King Comics #118
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeKing Comics #118 (1946) sits near the heart of one of the earliest and most sustained newspaper-strip anthology series in American comics history — a run that David McKay Publications maintained from April 1936 through 1949, giving newsstand readers their only way to collect King Features Syndicate characters like Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Popeye, and Mandrake the Magician in comic-book form. By 1946, the series had been packaging these strips for a decade and was still the primary vehicle through which many readers encountered adventures of those characters between covers rather than in a daily paper. As a mid-run issue from the tail end of the Golden Age, #118 represents the anthology model's staying power and its role in normalizing the reprint comic-book format that major publishers would later refine.
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David McKay Publications launched King Comics in April 1936, partnering with King Features Syndicate to reformat that syndicate's newspaper strips — mostly Sunday pages, with occasional dailies — into full-color comic-book pages. The series was edited under the pen name 'Jo King' by Ruth Plumly Thompson, the prolific Oz-book author who brought genuine literary sensibility to the editorial chair. By the time issue #118 appeared in 1946, the page count had already begun contracting from the original 64-page format toward a leaner 36-page book, reflecting postwar paper and production pressures across the industry.
Trivia · 8 facts
- King Comics was launched in April 1936 by David McKay Publications as an anthology of King Features Syndicate newspaper strips reformatted for the comic-book page.
- The series ran for 159 total issues; the final four issues (#156–159) transferred to Standard Comics before the title ended.
- Issue #118 was published in 1946, placing it firmly in the late Golden Age portion of the run, roughly a decade into the series.
- Neighboring issues in the 1946 run carried strips by a large roster of creators including Lee Falk (The Phantom), Austin Briggs (Flash Gordon, who had by this period taken over the strip from Alex Raymond), Fran Striker (The Lone Ranger), Chic Young (Blondie), Bela Zaboly (Thimble Theatre/Popeye), and others.
- The series was edited by Ruth Plumly Thompson, sometimes credited on the book as 'Jo King' — a pun on her editorial role.
- By 1946, the Flash Gordon pages in the series were being drawn by Austin Briggs; Don Moore, co-creator of the strip from its 1934 debut, had been the author throughout, though he was long under-credited behind Alex Raymond's fame as artist.
- The comic-book format used by King Comics was printed in full color at approximately 26 cm × 17.5 cm, with page counts that had reduced from the original 64 pages as the series matured.
- King Comics #118 carries no identified first appearances or singular story milestones in any currently indexed online source; its significance is representative rather than unique within the run.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Le Fantôme Spécial #8 (1964)
Key issues in King Comics
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