King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles, and games to nearly 5,000 newspapers worldwide. King Features Syndicate also produces intellectual properties, develops new content and franchises (like The Cuphead Show!, which it produced with Netflix), and licenses its classic characters and properties.
King Features Syndicate is a unit of Hearst Holdings, Inc., which combines the Hearst Corporation's cable-network partnerships, television programming, distribution activities, and syndication companies. King Features' affiliate syndicates are North America Syndicate and Cowles Syndicate.
History
William Randolph Hearst's newspapers began syndicating material in 1895 after receiving requests from other newspapers. The first official Hearst syndicate was called Newspaper Feature Service, Inc., established in 1913.Markstein, Don. "King Features Syndicate," Toonpedia. Accessed November 22, 2018. In 1914, Hearst and his manager Moses Koenigsberg consolidated all of Hearst's syndication enterprises under one banner (although Newspaper Feature Service was still in operation into at least the 1930s).A Directory of Newspaper Syndicates in the United States (compiled from the Ayer Newspaper Directory for 1936 and Editor and Publisher International Year Book for 1936.) Koenigsberg gave it his own name (the German word König means king) when he launched King Features Syndicate on November 16, 1915."King Features History: A Crowning Achievement," King Features website. Accessed January 15, 2019.
Production escalated in 1916 with King Features buying and selling its own staff-created feature material. A trade publication — Circulation — was published by King Features between 1916 and 1933. In January 1929, the world-famous Popeye character was introduced in King Features' Thimble Theater comic strip.
King Features had a series of hits during the 1930s with the launch of Blondie (1930–present), Flash Gordon (1934–2003 Note: Relaunched again in October 2023 by Dan Schkade as a daily and Sunday strip), Mandrake the Magician (1934–2013), and The Phantom (1936–present). In March 1936, a fictional, magical animal called Eugene the Jeep was added to Popeye, and trademarked.How the Jeep got its name instead of Peep, Beep, or Seep | Allpar, Nov 2020 Archived)
King Features remained a "powerhouse" syndicate throughout the 1950s and the 1960s.Marschall, Rick. "Bob Weber, Forever the Cartoon Fan" ("A Crowded Life in Comics"), Yesterday's Papers (October 25, 2020). In 1965 it launched a children's comic and coloring page.
In 1986, King Features acquired the Register and Tribune Syndicate for $4.3 million.Strentz, Herb. "John Cowles" Later that year, Hearst bought News America Syndicate (formerly Publishers-Hall).King Features Syndicate profile. via Hearst Corporation By this point, with both King Features and News America (renamed North America Syndicate), Hearst led all syndication services with 316 features.
In 2007, King Features donated its collection of comic-strip proof sheets (two sets of over 60 years' accumulation) to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and the Michigan State University Comic Art Collection while retaining the collection in electronic form for reference purposes.Randy Scott. "The King Features Proof Sheet Collection." Insight. [Fall 2009?] p.3
In November 2015, King Features released a book, titled "King of the Comics: One Hundred Years of King Features Syndicate" to commemorate its 100th anniversary. The book features a compilation of strips and the histories behind King Features strips.
As of 2016, with 62 strips being syndicated, Hearst was considered the second-largest comics service, second only to UclickDwyer, Ed. "CULTURE: The Funny Papers: Newspapers may be in trouble, but the comic strip is alive and well — and flourishing online," Saturday Evening Post (November 7, 2016). (now known as Andrews McMeel Syndication).
In December 2017, King Features appointed CJ Kettler as president of the company. Kettler previously was CEO of Sunbow Entertainment and the executive producer of the Netflix series Carmen Sandiego.
William Randolph Hearst's involvement
In 1941, King Features manager Moses Koenigsberg wrote an autobiographical history of the company titled King News. William Randolph Hearst paid close attention to the comic strips, even in the last years of his life, as is evident in these 1945–46 correspondence excerpts, originally in Editor & Publisher (December 1946), about the creation of Dick's Adventures in Dreamland — a strip that made its debut on Sunday, January 12, 1947; written by former Daily News reporter Max Trell and illustrated by Neil O'Keefe (who also drew for King Features a strip based on Edgar Wallace's Inspector Wade of Scotland Yard):Dick's Adventures in Dreamland at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. from the original on March 24, 2015.
Hearst to King Features president J. D. Gortatowsky (December 28, 1945): "I have had numerous suggestions for incorporating some American history of a vivid kind in the adventure strips of the comic section. The difficulty is to find something that will sufficiently interest the kids… Perhaps a title — "Trained by Fate" — would be general enough. Take Paul Revere and show him as a boy making as much of his boyhood life as possible, and culminate, of course, with his ride. Take Betsy Ross for a heroine, or Barbara Fritchie… for the girls."
King Features editor Ward Greene to Hearst: "There is another way to do it, which is somewhat fantastic, but which I submit for your consideration. That is to devise a new comic… a dream idea revolving around a boy we might call Dick. Dick, or his equivalent, would go in his dream with Mad Anthony Wayne at the storming of Stony Point or with Decatur at Tripoli… [This would] provide a constant character… who would become known to the kids."
