King of the Comics: One Hundred Years of King Features Syndicate

Book excerpt: Krazy Kat! Popeye! Flash Gordon! Beetle Bailey! Blondie! Prince Valiant! Hagar the Horrible! Barney Google and Snuffy Smith! Baby Blues! Mutt & Jeff! Zits! Juliet Jones! Buz Sawyer! Steve Canyon! Bizarro! Hi & Lois! Maggie & Jiggs! Johnny Hazard! There are simply too many to list because King Features has had a more illustrious and long-lasting history than any newspaper syndicate, even as it continues to lead the way into the digital age and beyond. This book is a centennial birthday bash hosted by Dean Mullaney, Bruce Canwell, and Brian Walker, with contributions by Brendan Burford, Lucy Shelton Caswell, Jared Gardner, Ron Goulart, Jeffrey Lindenblatt, Carl Linich, Paul Tumey, and Germund von Wowern. More than just comics, it’s a celebration of the profound impact that King Features has had on popular culture! From the earliest days when William Randolph Hearst first added cartoons to his newspapers, comic strips have had a profound impact on popular culture. With the consolidation of Hearst’s various distribution channels in November 1915, King Features was born. A century later the world’s largest syndicate leads the way in the 21st Century and beyond. NOMINATED FOR TWO 2016 EISNER AWARDS: BEST COMICS-RELATED BOOK and BEST PUBLICATION DESIGN