The King Features Syndicate Microfilm Catalogue is a book listing Sunday and daily comic strips licensed to King Features Syndicate, held on microfilm, available to publishing partners and publishing houses interested in printing classic comic strip stories.

The Microfilm Catalogue measures 28cm x 21.7cm, with 195 black and white pages found within. The front and back cover of the copy shown below is the ‘4th Printing’, released in January 1982. Both of Lee Falk’s comic book character creations are featured on the cover, the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, alongside other King Features Syndicate licensed comic book characters.

A large number of comic book characters are on offer by King Features Syndicate within the catalogue. Below we see the 3 page Index at the front of the catalogue, detailing these characters.

On page 94, we find the Phantom listed, with a Phantom Sunday comic strip found on the left hand side (written by Lee Falk and illustrated by Sy Barry), plus a list of all available Phantom stories on microfilm on the right hand side.

The Phantom microfilm on offer date back to the very first stories published in newspapers, daily story first published on the 17th of February, 1936 and the first Sunday story published on the 28th of May, 1939.

The microfilms are divided into the year of publication, with daily stories available from 1937 thru to 1979, and Sunday stories available from 1939 thru to 1979. Interestingly, some years are noted as ‘material is of poor quality’.

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