[MarkWarner]

One thing that we all agreed on with last week's Space Adventures by Charlton that it was sloppily made. Very much so!!! But even so, collectively it received a rather undeserved and begrudging thumbs up, with a dissenting voice or two.

Now this week's book was a suggestion from one of our number, and for the life of me I don't know who it was. It is from our "Small Press" section, I love this bit of the site! So many little gems hidden away https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1800.

Anyway, back to the book, it is a one shot Captain Easy by Argo Publications. It can be found here: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=28034. There is really only one story in this, so it's a 23 page minimum read this week. It better be good!

[misappear]

I tried to find out some cursory info on Argo Publishing, but no dice.  They published stories (I'm assuming edited newspaper strips?) with Captain Easy, Mary Worth, Kerry Drake, and others. 

This story might be notable for its use of graytone.  Night and dark scenes were interestingly presented.  Also, there was quite the contrast between the carefully drawn full and 3/4 face illustrations with the very flat profile illustrations.  If anything, the flat profiles made the full face shots much more eye-catching. 

Assuming this was a reprint/edit, the individual panels in the comic must be somewhat larger than the original printed strip panels.  I noted this because of the detail in each panel.  Something that would not be possible in today's newspapers, with their postage-stamp sized panels.

A story observation:  Wouldn't what Jo knew coupled with what Easy knew get to Milbank being the culprit pretty much from the get go? 

My, how times change:  Easy's page 5 quote, "Bobby seemed very appealing to me."  (Whoa! says I to myself as I'm reading).  Not a line of dialogue you'd see in that context anymore.  Are we too PC now?  As a high school teacher I've got to be so careful at how I word things. 

Back-up features:  The text story surprised me.  You've got two very menacing intruders dead on the floor of a cabin, gotta be blood and guts everywhere, and the mom says, "We have another man in the family now." Aaawww, shucks.  Our little Johnny done growed up!  That was a laugh-out-loud moment of ridiculous writing.  Possibly the highlight of the comic for me. 

I still thought this book to be a good read.  I don't know why I really liked the artwork, but I did.  And the text story---you could use that in an English class on how not to write.  Hilarious nonetheless. 

[SuperScrounge]

Not quite the action hero he started off as in Wash Tubbs. Oy, taking the pill rather than having it tested. *rolls eyes* Parts of it feel rushed, as if the whole story from the newspaper strip was too long for the comic book version, but otherwise an okay story.

Righterong? - Would have been better if the answers weren't so easy to see.

The Desperate Men - Okay.

This Curious World - "Please point out on this doll where the octopus fondled you." ;-) Okay fact pages.

[Morgus]

Not quite a national monument in terms of comic history, but something the serious comic fan should know about. This one was an interesting read...quite frequently, the great 'must read' strips can be a bit tedious, but this one sailed along, keeping you turning the page...or originally buying the next day's paper...and he looks a heck of a lot like Rip Haywire, one of my favorite dailies that is running now.

[narfstar]

I did find it tedious. It was also very predictable.

[paw broon]

I sometimes find myself thinking that newspaper strips should be be left where they belong, in newspapers.  There is a slightly different skill required for telling a story in newspaper strip form than in the wider comic book format.  When the strips are reprinted they should be done in the same layout as the original newspaper page.  Landscape for the daily one, two, tree tier strips and portrait for the Sunday full page jobs. The current reprints of Bond and Blaise in upright books do work but I'd prefer then in a landscape format with no more than 2 or 3 panels per page.
Rip Kirby and Buck Ryan - 2 of my favourites -  are good examples.  Rip Kirby is a classic, but many reprints of his adventures and those of  Ryan in Super Detective Library or Indrajal comics were edited, cut and messed about with in order to fill the comic and fit in with the space allocated, thus interfering with the great storytelling and in some fans opinions, ruining the strips. It took a Spanish company to reprint Kirby in a suitable, complete format.  The same thing happened(s) with The Phantom - see early Frew and various other reprint attempts. 
I shiver to think how some of these reprint comic companies would have treated the likes of Jeff Hawke or Tug Transom.
Anyway, that's me on my hobby horse and not really addressing this comic, which wasn't a particularly exciting read.  The mystery wasn't very mysterious and the characters, incl. Easy were not that engaging or interesting.  The bit with the pill was jarring - and stupid.  I enjoyed looking at it as the art was appealing in a sort of not quite Roy Crane way, with some panels being atmospheric.  Well, to my eyes anyway, bearing in mind that I don't see colours that well.

