In 1933 Captain Easy got a series of his own ... has outlasted
Captain America, Captain Marvel, Captain Midnight and many,
many more heroes until he was finally retired after over 50 years
of service, in 1988.

This SUNDAY Page is dated July 5, 1964. Distributed by NEA,
Inc. Size is 18" x 26 3/4" and is framed (without glass). At the
time, in the 60's, Mel Graff took the Sunday Captain Easy over
from his neighbor in Florida, Leslie Turner.

Graf was a very capable artist. He learned his craft from the
College of Hard Knocks. He obtained his only art training in
high school and from a Landon correspondence cartooning
course. He was fortunate in getting a job in the NEA syndicate's
Cleveland offices. Eventually he was transferred to New York
and soon after that he switched over to the Associated Press
bullpen, where both Sickles and Caniff were employed.

Gradually, no doubt influenced by many of his AP coworkers,
he developed a style using a realistic approach in his work.
He relyed on heavy brushing in shadows as you can see in this
strip. His backgrounds had a lot of detail and he used movie
camera angles for greater interest. No doubt he studied how
Roy Crane, the originator of Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy did
his work.

For many years Roy Crane pubished cartooning lessons on how
he drew Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy which appeared in
Cartoonist Profiles magazine. I teach cartooning to young teen agers
and often give copies of Roy Cranes lessons to my more serious,
talented students.

Like Turner and Roy Crane, Mel Graff was a railroad buff and
he came up with some well done sequences using vintage trains.
As a young man Graff worked on the railroad, even putting in
some time as a hobo (he was born in 1907). After leaving Captain
Easy late in 1969, he went into semi retirement. He passed away
in 1975.

When you study each panel of this Sunday page and see the
detailed work that went into each panel and the detailed
backgrounds Graff drew, in addition to his ability to incorporate
humor into the story, only then will you be able to see why the
feature continued to be one of the all-time greats.

This Sunday page will be an asset for any comic strip collectors
collection.

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