs began in 1924 as a humorous story about the romantic adventures of Washington Tubbs, but increasingly Tubbs became involved in exciting adventures in exotic places. With the creation of the popular soldier of fortune Captain Easy in 1929, the strip became, along with Tarzan of the Apes and Buck Rogers , one of the first adventure strips. However, Crane was an employee of the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate, which owned the rights to the Tubbs and Easy characters. Crane approached King Features with an idea for a new strip, and when they offered him ownership, he abandoned Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy in 1943, giving full concentration to launching Buz Sawyer. Crane remembered the events this way:
Granberry began writing Buz Sawyer during the 1940s, continuing as the strip's scripter until 1983. In 1946, 31-year-old Henry G. Schlensker, who had created Biff Baker with Ernest Lynn (1941–45), settled in Orlando, where he became Crane's art assistant. An ulcer resulted in Crane's retirement from the strip in the 1960s, but he continued to work closely with Granberry and Schlensker. After Crane's death in 1977, Schlensker began signing the strip. The duo continued as a team until 1983. When they retired, John Celardo drew the daily until it was discontinued on 7 October 1989. Schlensker, who fought with the Army Air Corps in East Asia during World War II, died in 1997 at the age of 82. His wife Virginia Schlensker said that "he loved to draw, and he loved action. That strip was his whole life". [4]
Roscoe Sweeney, Sawyer's comic-relief sidekick, was the lead character of the Buz Sawyer Sunday strip titled Buzz Sawyer Featuring His Pal Roscoe Sweeney. It began November 23, 1943, and, at first, was about Sweeney and other gunners from the aircraft carrier Tippecanoe. [5] After World War II Roscoe often worked on a farm with his sister Lucille [6] near Indiantown, in Martin County, Florida. [7]
Sweeney kept looking for adventure, and in 1947 he enlisted in the naval reserve program, [8] now named the United States Navy Reserve. Even when he was on the farm he had interesting adventures. In 1964 he and Lucille met space aliens with a flying saucer, [9] and in 1967 he planted a tree that grew five dollar bills. [7]
Roy Crane claimed that Sweeney was his favorite character – just an average guy, trying to do the right thing, but getting into trouble. [10] By 1949 Roscoe Sweeney was carried in over a hundred Sunday newspapers. [11] Roy Crane ended the Sunday comic in 1974. [12]
Roy Crane won the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 1950 (when it was the Barney Award). He also won their Story Comic Book Award in 1965.
The daily Buz Sawyer has been reprinted by Comics Art Showcase, Dragon Lady Press and Comics Revue . Manuscript Press has published two books collecting the daily strip from the beginning. Only a few scattered Sundays have ever been reprinted. The comic strip was also adapted into a Better Little Book, Buz Sawyer and Bomber 13.
In 2011, Fantagraphics Books published the first in a series of books reprinting the daily strips, along with selected Sunday strips. The first volume covers the daily strips from 1 November 1943 (the first strip) until 5 October 1945 (when Buz leaves the Navy). The second volume covers daily strips from October 1945 to July 1947, along with the Salvaduras Sunday sequence, and came out in 2012. The third volume covers daily strips from July 1947 to July 1949, and came out in 2014. The fourth volume covers daily strips from July 1949 to June 1952, and came out in 2016.
In June 2006, King Features' email service, DailyINK, now Comics Kingdom, began running Buz Sawyer dailies from the beginning. [13] By 2009, this run had brought Buz into civilian life. All of these strips are missing the bottom quarter inch of art.
Story arcs in the early years of the daily strip:
|
|
Terry and the Pirates is an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff, which originally ran from October 22, 1934, to February 25, 1973. Captain Joseph Patterson, editor for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, had admired Caniff's work on the children's adventure strip Dickie Dare and hired him to create the new adventure strip, providing Caniff with the title and locale. The Dragon Lady leads the evil pirates; conflict with the pirates was diminished in priority when World War II started.
Royston Campbell Crane, who signed his work Roy Crane, was an American cartoonist who created the comic strip characters Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer. He pioneered the adventure comic strip, establishing the conventions and artistic approach of that genre. Comics historian R. C. Harvey wrote, "Many of those who drew the earliest adventure strips were inspired and influenced by his work."
