Crackajack Funnies #39

History

Crackajack Funnies was produced by K. K. Publications Inc., a vehicle of Whitman Publishing Co., itself a subsidiary of Western Printing & Lithographic Co., which had a close production relationship with Dell Publishing — explaining why the series is often (imprecisely) shelved under the Dell label. Editor Oskar Lebeck oversaw the Owl feature; he had originally conceived the character in Crackajack Funnies #25 (July 1940) as a Shadow-derived pulp figure, but quickly brought in artist-writer Frank Thomas to rebuild the concept along more Batman-influenced lines starting with issue #26. By the time #39 appeared in September 1941, Thomas had been producing the feature for over a year, the cover of #39 itself being his work, with a large multi-creator roster — including Bill Holman, Al McWilliams, Gaylord Du Bois, and others — filling the anthology's remaining features. The Andy Panda strip in this issue is believed to derive from prototype newspaper-comic material prepared by the Lantz studio that syndication had passed on, repurposed here for its comic-book debut.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published September 1941 by K. K. Publications Inc. (Whitman/Western), cover-dated as part of the Crackajack Funnies run that spanned issues #1 (June 1938) through #43 (January 1942).
• First comic-book appearance of Andy Panda — and the first appearance of any Walter Lantz character in comics — marking a significant early bridge between the theatrical animation and four-color publishing worlds.
• Andy Panda's debut strip in this issue ran three pages; the character appeared for one more issue (#40) before migrating to The Funnies #61 (November 1941) and eventually becoming the lead feature of Walter Lantz New Funnies.
• Andy Panda's debut was a low-key, uncelebrated one: none of the seven features promoted on the cover of #39 mention him, making it an inauspicious first appearance by any measure.
• The issue's Owl feature stars Nick Terry — millionaire private detective and secret identity of the Owl — continuing the title's hallmark serialized storytelling; this chapter involves Terry tracking the aerial abductors of Owl Girl to a flying school while operating undercover as himself.
• The Owl was conceived by editor Oskar Lebeck and definitively created by Frank Thomas, who also supplied the cover for this issue; Thomas shaped the character into what contemporaries and later historians recognized as Whitman/Western's answer to Batman.
• The Owl's Crackajack Funnies run (issues #25–43) is historically notable for its sustained, multi-issue villain arcs — a structural approach rare in Golden Age superhero comics — before the feature moved to Dell's Popular Comics beginning with issue #72 (February 1942).
• The full run of Nick Terry / Owl stories from Crackajack Funnies (1940–41) and Popular Comics (1942–43) has been reprinted in a collected edition, making these otherwise scarce stories accessible to modern readers.

Cast · 2 characters

Full credits

Key issues in Crackajack Funnies