Comics Reading Libraries

King Features’ Comics Reading Libraries (1973–1979) was a unique publishing experiment that collected classic newspaper comic strips into durable, book-like formats rather than traditional comic issues. Though it produced no numbered issues, the series packaged beloved daily and Sunday strips—such as The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, and Flash Gordon—for a readership eager to revisit serialized adventures in a library-bound edition. Associated with the syndicate’s vast archive, these volumes preserved the work of legendary cartoonists like Lee Falk and Alex Raymond, bridging the gap between newsprint ephemera and collected editions. A precursor to modern comic strip anthologies, it matters as an early effort to treat comic strips as enduring literature.