Red Ryder Comics #6

History

The Red Ryder strip was conceived when artist Fred Harman — a Colorado-raised cowboy who had been self-syndicating his earlier strip Bronc Peeler — met publisher and licensing entrepreneur Stephen Slesinger in New York in 1938; Slesinger spent roughly a year developing and refining the property before it launched via the Newspaper Enterprise Association on November 6, 1938. The comic-book rights passed first to Slesinger's own Hawley Publications, which produced issues #1–#5 between September 1940 and December 1941, before Dell took over with issue #6 in April 1942 and kept the title on newsstands continuously through 1955. Dell produced the book through its partnership with Western Printing and Lithographing Company, which retained significant editorial control over the Red Ryder title specifically — a relationship that would not be formally codified until Dell and Western's arrangement was restructured in 1944. Prolific Dell/Western scripter Gaylord DuBois contributed text pages and other features to the series during the early 1940s, having also served as a ghostwriter on the newspaper strip itself.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Red Ryder Comics #6 (April 1942) is the first issue published by Dell, picking up numbering directly from Hawley Publications' five-issue run (Sept. 1940–Dec. 1941).
• The issue features artist-creator Fred Harman's cowboy protagonist Red Ryder and his Navajo sidekick Little Beaver, characters drawn from Harman's own real-life experiences living and working in Colorado ranch country.
• Like the other early Dell issues, #6 was structured as a newspaper-strip reprint anthology, reprinting Red Ryder Sunday pages alongside other NEA-syndicated strips including Captain Easy and Alley Oop — the title did not switch to all-original material until issue #47 (June 1947).
• The issue was published simultaneously with the launch of the Red Ryder radio serial, which debuted on the Blue Network on February 3, 1942, marking the height of the character's multi-platform presence.
• Red Ryder Comics ran under the Dell imprint for 139 issues (#6–#144), eventually becoming Red Ryder Ranch Magazine with #145 and Red Ryder Ranch Comics with #149 — a total run of 151 issues, making it one of the longest continuous newsstand runs of any Western comic.
• The strip itself, created by Fred Harman in collaboration with Stephen Slesinger, was syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association beginning November 6, 1938, and eventually appeared in approximately 750 newspapers with translations into ten languages.
• Gaylord DuBois, a prolific Western Publishing scripter who had also ghostwritten the newspaper strip, contributed text features (including 'Little Beaver' prose pages) and other back-matter to the comic series during the early Dell years.
• A copy of Red Ryder Comics #6 from the Edgar Church (Mile High) pedigree collection is documented, indicating the issue was part of one of the most significant Golden Age collections ever assembled.

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