If King Features Syndicate’s Book-of-the-Month
newspaper comic strip was reminiscent of Classics Illustrated, its comic
book reprints were even more so. The
reprints were not only comic adaptations of famous books but were in comic book
format, with the same dimensions (7-3/8” x 10-1/4”), number of pages (68 or
52), a slick cover, and newsprint interior.
Of course, there was the same question as to whether they were actually
comics, since they had no word balloons or narration boxes and were mostly text
with a lot of illustration panels. But
they looked like comic books and were published by a comic book company.
Actually, David McKay Company was a book publisher that also
produced comic books, mostly (but not exclusively) reprints of newspaper comics
owned by King Features, like Blondie, Popeye, and The
Katzenjammer Kids. So it’s not
surprising that King Features would choose McKay to reprint its Book-of-the-Month
strip.
The reprints differed from the originals in that they had
additional content, namely a painted cover, a title page, and usually an author
biography. While painted covers were the
norm in pulp magazines at the time, they were by no means common in comic books. Dell had done a few, but the publishers most
associated with them – Classics Illustrated and Gold Key – didn’t begin using
them until years later. Artists Clayton
Knight and E. Franklin Wittmack provided most of American Library’s covers.
Ex-World War I pilot Knight made his mark in comics in the
late 1930s with the aviation-themed newspaper strips Ace Drummond and Hall
of Fame of the Air, both written by famed ace pilot and airline executive
Eddie Rickenbacker, distributed by King Features, and reprinted by David McKay
Company in King Comics. Knight
followed this up with a couple of 2-page strips entitled The Romance of
Flying and Heroes on Wings, appearing in the McKay-published Magic
Comics. Knight also illustrated
children’s books, sometimes in collaboration with his wife and fellow
illustrator, Katherine Sturges Dodge.
Wittmack did centerfolds called Battle of the Atlantic
and Battle of the Seven Seas in McKay’s Ace Comics. He was also a prolific cover painter for pulp
magazines like Adventure, Clues Detective Stories, Frontier
Stories, Short Stories, The Popular Magazine, Weird Tales
and Western Story and provided illustrations for Collier's, Liberty,
The Saturday Evening Post, and Scientific American. He is particularly known for his Popular
Science covers.
Assigning publication dates to American Library comics is
problematic, since the King Features copyright years listed in them indicate
when the adaptation originally appeared in newspapers, not when the reprints
were published. The back covers can help,
as they feature ads for other books, but at best all they can do is tell the
earliest date possible. Even the order
of publication is uncertain. The
Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide designates Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
as American Library #1 and Guadalcanal Diary as American
Library #2 (and comics.org
follows its lead), but there’s reason to believe that Guadalcanal Diary
was published first. (See the note below
under Guadalcanal Diary.)
American Library wasn’t the only place the King Features Book-of-the-Month
strip was reprinted. There was also one
reprint published by Gilberton Company (publisher of Classic Comics,
which later became Classics Illustrated). It appears that this book came out in 1944,
but it’s not known if this was before or after the American Library
series.
Credits and Notes
Page counts include covers.
68 pages, 15¢ cover price
Published by David McKay Company, Washington Square,
Philadelphia
Cover painting by Clayton Knight
Title page art by Anonymous
Illustrations by Don Komisarow
A Picture Version of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, published
by Random House and selected by Book-of-the-Month Club
Reprinted from the King Features newspaper comic strip
- Back cover has ad for More Cuties in Arms by E. Simms Campbell (1943)
- The Overstreet Guide designates this comic book as American Library #1, but there is no mention of that title or number anywhere in the book.
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68 pages, 10¢ cover price
Published by David McKay Company, Washington Square,
Philadelphia
Cover painting and title page art by E. Franklin Wittmack
Illustrations by I. B. Hazelton
A Picture Version of Guadalcanal Diary, published by
Random House and selected by Book-of-the-Month Club
“This story is the basis for Twentieth Century Fox motion
picture of Guadalcanal Diary”
Drawings copyright, 1943, by King Features Syndicate
Text copyright, 1943, by Random House, Inc
Reprinted from the King Features newspaper comic strip
- Back cover has ad for Cuties in Arms by E. Simms Campbell (1941, 1942)
- The Overstreet Guide designates this comic book as American Library #2, but there is no mention of that title or number anywhere in the book.
