Collection inventory

Special Collections home page

Leslie Turner Cartoons

An inventory of his cartoons at Syracuse University


Finding aid created by: EF
Date: 29 May 1968

Biographical History

Leslie H. Turner (1899-1988) was an American cartoonist. He was Roy Crane's assistant and eventual successor on the long-running newspaper comic strip Captain Easy.

Turner was born in Cisco, Texas in December of 1899. He served for a short time in the U.S. Army at the tail end of World War I and later attended Southern Methodist University, where he received his degree in 1922. Turner spent his early career doing freelance magazine illustration work in New York, placing his art in the top magazines of the time -- Judge, the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal and Boys' Life. In 1937, Turner was hired to assist on Roy Crane's popular newspaper adventure strip Wash Tubbs/Captain Easy*. Crane was content to leave the Sunday Captain Easy feature entirely to Turner, focusing his energy on the daily Wash Tubbs strips. In 1943, Crane signed on to produce a new strip for King Features Syndicate, Buz Sawyer. Turner inherited the daily and went on to draw both strips for many years, finally retiring at the end of the 1960s. His last Captain Easy strip appeared in January of 1970. Captain Easy continued its run until 1988.

*Crane's original daily feature was called "Wash Tubbs", but soon the popular Captain Easy character was spun-off to his own Sunday feature. After running separately for many years, the two strips both began to carry the title "Captain Easy" around 1949.

Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Leslie Turner Cartoons collection contains original daily cartoons and Sunday cartoons from the comic strip Captain Easy. Daily cartoon: traces of graphite, brush, pen and ink on Craftint board, approx. 6 x 18 1/4 in. Sunday cartoon: traces of graphite, pasteovers, brush, pen and ink on illustration board, approx. 17 3/4 x 26 in.

Arrangement of the Collection

Daily and Sunday cartoons are arranged separately in chronological order.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions:

The majority of our archival and manuscript collections are housed offsite and require advanced notice for retrieval. Researchers are encouraged to contact us in advance concerning the collection material they wish to access for their research.

Use Restrictions:

Written permission must be obtained from SCRC and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.

Related Material

See the Roy Crane Papers for additional material related to Wash Tubbs/Captain Easy. Please refer to the SCRC Subject Index for a complete listing of cartoon collections at the Special Collections Research Center.

Subject Headings

Persons

Turner, Leslie, b. 1899.

Corporate Bodies

Newspaper Enterprise Association.

Associated Titles

Captain Easy (comic strip)
Wash Tubbs (comic strip)

Subjects

Adventure stories -- Comic books, strips, etc.
American wit and humor, Pictorial.
Caricatures and cartoons -- United States.
Cartoonists -- United States.
Comic books, strips, etc. -- United States.

Genres and Forms

Cartoons (humorous images)

Occupations

Cartoonists.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Preferred citation for this material is as follows:

Leslie Turner Cartoons,
Special Collections Research Center,
Syracuse University Libraries

Acquisition Information

Gift of Newspaper Enterprise Association, Inc., 1967-1969.

Table of Contents

Captain Easy

Inventory