Frank W. Bolle was an American comic-strip artist, comic book artist and illustrator, best known as the longtime artist of the newspaper strips Winnie Winkle and The Heart of Juliet Jones; for stints on the comic books Tim Holt and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom; and as an illustrator for the Boy Scouts of America magazine Boys' Life for 18 years. With an unknown writer, he co-created the masked, Old West comic-book heroine the Black Phantom. Bolle sometimes used the pen name FWB and, at least once, F. L. Blake.
Dan Heilman was the first artist of the Judge Parker comic strip. He was born in 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Noel Douglas Sickles was an American commercial illustrator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Scorchy Smith.
Wash Tubbs is an American daily comic strip created by Roy Crane that ran from April 14, 1924 to 1949, when it merged into Crane's related Sunday page, Captain Easy. Crane left both strips in 1943 to begin Buz Sawyer, but a series of assistants, beginning with Leslie Turner, kept the combined Captain Easy daily and Sunday strips going until October 1, 1988.
Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune is an American action/adventure comic strip created by Roy Crane that was syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association beginning on Sunday, July 30, 1933. The strip ran for more than five decades until it was discontinued on October 1, 1988.
Comics Revue is a bi-monthly small press comic book published by Manuscript Press and edited by Rick Norwood. Don Markstein edited the publication from 1984 to 1987 and 1992 to 1996.
A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.
The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary news service to the Scripps Howard News Service; it later evolved into a general syndicate best known for syndicating the comic strips Alley Oop, Our Boarding House, Freckles and His Friends, The Born Loser, Frank and Ernest, and Captain Easy / Wash Tubbs; in addition to an annual Christmas comic strip. Along with United Feature Syndicate, the NEA was part of United Media from 1978 to 2011, and is now a division of Andrews McMeel Syndication. The NEA once selected college All-America teams, and presented awards in professional football and professional [NBA] basketball.
The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in most western newspapers. Compared to weekday comics, Sunday comics tend to be full pages and are in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies.
Dragon Lady Press was the publishing wing of the Toronto-based comic book store Dragon Lady Comics, operating from 1985 to 1988. The company was known for its reprints of classic newspaper comic strips in various forms. Its publications were distributed through the direct market throughout the United States and Canada.
Charles J. "Jerry" Grandenetti was an American comic book artist and advertising art director, best known for his work with writer-artist Will Eisner on the celebrated comics feature "The Spirit", and for his decade-and-a-half run on many DC Comics war series. He also co-created the DC comic book Prez with Joe Simon.
Edwin Phillips Granberry was an American writer, novelist and translator. In 1932, he won the O. Henry Award for Best Short Short Story.
Military humor is humor based on stereotypes of military life. Military humor portrays a wide range of characters and situations in the armed forces. It comes in a wide array of cultures and tastes, making use of burlesque, cartoons, comic strips, double entendre, exaggeration, jokes, parody, gallows humor, pranks, ridicule and sarcasm.
Out Our Way was an American single-panel comic strip series by Canadian-American comic strip artist J. R. Williams. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association, the cartoon series was noted for its depiction of American rural life and the various activities and regular routines of families in small towns. The panel introduced a cast of continuing characters, including the cowboy Curly and ranch bookkeeper Wes. Out Our Way ran from 1922 to 1977, at its peak appearing in more than 700 newspapers.
Don Winslow of the Navy was an American comic strip created by Frank Victor Martinek and distributed mostly by the Bell Syndicate from 1934 to 1955. The title character was a spy-chasing lieutenant commander in Naval intelligence. The comic strip led to a radio adventure serial that began in 1937, as well as film serials that began in 1942. Original comic book stories also appeared in Fawcett Comics titles starting in 1943.
Leslie Turner was an American cartoonist and writer who produced the adventures of Captain Easy for more than three decades.
Ace Kilroy is a serialized adventure webcomic that launched on October 31, 2011. In its first season, it ran in daily black-and-white installments, culminating every week with an extra-long "Color Sunday" that also served as a teaser to the events of the upcoming week.
Mickey Mouse is an American newspaper comic strip by the Walt Disney Company featuring Mickey Mouse, and is the first published example of Disney comics. The strip debuted on January 13, 1930, and ran until July 29, 1995. It was syndicated by King Features Syndicate.