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Royston Campbell Crane (November 22, 1901 – July 7, 1977), who signed his work Roy Crane, was an influential 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."〔(Harvey, Robert C. ''The Art of the Funnies'', "A Flourish of Trumpets: Roy Crane and the Adventure Strip". University Press of Mississippi, 1994. )〕 Born in Abilene, Texas, Crane grew up in nearby Sweetwater. When he was 14, he took the Charles N. Landon correspondence course in cartooning. He initially attended college at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene and later the University of Texas, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. At 19, he studied for six months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago. His early work history was a checkered one, including pitching tents for a Chautauqua, a seaman's berth and a stint riding the rails. In 1922, he began his newspaper cartooning career on the ''New York World'', where he assisted H. T. Webster. Crane was also influenced by the work of cartoonist Ethel Hays, especially in the drawing of women.〔Holtz, Allan. "Ethel Hays, Great Female Cartoonist," ''Hogan's Alley'' issue #13. Atlanta, Georgia: Bull Moose Publishing.〕 ==Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy== In 1924, Crane approached Charles N. Landon, an editor at the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Landon and Crane discussed a strip titled ''Washington Tubbs II'' about a diminutive goof employed at a grocery store. With the title shortened to ''Wash Tubbs'', the strip debuted April 21, 1924. After four months, Crane tired of the gag-a-day format and sent his pint-size hero hunting for a treasure buried somewhere on a South Pacific island. The strip then evolved into a rollicking adventure yarn, with Crane introducing innovations in storytelling, sound effects and layouts, as noted by pop culture historian Tim DeForest: :Though played mostly for laughs, the storyline contained a notable element of danger as well... Crane was developing strength as an artist that added to his already strong figure work. He had an eye for detail, paying close attention to background and to the overall layout of each panel. He was an innovator in the use of lettering, using bold type and exclamation points to enhance the emotions already expressed by his character design... It was Crane who pioneered the use of onomatopoeic sound effects in comics, adding "bam," "pow" and "wham" to what had previously been an almost entirely visual vocabulary. Crane had fun with this, tossing in an occasional "ker-splash" or "lickety-wop" along with what would become the more standard effects. Words as well as images became vehicles for carrying along his increasingly fast-paced storylines. Following Wash's initial adventure, the strip reverted to a dependence on gags for a time. But Wash had acquired a taste for travel and adventure.〔(DeForest, Tim.''Storytelling in the Pulps, Comics, and Radio: How Technology Changed Popular Fiction in America''. McFarland, 2004. )〕 With the introduction in 1929 of the raffish soldier of fortune, Captain Easy, Crane heightened the spirit of adventure and later created a Sunday strip focusing on Captain Easy. NBM's Flying Buttress Classics Library reprinted the complete run of ''Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy'' in a series of 18 volumes. Bill Blackbeard's introductions to these books contain biographical and critical material.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Roy Crane」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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