- There are a couple of facts that support the idea that Guadalcanal Diary was published before Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, not after. The first is that the price is 10¢ – 5¢ less than Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo’s price (with no difference in page count). It seems logical that the price would go up, not down. Also, the book advertised on Guadalcanal Diary’s back cover (Cuties in Arms) was published before the book advertised on Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo’s back cover (More Cuties in Arms). If it’s true that Guadalcanal Diary was published first, then it would make sense to consider it American Library #1, while Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo would be American Library #2. (Are you listening, Overstreet Guide?)
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68 pages, 15¢ cover price
Published by David McKay Company, Washington Square,
Philadelphia
Cover painting and title page art by E. Franklin Wittmack
Illustrations by John Fulton
A Picture Version of Look to the Mountain, published
by Henry Holt and Co. and selected by Book-of-the-Month Club
Drawings copyright, 1942, by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Text copyright, 1942, by Henry Holt & Co.
Reprinted from the King Features newspaper comic strip
- Back cover has ad for Blondie: 100 Selected Top-Laughs of America's Best Loved Comic (1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944)
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68 pages, 15¢ cover price
Published by David McKay Company, Washington Square,
Philadelphia
Cover painting by Anonymous
Title page art by E. Franklin Wittmack
Illustrations by Stephen Grout
Drawings copyright, 1944, by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Text copyright, 1944, by Erle Stanley Gardner
Reprinted from the King Features newspaper comic strip
- Back cover has ad for Blondie: 100 Selected Top-Laughs of America's Best Loved Comic (1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944)
- This reprint has something its comic strip counterpart didn’t – a lead-in to the next Erle Stanley Gardner/Perry Mason book. In addition to a much more extensive recap of the case in the wrap-up scene in Mason’s office, the reprint – like the original novel it’s based on – ends with a visit from “a blonde woman out there with a black eye.” As Mason comments, “An hysterical blonde with a black eye would seem to be an emergency case, at least an interesting one–The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde.” Gardner’s Black-Eyed Blonde novel was also adapted in King Features’s Book-of-the-Month strip, and it would seem that it was slated for a future American Library reprint. But AL was canceled before that could happen.
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52 pages, 15¢ cover price
Published by David McKay Company, Washington Square,
Philadelphia
Cover painting and title page art by E. Franklin Wittmack
Illustrations by F. R. Gruger
An illustrated condensed version of the novel published by
Wm. Morrow & Co.
Drawings copyright, 1944, by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Text copyright, 1944, by Niven Busch
Reprinted from the King Features newspaper comic strip
- Back cover has ad for More Cuties in Arms by E. Simms Campbell (1943)
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52 pages, 15¢ cover price
Published by David McKay Company, Washington Square,
Philadelphia
Cover painting by Clayton Knight
Title page art by Anonymous
Illustrations by L. H. Greenwood
A picture version of Wingate’s Raiders published by The
Viking Press, Inc.
Drawings copyright, 1944, by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Text copyright, 1944, by Charles J. Rolo
Reprinted from the King Features newspaper comic strip
- Back cover has ad for More Cuties in Arms by E. Simms Campbell (1943)
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68 pages, 15¢ cover price
Published by Long Island Independent, Long Beach,
NY/Gilberton Company, New York, NY
Cover painting and title page photo by Anonymous
Illustrations by William Sharp
Based on the Book-of-the-Month
“The complete book is published by The Macmillan Company,
New York, and is available at all bookstores at $2.00.”
Drawings copyright, 1943, King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Text copyright, 1943, H. M. Stationery Office
Reprinted from the King Features newspaper comic strip
- Back cover has ad for Classic Comics gift boxes that includes list of 20 Classic Comics published to date (HRN 20). The last of these comics is The Corsican Brothers, published June 1944.
- There’s some confusion about the publisher of this comic
book. The indicia lists the Long Island
Independent, a New York newspaper, as publisher, but because of the Classic
Comics ad on the back cover, it’s generally assumed that Gilberton Company
(publisher of Classic Comics) is the real publisher. It was probably an example of the arrangement
Gilberton made with local New York area newspapers to use their newsprint
allotments to circumvent wartime rationing restrictions. You can read more about this in my post
entitled Classic
Comics and the Illegal Paper Allotment Scheme.
- The book this adaptation was based on was written by Hilary St. George Saunders but published anonymously.
- In comic book databases, this book is usually listed as The Story of the Commandos: Combined Operations. But the title page inverts that and calls it instead Combined Operations: The Story of the Commandos, as do the original book and comic strip. For that reason, I’ve opted to use the original, inverted title.
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