Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle is a fictional

Fictional character

A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...

 American comic book

American comic book

An American comic book is a small magazine originating in the United States and containing a narrative in the form of comics. Since 1975 the dimensions have standardized at 6 5/8" x 10 ¼" , down from 6 ¾" x 10 ¼" in the Silver Age, although larger formats appeared in the past...

 character who was featured in his own self titled series, published by Dell Comics

Dell Comics

Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...

 in the 1960s.

The character was created during a period of transition for Dell Comics. Up until 1962 Dell had been the official comic book publisher for Western Publishing

Western Publishing

Western Publishing, also known as Western Printing and Lithographing Company was a Racine, Wisconsin firm responsible for publishing the Little Golden Books. Western Publishing also produced children's books and family-related entertainment products as Golden Books Family Entertainment...

, the licencer for Walt Disney

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...

, Hanna-Barbera

Hanna-Barbera

Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...

 and Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 among others. This relationship ended when Western made the decision to start its own comic book publishing company, Gold Key Comics

Gold Key Comics

Gold Key Comics was an imprint of Western Publishing created for comic books distributed to newsstands. Also known as Whitman Comics, Gold Key operated from 1962 to 1984.-History:...

.

Faced with the prospect of losing the rights to all of the series they were publishing, Dell began a large scale campaign in which numerous series and characters were created. This was designed to allow Dell to survive as a company past the point of Gold Key's creation. Of the characters created during this period, Kona was one of Dell's most successful creations.

Publication history

Kona debuted in Four Color Comics

Four Color

Four Color, also known as Four Color Comics and One Shots, was a long-running American comic book anthology series published by Dell Comics between 1939 and 1962...

 #1256 (dated February 1962) before his own self titled series started a few months later with issue #2 (dated June 1962). Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle would run to issue #21 (dated June 1964). The series was plotted by Don Segall, scripted and drawn by the great Sam Glanzman

Sam Glanzman

Sam J. Glanzman is an American comic-book artist, best known for his Charlton Comics series Hercules, about the mythological Greek demigod; his biographical war stories about his service aboard the U.S.S...

. Later stories were scripted by Paul S. Newman

Paul S. Newman

Paul S. Newman was an American writer of comic books, comic strips, and books, whose career spanned the 1940s to the 1990s...

.

Fictional character biography

Kona saves the lives of Dr. Henry Todd, his daughter Mary and his grandchildren Mason and Lily after this group crashes their army surplus blimp

Non-rigid airship

A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is a floating airship without an internal supporting framework or keel. A non-rigid airship differs from a semi-rigid airship and a rigid airship in that it does not have any rigid structure, neither a complete framework nor a partial keel, to help the airbag...

 on the prehistoric Pacific

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

island that Kona calls home. Befriending them, Kona becomes their protector and saves them from many huge animals and monsters.

Dr. Todd and his family eventually escape from the island, but later return to get Kona. After this Kona travels the world with them as their protector from the many huge monsters they encounter.