During World War II, the adventurous John Singer Sawyer, nicknamed Buz Sawyer, became a Naval Aviator and flew as an ace Navy fighter and dive bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater where he had numerous adventures with his sidekick Sweeney. As a civilian in the post-World War II years, Buz became an oil company troubleshooter, traveling to far-flung locales. He married Christy Jameson on 13 December 1948, and their son Pepper was born in 1951. Buz rejoined the Navy in the 1950s and flew carrier-based reconnaissance attack jets over Vietnam during the 1960s. Roy Crane was one of the innovators of the adventure comic strip. Wash Tubbs began in 1924 as a humorous story about the romantic adventures of Washington Tubbs, but increasingly Tubbs became involved in exciting adventures in exotic places. With the creation of the popular soldier of fortuneCaptain Easy in 1929, the strip became, along with Tarzan of the Apes and Buck Rogers, one of the first adventure strips. However, Crane was an employee of the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate, which owned the rights to the Tubbs and Easy characters. Crane approached King Features with an idea for a new strip, and when they offered him ownership, he abandoned Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy in 1943, giving full concentration to launching Buz Sawyer. Crane remembered the events this way:
Daily strip
Granberry began writing Buz Sawyer during the 1940s, continuing as the strip's scripter until 1983. In 1946, 31-year-old Henry G. Schlensker, who had created Biff Baker with Ernest Lynn, settled in Orlando, where he became Crane's art assistant. An ulcer resulted in Crane's retirement from the strip in the 1960s, but he continued to work closely with Granberry and Schlensker. After Crane's death in 1977, Schlensker began signing the strip. The duo continued as a team until 1983. When they retired, John Celardo drew the daily until it was discontinued on 7 October 1989. Schlensker, who fought with the Army Air Corps in East Asia during World War II, died in 1997 at the age of 82. "He loved to draw, and he loved action. That strip was his whole life," said his wife, Virginia Schlensker.
Rosco Sweeney, who was Sawyer's comic-relief sidekick, was the lead character of the Buz Sawyer Sunday strip, a comedy about rural and suburban life. Sweeney largely disappeared from the dailies after World War II. Beginning in the late 1940s, Crane assigned the writing and drawing chores for the Sunday strip to cartoonist Clark Haas, who was a pioneer jet pilot. Later, Al Wenzel did the Sunday strip, which Crane brought to a conclusion on 19 May 1974.
The daily Buz Sawyer has been reprinted by Comics Art Showcase, Dragon Lady Press and Comics Revue. Manuscript Press has published two books collecting the daily strip from the beginning. Only a few scattered Sundays have ever been reprinted. The comic strip was also adapted into a Better Little Book, Buz Sawyer and Bomber 13. In 2011, Fantagraphics Books published the first in a series of books reprinting the daily strips, along with selected Sunday strips. The first volume covers the daily strips from 1 November 1943 until 5 October 1945. The second volume covers daily strips from October 1945 to July 1947, along with the Salvaduras Sunday sequence, and came out in 2012. The third volume covers daily strips from July 1947 to July 1949, and came out in 2014. The fourth volume covers daily strips from July 1949 to June 1952, and came out in 2016.
Digital rebirth
In June 2006, King Features' email service, DailyINK, now Comics Kingdom, began running Buz Sawyer dailies from the beginning. By 2009, this run had brought Buz into civilian life. All of these strips are missing the bottom quarter inch of art.
