Johnny Hazard

Johnny Hazard was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Frank Robbins for King Features Syndicate. It was published from 1944 until 1977 with separate storylines for the daily strip and the Sunday strip.

After work in advertising, Robbins took over the daily strip Scorchy Smith from Noel Sickles in 1939 with a Sunday page added in 1940. King Features then asked Robbins to do Secret Agent X-9, 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, Look, The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines. Robbins stopped drawing Johnny Hazard in 1977 and retired to Mexico in order to devote himself to painting full-time.

The strip followed the globe-trotting adventures of aviator Johnny Hazard, initially as a member of the United States Army Air Corps in World War II, later as a Cold War secret agent. Comics historian Don Markstein described the transition:

Robbins' Johnny Hazard comic book was published by Standard Comics 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, with separate volumes for daily and Sunday strips.

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

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