New Funnies #66
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeNew Funnies #66 (August 1942) is one of the earliest entries in Dell's pivotal re-launched anthology, which had just transformed from the superhero-and-strip-reprint title The Funnies into a dedicated funny-animal and children's-character book with issue #65 the previous month. The retooled series brought together Walter Lantz's stable — Andy Panda, Oswald the Rabbit, and the freshly minted Woody Woodpecker (whose very first comics appearance had just occurred in The Funnies #64) — alongside Johnny Gruelle's Raggedy Ann and Andy and Felix the Cat, establishing the template for the long-running anthology that would run to issue #288 in 1962. Because Woody had debuted in comics only two issues earlier, #66 is among his earliest comic book appearances and captures the character at the exact moment Dell was figuring out how to translate his anarchic screen personality onto the page. The title's editorial pivot away from costumed heroes toward licensed cartoon characters also makes this run a landmark in the development of the funny-animal genre within American Golden Age comics.
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The series began life in 1936 as The Funnies, packaged by Max Gaines and editor Sheldon Mayer, and ran 64 issues as a mixed anthology of newspaper-strip reprints and original material including superhero features. With issue #65 (July 1942), Dell relaunched the title as New Funnies, stripping out nearly all the hero and adventure content and replacing it with Walter Lantz characters licensed through Western Publishing, plus Raggedy Ann & Andy — written under the Gaylord Du Bois byline as 'Johnny Gruelle's Raggedy Ann & Andy' — and other licensed properties such as Felix the Cat. Issue #66 arrived the very next month, August 1942, as the second installment of this new format, at 68 full-color pages and a ten-cent cover price, with art and story credits largely unattributed in surviving records.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published August 1942 by Dell, 68 pages, full color, cover price ten cents — the second issue under the New Funnies banner.
- The series had just relaunched with #65 (July 1942), having run as The Funnies (issues #1–#64) since October 1936; #66 is only the second issue of the new all-funny-animal format.
- Woody Woodpecker's first comic book appearance occurred in the immediately preceding issue, The Funnies #64 (May 1942); #66 is one of his earliest comics appearances, placing him in the anthology just months after his comics debut.
- The issue continues the anthology roster established in #65: Walter Lantz characters Andy Panda, Oswald the Rabbit, and Woody Woodpecker appear alongside Raggedy Ann and Andy, Felix the Cat, Lil' Eight Ball, and other features.
- Raggedy Ann and Andy stories running throughout New Funnies #65–#111 were scripted as 'Johnny Gruelle's Raggedy Ann & Andy,' written by Gaylord Du Bois, based on Johnny Gruelle's original characters.
- Lil' Eight Ball — a Walter Lantz character that historians and the Wikipedia Dell Comics article describe as a racially stereotypical depiction — appeared in this run; Dell eventually discontinued the character; his last appearance in the title was in the August 1947 issue.
- Woody Woodpecker gradually became the dominant star of New Funnies, eventually leading to his own Dell Four Color one-shot series beginning in 1947 and a standalone ongoing title starting in 1952–53 that ran for 201 issues.
- Notable creators who worked on the New Funnies anthology during this era include writer Gaylord Du Bois (Raggedy Ann stories), and later Carl Barks (an Andy Panda story in #76, 1943) and John Stanley (whose first regular Woody Woodpecker story appeared in #86, 1944).
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