Crackajack Funnies #12
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeCrackajack Funnies #12 (June 1939) sits squarely in the earliest comic-book run of Red Ryder and his young Navajo ward Little Beaver, just four issues into Dell's reprint of the newspaper strip that had launched nationally only months before. The issue belongs to the formative stretch of comics in which cowboy-and-sidekick storytelling was codified as a dominant Golden Age formula — Red Ryder and Little Beaver being among the earliest and most widely emulated examples of the heroic Western duo. The run in Crackajack Funnies (issues #9–#35) represents the only place readers could find Red Ryder in comic-book form through most of 1939 and 1940, before the character graduated to his own dedicated title. As part of Dell and Western Publishing's broader anthology strategy of adapting popular newspaper strips for the comic-book format, the issue also reflects how the industry was learning to serve a mass newsstand readership in the early Golden Age.
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Red Ryder was conceived by syndicator Stephen Slesinger, who recruited Colorado-raised artist Fred Harman after seeing his earlier Western strip Bronc Peeler; the two spent roughly a year in New York developing the property before the Sunday strip debuted November 6, 1938, via the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Little Beaver, the young Navajo sidekick who had first appeared in Bronc Peeler, was carried over directly into Red Ryder as the hero's ward and constant companion. Dell, which had formed a production-and-distribution partnership with Western Publishing in 1938, began reprinting the Red Ryder newspaper strips in its anthology title Crackajack Funnies with issue #9 in March 1939; issue #12 falls four months into that run. The strip's comic-book life in Crackajack Funnies continued through issue #35 before Red Ryder eventually received his own dedicated comic title.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published June 1939 by Dell/Western Publishing as part of the ongoing Crackajack Funnies anthology series (vol. 1, issues #1–#43, 1938–1942).
- Contains reprints of the Red Ryder newspaper strip, which had debuted as a Sunday feature on November 6, 1938, syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
- Red Ryder and Little Beaver both first appeared in comic-book form four issues earlier, in Crackajack Funnies #9 (March 1939) — issue #12 is part of the continuing early run, not a first-appearance issue for either character.
- Little Beaver, the young Navajo sidekick, was originally introduced in Fred Harman's earlier strip Bronc Peeler (1933–1938) and carried directly into Red Ryder when that strip launched.
- The Red Ryder feature ran in Crackajack Funnies from issue #9 through issue #35, representing the character's primary comic-book home before Dell launched a dedicated Red Ryder Comics series in August 1941.
- The strip was created by syndicator/scripter Stephen Slesinger and artist Fred Harman, a genuine working cowboy raised in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, whose firsthand ranch experience informed the strip's visual authenticity.
- Crackajack Funnies was a multi-feature anthology also containing reprints of Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy, Don Winslow of the Navy, Tom Mix, Myra North, and other popular NEA and syndicate strips of the era.
- The Red Ryder franchise launched from this strip would eventually encompass a 151-issue dedicated comic series, a Republic Pictures film serial beginning in 1940, a radio program (1942–1951), over 27 movies, and the Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun — one of the longest-running licensing agreements in American entertainment history.
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