Johnny Hazard was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Frank Robbins

Frank Robbins

Franklin "Frank" Robbins was a notable American comic book and comic strip artist and writer, as well as a prominent painter whose work appeared in museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, where one of his paintings was featured in the 1955 Whitney Annual Exhibition of American...

 for King Features Syndicate

King Features Syndicate

King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...

. It was published from 1944 until 1977 with separate storylines for the daily strip

Daily strip

A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays....

 and the Sunday strip

Sunday strip

A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...

.

Day before D-Day

After work in advertising, Robbins took over the daily strip Scorchy Smith

Scorchy Smith

Scorchy Smith was an American adventure comic strip created by artist John Terry that ran from 1930 to 1961.Scorchy Smith was a pilot-for-hire whose initial adventures took him across America, fighting criminals and aiding damsels in distress...

from Noel Sickles

Noel Sickles

Noel Douglas Sickles was an American commercial illustrator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Scorchy Smith....

 in 1939 with a Sunday page added in 1940. King Features then asked Robbins to do Secret Agent X-9

Secret Agent X-9

Secret Agent X-9 was a comic strip begun by writer Dashiell Hammett and artist Alex Raymond . Syndicated by King Features, it ran from January 22, 1934 until February 10, 1996....

, but Robbins instead chose to devise an aviation comic for the syndicate, and Johnny Hazard was launched on Monday, June 5, 1944, one day before D-Day. While working on the strip during the 1940s, Robbins contributed illustrations to Life

Life (magazine)

Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

, Look

Look (American magazine)

Look was a bi-weekly, general-interest magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa from 1937 to 1971, with more of an emphasis on photographs than articles...

, The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

and other magazines. Robbins stopped drawing Johnny Hazard in 1977 and retired to Mexico in order to devote himself to painting full time.

Characters and story

The strip followed the globe-trotting adventures of aviator Johnny Hazard, initially as a member of the United States Army Air Corps

United States Army Air Corps

The United States Army Air Corps was a forerunner of the United States Air Force. Renamed from the Air Service on 2 July 1926, it was part of the United States Army and the predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces , established in 1941...

 in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, later as a Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 secret agent. Comics historian Don Markstein

Don Markstein's Toonopedia

Don Markstein's Toonopedia was a web encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation. Don D...

 described the transition:

As the story opened, Johnny, like most American men of his generation, was fighting World War II. But his gig with the Army Air Corps didn't last long, as D-Day came when the strip was only a day old. But the only effect civilian life had on him was to enlarge the scope of his adventures—as a freelance pilot, Johnny ranged throughout the entire world. (An early focus, tho, was China, putting him head-to-head with the rival Chicago Tribune Syndicate's Terry and the Pirates

Terry and the Pirates (comic strip)

Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff. Captain Joseph Patterson, editor for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, had admired Caniff’s work on the children's adventure strip Dickie Dare and hired him to create the new adventure strip,...

.) Johnny dealt with spies, beautiful women, smugglers, gorgeous dames, sci-fi style menaces, fabulous chicks and all the other kinds of folks a two-fisted adventurer of his calibre would be expected to deal with. As he did, unlike many fictional two-fisted adventurers, he matured—not as quickly as real people, but after a third of a century or so, he was quite gray at the temples. And a third of a century was as long as the strip ran. It was popular enough at first, and ran far longer than most post-war adventure strips, but the times were against it. Newspaper editors were more interested in daily gags than continuous stories, and Johnny Hazard succumbed to the trend in 1977.

Reprints

Robbins' Johnny Hazard comic book was published by Standard from August 1948 to May 1949. The Sunday strips were reprinted in a full-color volume published by the Pacific Comics Club. Other reprints were published by Pioneer Comics and Dragon Lady Press. In 2011, Hermes Press announced a hardcover archive reprint series.

Archives

The Frank Robbins collection at Syracuse University has 1090 original Johnny Hazard strips, consisting of 934 daily strips and 156 Sunday strips.

1963-66 story arcs

Daily strip continuities

• "Wheel and Deal" (4 Feb 1963 - 27 Apr 1963)
• "My Son the Millionaire" (29 Apr 1963 - 20 Jul 1963)
• "The Mink-Lined Nest" (23 Jul 1963 - 12 Oct 1963)
• "Mysterious Friend" (14 Oct 1963 - 4 Jan 1964)
• "A Gift for Florian" (6 Jan 1964 - 28 Mar 1964)
• "Extortion Inc." (30 Mar 1964 - 27 Jun 1964)
• "Traders in Death" (29 Jun 1964 - 19 Sep 1964)
• "Alphabet Soup" (21 Sep 1964 - 26 Dec 1964)
• "Operation Beardles" (28 Dec 1964 - 20 Mar 1965)
• "Tell It to Telstar" (22 Mar 1965 - 29 May 1965)
• "Operation Trojan Horse" (30 Aug 1965 - 20 Nov 1965)
• "Rescue Inc." (22 Nov 1965 - 19 Feb 1966)
• "The Many Faces of Henry Clay" (21 Feb 1966 - 21 Mar 1966)

Sunday strip continuities

• "Capone Squadron" (6 Jan 1963 - 13 Jan 1963)
• "Operation Bodyguard" (20 Jan 1963 - 5 May 1963)
• "The Diamond Mountain" (12 May 1963 - 25 Aug 1963)
• "Disaster Area" (1 Sep 1963 - 8 Dec 1963)
• "Head-Locked Secret" (15 Dec 1963 - 22 Mar 1964)
• "Sentimental Journey" (5 April 1964 - 19 Jul 1964)
• "Fatal Lure" (26 Jul 1964 - 8 Nov 1964)
• "Commando Isle" (15 Nov 1964 - 7 Mar 1965)
• "Tea for Two?" (14 Mar 1965 - 20 Jun 1965)
• "The Big Gamble" (4 Jul 1965 - 3 Oct 1965)
• "Cargo Cult" (17 Oct 1965 - 30 Jan 1966)
• "The Kono Affair" (6 Feb 1966 - 27 Feb 1966)

External links

• Around in Europe with Johnny Hazard
• Comiclopedia: Johnny Hazard
• Johnny Hazard Flying Toy Airplane