[crashryan]

I agree with Paw that newspaper strips are better presented, as much as possible, in their original format. The IDW reprints of strips like Rip Kirby and Dick Tracy have done well in this regard (unfortunately their 50-bucks-a-pop price tag is usually beyond my means). However in the days before mass reprinting, comic books were the only place you could find classic newspaper strips. When I was in college I discovered a copy of Dell Four Color 44 (for two bucks!), Terry and the Pirates. It revealed to me for the first time the wonders of the pre-war Terry. So I'm forgiving when it comes to comic book strip reprints, though some of the hack-em-up jobs are pretty extreme.

This Captain Easy comic does a respectable job. Leslie Turner's use of Craftint presents a challenge because the cross-hatching can muddy up color. The colorist makes a number of wise choices, holding back on color and letting the grey tones stand by themselves. Two great examples are the moonlit scene on page 5 and the ghost scenes on pages 20 and 24.

I am a great admirer of Leslie Turner. He absorbed his friend Roy Crane's style,then pushed it more in the direction of realism. He drew very pretty girls and lovingly detailed, well-researched backgrounds. He's much under-appreciated.

Turner's stories were usually pretty good. I confess this isn't one of his best. The entire scheme is revealed in the opening pages, so there are no surprises. We just watch Easy figure things out. I was flabbergasted when Easy swallowed the pill to test it. What a boneheaded stunt! What if Mrs Milbank had decided she'd waited long enough and tried to slip Doris some poison instead of a mickey?

The filler features are entertaining (I read them while being fondled by my octopus) but the text story is something else! At first quick read I thought fourteen-year=old Johnny earns his manhood by shooting the second intruder, but upon rereading I see the shot is fired by his father. Still, as Misappear points out, they're standing there congratulating each other while two corpses are bleeding on the floor. I hope they at least swept up before dinner.

Hey, kids! How about that Shur-Hooker Automatic Fisherman? Shell out your dollar and take a nap while a Hooker does the fishing for you. The ad for the miniature camera reminds me of the bygone days of Film. A local drugstore offered a free-film-for-life scheme like this one. They developed your prints and returned them along with a roll of generic film. For black-and-white (anybody remember black-and-white?) it was a good deal. Even generic black-and-white film gave decent results. Their generic color slides didn't hold a candle to Kodak, though. I wonder how well-made this miniature camera was. If it measured 2" x 1-1/4" it couldn't have used one of the standard film sizes. Strips of 8 mm movie film, maybe?

[MarkWarner]

Initially, this seemed to start part way through. But once I got going, it appeared to be a complete story and the start was just masquerading as a continuation (if that makes sense, which I don't think it does) .. Anyway, it was great. There was a good story line and cool art. If I were around back in the day, then I'd certainly have been an avid Captain Easy fan! This will be a hit, and we just have formalities to complete. 

Shur-Hooker - I am not sure how effective that this was/is, but it doesn't look like so much fun as a rod and reel.

Righterong - I did not do very well. In fact I was certainly more wrong than right.

The Desperate Men - A Folksy text story. I don't do folksy so this was a fail for me.

This Curious World - I enjoyed this. I am a "fact" sort of guy. Unfortunately, 90% is soon forgotten

Righterong - I did even worse than with the first lot. I don't think I even scored one right!

This Curious World - Again good, and again probably mostly forgotten,

Verdict: A MASSIVE hit. I really enjoyed this book. It is further confirmation that underneath the hood, I am a comic strip rather than a comic book sort of fella!