Red Ryder
Red Ryder was a popular fictional cowboy created by the Americans Stephen Slesinger and Fred Harman .
Comic series
In 1933, the comic artist Fred Harman founded the western hero Bronc Peeler , who was printed as a half-page comic strip in various American newspapers. In 1938 businessman Stephen Slesinger convinced him to make some changes to the concept of the comic series and to rename the title character Red Ryder . Slesingers managed to sell the figure to the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), which helped the Red Ryder achieve a nationwide breakthrough. From 1940 Red Ryder also appeared in Stephen Slesingers Hawley Publications Inc. as an independent comic magazine. With various publishers, the magazine series had 151 issues by 1957. In order to cope with the large number of publications, Harman used the help of numerous ghostwriters and draftsmen.
Radio, film and television
On February 3, 1942, a series of Red Ryder radio plays, which was very successful at times, was launched. As early as 1940, "The Adventures of Red Ryder" was the first movie that was made, which was to be followed by numerous others until the 1950s. 1956 was also a Red Ryder television series.
Red Ryder at Spirou
The comic cowboy had already found his way to Europe in 1939. In the early years of the Belgian comic magazine Spirou , in addition to its own productions, numerous American series were published under license there. The adventures of Red Ryder were soon so popular with the magazine's readership that the Red Ryder Comics were also reprinted as an album by Dupuis from 1949 onwards. The series was discontinued in 1957 after seven volumes after Jerry Spring, a cowboy penned by a Belgian draftsman ( Jijé ), had succeeded him in Spirou magazine in 1954.
Jijé had made his first attempts at drawing a western comic a decade earlier, also with the Red Ryder. When there were no print templates from America during the Second World War , Jijè had created his own sequels for the adventure currently running in the magazine.