Crackajack Funnies #1

History

Crackajack Funnies was produced by Western Printing and Lithographing Company under its Whitman Publishing imprint — the very partnership with Dell that was being formalized in 1938 — and distributed by American News Company. The title gathered strips previously scattered across Dell's earlier anthology lineup (The Funnies, Popular Comics, and The Comics), consolidating features like Dan Dunn, Wash Tubbs, and Tom Mix into a single new book; the Grand Comics Database notes this consolidation explicitly for each feature. Almost all content in the issue consists of newspaper strip reprints, with the Tom Mix feature adapted in part from Whitman Big Little Book source material, and editorial information for the run is documented in Ron Goulart's Over 50 Years of American Comic Books (Mallard Press, 1991). The contributing artists on issue #1 include Roy Crane, Norman Marsh, Merrill Blosser, Frank V. Martinek, Martha Orr, and Ken Ernst, among many others, reflecting the broad syndicate licensing that underpinned the entire title.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published June 1938 by Whitman Publishing Co. (indicia publisher), distributed by American News Company; part of the Dell/Western Publishing partnership that began in 1938.
• Tom Mix appears in this issue as a continuing feature — his strip had previously run in Dell's The Comics (1937 series) before moving to Crackajack Funnies with this debut issue.
• Tom Mix's comic book presence was an extension of his radio show, The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters (1933–1951); his proper narrative comic appearances ran in Dell's The Comics, Popular Comics, and Crackajack Funnies from 1936 to 1939.
• The issue is a 64-page, full-color anthology; almost all features are newspaper strip reprints, with some content adapted from Whitman Big Little Books.
• The Tom Mix story in issue #1 is noted as probably adapted from an unidentified Big Little Book (copyright held by Stephen Slesinger), while the Captain Frank Hawks, Air Ace strip was adapted from Big Little Book #1144.
• Other features debuting in this title with issue #1 include Dan Dunn (from The Funnies), Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy by Roy Crane (from The Comics), Myra North Special Nurse (from The Comics), Don Winslow of the Navy (from Popular Comics), Freckles and His Friends, Apple Mary, and Buck Jones (adapted from Big Little Book #1461).
• The series would later introduce the first comic book appearance of Red Ryder by Fred Harman in issue #9, and the first appearance of the Golden Age hero The Owl in issue #25.
• Modern public-domain reprints of individual issues of Crackajack Funnies have been published by Golden Age Reprints, making the content accessible to contemporary readers.

Cast · 1 character

Full credits

Key issues in Crackajack Funnies