If you look over at the AAUGH.com Guide’s page to books for which Schulz did introductions and illustrations, you’ll find he did a lot of them over the years. It’s not because he was a particularly masterful writer of such things – he’s not bad, but nothing impressive – but because he was so respected that his willingness to do an introduction, and to have his name on the cover of a book, carried with it a powerful endorsement.

The latest book to earn the “I’ve got it!” asterisk on that list is Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs. Schulz was a big fan of the “Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy” strip, which started he was one year old. In his foreword, Schulz says that the strip was an influence on him, citing his realization at one point that Linus had, in side shots, started to look like little Mr. Tubbs. And he does mention at one point having created a Wash Tubbs-like adventure strip when he was a teenager.

However, he doesn’t mention another creation which would prove the influence. Back in the 1950s, Schulz and Jim Sasseville (artist for some of the Peanuts comic books and Schulz’s collaborator for most of the run of “It’s Only a Game”) worked up weeks of strips for a pitch for their own adventure strip… a strip that carries some of the light-hearted sensibility and some of the look of Roy Crane’s work. The lead character even looks a fair bit like Captain Easy – who by the time Schulz stared cartooning had taken over as lead of the Wash Tubbs strip, with Tubbs consigned to a supporting role. (That history parallels what happened to another strip that plays a part in the Schulz history; Schulz got the nickname “Sparky” after Barney Google’s horse, and Mr. Google himself got relegated to an occasional guest spot in his own strip, which is now better known as “Snuffy Smith”. Do not cry for Barney Google, though; I hear the Internet firm he founded has been doing quite well.)

Anyway, this 1974 book offering up 300 pages from the first decade of Wash Tubbs is not the easiest thing to find. Back then, reprints of classic strips were rarer and aimed at a smaller audience, and if produced with a great affection for the material, it was not produced with access to the same full set of techniques for finding sources for reprint and improving the images.  Luckily, it is not the last reprint done of this strip, and reprinting efforts are currently in the hands of Fantagraphics, the same folks who produce the Complete Peanuts. They currently have two volumes out of Captain Easy Sunday strips.

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