Newspaper Page Text
HECK IN THE PACIFIC
This week we're talking about the funny
pages, so before I begin, I'd like to take a
moment to weigh in on one of this paper's
perennial hot-button issues, Missy Kulik's Tofu
Baby. It's a brilliant strip, a wonderful exercise
in minimalism and the artist's ability to take
a single premise and run with it in an endless
number of ways. And it really pisses people
off, which means it must be doing something
right. As I've said here before, bad art com
forts and good art picks a fight. So bwavo.
Tofu Baby. You wule.
Now to the main point. Many of you may
not realize this, but once upon a time, before
the Internet, before 24-hour cable news,
before the nightly network broadcast, before
television, the American people got the bulk
of their information on global events from the
daily newspaper. Major cities would have more
than one paper and the competition to attract
readers had more to do with depth of coverage
than the pop of infographics. It seems crazy,
but back then, people took time to read.
An integral part of the daily paper was
the funny pages, so called because the com
ics section occupied
more than one page,
necessary because
comic-strip panels
were larger than a
postage stamp. The
comics were an enter
tainment rather than
a momentary distrac
tion. That's hard to
believe in these post-
Bill Watterson days, I
know, but the comics
used to be more than
just a speed bump.
The one-off humorous
strips were actually
funny, and the daily
serials were followed with the fervor we now
devote to all matters Kardashian.
The undisputed king of the adventure
comic strip was Roy Crane. In the 1930s
Crane created one of the first and gener
ally considered best adventure strips, Wash
Tubbs and Captain Easy, which began life
as a humor strip but evolved into a daily
exercise in adventure and derring-do as his
fortune-hunter heroes fought and loved their
way through exotic lands between the wars.
Crane's style and storytelling were impeccable,
and his imitators, notably Milton (Terry and
the Pirates) Caniff, were legion.
Although Crane had a successful strip ‘
going, however, he was signed with a comics
syndicate with inferior distribution. Small
town folks in the heartland thrilled to Captain
Easy, but the major markets eluded Crane,
as did major-market money. Enter publish
ing magnate William Randolph Hearst, who
poached Caniff, Hal Foster (Prince Valiant)
and Crane for his King Features Syndicate in
the early '40s. Suddenly faced with a whole
new audience and a world newly at war, Crane
created a new strip for Hearst, the exploits of
a daring Navy pilot named Buz Sawyer, begin
ning in 1943. The result was one of the great
est adventure strips ever, the first two years
of which have been collected in Buz Savryer.
The War in the Pacific (Fantagraphic Books,
2011).
John Singer "Buz" Sawyer is an all-Ameri
can boy from the tiny town of Willow Springs,
TX, who puts his career as a college football
hero aside when World War II breaks out. Now
a bomber pilot stationed in the Pacific the
ater, Buz flies mission after mission accompa
nied by his loyal air crewman Roscoe Sweeney,
a big lovable lug in the Ernest Borgnine mold.
Of course, being a comic-strip hero, Buz goes
on the occasional spy mission, gets shot
down and captured by the enemy a lot, and
finds romance with pneumatic femmes fatales
wherever he goes. But the selling points of
the series are the aerial battles, which Crane
depicts with a kinetic immediacy that's just
beautiful to read.
The widespread popularity of Buz Sawyer
was not lost on the Navy, who granted Crane
access to its facilities, bases and carriers to
keep him up-to-date on advances in its tech
nology and to give him a grunt's-eye view of
daily life in the service. Crane's strip, there
fore, is packed with verisimilitude, and Crane
was an eager propagandist for the Navy. The
comic is chock-full of gee-whiz of the kind we
haven't seen since the United States decided
that everyone else's wars were our business
and turned us all into cynics. The bright-eyed,
steely resolve of Crane's generation shines in
every panel, making
it a refreshing bit .
of nostalgia as well
as an exemplar of
sequential art.
For all his heroic
posturing, Crane does
keep his war in its
proper perspective.
Men are wounded;
men die. Planes crash,
and often because
their pilots make stu
pid mistakes. There
is collateral damage
aplenty, and no death
is treated glamor
ously. Crane's fighting
men are full of bravado, but they'd all rather
be home.
There are some sour notes in the strip, of
course. Typically for comics of the period, the
Japanese are depicted as caricatures—buck
toothed, pidgin-speaking, and thoroughly
without redeeming qualities of any kind, straw
people easy to kill. And when the atom bomb
arrives, boy are we ever happy about it. It's
pointless, however, to judge the strip through
the filter of modern political correctness, so
just be aware that Buz Sawyer is completely a
reflection of its time.
That is, after all, what makes the strip so
worthy of revisiting and makes a collection
like this one such a great investment, this
glimpse into a time when America was united
in fighting the good fight, from the front
lines to the funny pages. For history buffs and
comic fans alike, Roy Crane's flyboy provides a
great escape from 21st-century cynicism.
Local Literary News: Mandala Journal is an
annual online student-run multicultural jour
nal for poets, writers, artists and thinkers
published under the guidance of the Institute
for African-American Studies at U6A. The new
issue will be launched on Thursday, Apr. 21,
and its overarching theme—which guides this
year's content—is "reconciliation.'' Featured
contributors include writers Sonia Sanchez,
LeAnne Howe and Dahlma Llanos-Figuero and
artists Kara Walker and Bettye Saar. Visit www.
mandala.uga.edu to learn more.
JohnG. Netties
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