Crackajack Funnies #9
Crackajack Funnies #9 (March 1939) marks the first comic-book appearance of Red Ryder — and his first cover appearance — making it the foundational issue for one of the most extensively adapted Western characters in American popular culture. The strip reprinted here introduced readers to Fred Harman's rough-and-tumble cowboy and his young Navajo sidekick Little Beaver, a pairing that would anchor a 26-year newspaper run, a dedicated 151-issue Dell comic-book series, radio programs, film serials, and a licensing empire that included the still-manufactured Daisy BB gun. As part of the broader Crackajack Funnies anthology, which had featured Tom Mix from its very first issue in June 1938, issue #9 signals the moment Dell's Western omnibus format pivoted toward what would become the dominant subject matter of Golden Age comics: the cowboy hero.
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Crackajack Funnies launched in June 1938 under the Whitman Publishing imprint (distributed by Dell), consolidating newspaper strip reprints from multiple syndicates — including Roy Crane's Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy, Don Winslow, Tom Mix, and Dan Dunn — that had previously been scattered across Dell's other anthology titles such as The Comics and Popular Comics. The Red Ryder newspaper strip itself was created by Stephen Slesinger, a writer and comic syndicator, and artist Fred Harman; Slesinger brought Harman to New York and the two spent approximately a year developing the property before its Sunday debut on November 6, 1938, syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Just four months after that newspaper debut, Dell/Whitman picked up the strip for Crackajack Funnies #9, running it continuously through issue #35 before Red Ryder graduated to his own dedicated Dell title in August 1941.
Trivia · 7 facts
- First comic-book appearance of Red Ryder, as confirmed by Key Collector Comics, GoCollect, the Hey Kids Comics Wiki, and multiple collector references.
- Also the first cover appearance of Red Ryder in comics, per GoCollect's key-issue notes.
- Red Ryder was created by writer/syndicator Stephen Slesinger and artist Fred Harman; the underlying newspaper strip debuted Sunday, November 6, 1938, syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
- Harman's prior strip, Bronc Peeler (1933–1938), was a direct creative precursor to Red Ryder; Little Beaver, Red's Navajo sidekick, was carried over and refined from that earlier strip.
- Tom Mix was also featured in this issue; the Tom Mix strip had been present in Crackajack Funnies since issue #1 (June 1938), having previously appeared in Dell's The Comics.
- The Red Ryder strip continued in Crackajack Funnies through issue #35 before Dell launched a dedicated Red Ryder Comics series in August 1941, which ran for 151 issues — one of the longest continuous newsstand runs for any Western comic title in the U.S.
- The Red Ryder property expanded into a 12-chapter Republic Pictures serial in 1940, a nationally syndicated radio program beginning February 1942, and a long-running Daisy BB gun licensing arrangement that began in 1940 and continues to this day.