Hearst to Greene: "The dream idea for the American history series is splendid. It gives continuity and personal interest, and you can make more than one page of each series… You are right about the importance of the artist."
Greene to Hearst (enclosing samples): "We employed the dream device, building the comic around a small boy."
Hearst: "I think the drawing of Dick and His Dad is amazingly good. It is perfectly splendid. I am afraid, however, that similar beginning and conclusion of each page might give a deadly sameness to the series… Perhaps we could get the dream idea over by having only the conclusion on each page. I mean, do not show the boy going to sleep every time and then show him waking up, but let the waking up come as a termination to each page… Can you develop anything out of the idea of having Dick the son of the keeper of the Liberty Statue in New York Harbor? I do not suggest this, as it would probably add further complications, but it might give a spiritual tie to all the dreams. The main thing, however, is to get more realism."
Greene: "We do not have to show the dream at the beginning and end of every page… If we simply call the comic something like Dreamer Dick, we would have more freedom… Some device other than the dream might be used… A simple method would be to have him curl up with a history book."
Hearst: "If we find [the first series] is not a success, of course we can brief it, but if it is a success it should be a long series."
Greene: "I am sending you two sample pages of Dick's Adventures in Dreamland which start a series about Christopher Columbus."
Hearst: "In January, I am told, we are going to 16 pages regularly on Puck, the Comic Weekly. That would be a good time to introduce the Columbus series, don't you think so?"
The last strips Hearst personally selected for syndication were Elliot Caplin & John Cullen Murphy's Big Ben Bolt and Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey;Warren, James. "A grand tribute to a golden era of cartoons," Poynter (January 2, 2018). Hearst died in 1951.
Editors In the 1940s, Ward Greene (1893–1956) was King Features' editor, having worked his way up through the ranks. He was a reporter and war correspondent for the Atlanta Journal for four years (1913–17), moving to the New-York Tribune in 1917 and then returning to the Atlanta Journal as correspondent in France and Germany (1918–19). He joined King Features in 1920, became a writer and editor of the magazine section in 1925, advancing to executive editor and general manager."WARD GREEN DIES: A HEARST OFFICIAL," New York Times (January 23, 1956), p. 25.
Vice president Bradley Kelly (1894–1969) was a comics editor during the 1940s.
Sylvan Byck (1904–1982) was head editor of the syndicate's comics features for several decades, from the 1950s until his retirement in 1978. A King Features employee for more than 40 years and comics editor for 33 years, Byck was 78 when he died July 8, 1982. Comic-strip artist John Celardo (1918–2012) began as a King comics editor in 1973.
In 1973, Tom Pritchard (1928–1992) joined King Features, and became executive editor in 1990, overseeing daily editorial operations and the development of political cartoons, syndicated columns, and editorial services for King Features and North America Syndicate. Born in Bronxville, New York, Pritchard arrived at King Features after work as a reporter at The Record-Journal (Meriden, Connecticut), as feature writer with The Hartford Times, as editor-publisher of Connecticut's weekly Wethersfield Post, and as executive editor of The Manchester Journal Inquirer in Connecticut. He died of a heart attack in December 1992 at his home in Norwalk."Tom Pritchard; Editor, 64", The New York Times, December 9, 1992.
In 1978, cartoonist Bill Yates (1921–2001) took over as King Features' comics editor. He had previously edited Dell Publishing's cartoon magazines (1000 Jokes, Ballyhoo, For Laughing Out Loud) and Dell's paperback cartoon collections. Yates resigned from King Features at the end of 1988 to spend full-time on his cartooning, and he died March 26, 2001.
In 1988, Yates was replaced by Jay Kennedy — author of The Official Underground & Newave Comix Price Guide (Norton Boatner, 1982). Kennedy was King Features' lead editor until March 15, 2007, when he drowned in a riptide while vacationing in Costa Rica.Heller, Steven. "Jay Kennedy, 50, an Editor and Scholar of Comic Strips, Is Dead," New York Times (March 19, 2007).
Brendan Burford, who attended the School of Visual Arts, was employed for a year as an editorial assistant at DC Comics before joining King Features as an editorial assistant in January 2000. Working closely with Jay Kennedy over a seven-year span, he was promoted to associate editor and then, after Kennedy's death, to the position of comics editor on April 23, 2007.
In November 2018, Tea Fougner was promoted to editorial director for comics after working as an editor at King Features for nine years. She is the first female-assigned and first genderqueer person to oversee comics editorial at King Features.
Comics editors 1940s: Bradley Kelly 1946–1956: Ward Greene 1956–1978: Sylvan Byck 1978–1988: Bill Yates 1988–2007: Jay Kennedy 2007–2017: Brendan Burford 2018–Present: Tea Fougner
Strip submissions When asked to speak in public, Byck made a point of telling audiences that King Features received more than 1,000 strip proposals annually, but chose only one each year. However, in Syd Hoff's The Art of Cartooning (Stravon, 1973), Byck offered some tips regarding strip submissions, including the creation of central characters with warmth and charm and the avoidance of "themes that are too confining," as he explained: