Haftalık Albüm (which translates to Weekly Album) was a comic book series published by Türkiye Yayınevi in Turkey from 1952 thru till 1954. The series contains 60 comic books, with one or two different comic book characters published per edition. These characters include the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, plus a variety of locally produced characters.
Türkiye Yayınevi stands as one of the most monumental and foundational pillars in the history of Turkish publishing and popular culture. Established in Istanbul by the influential educator, writer, and entrepreneur Tahsin Demiray, the company dominated the mid-20th-century media landscape. Operating from the late 1920s through the 1960s, it transformed how the Turkish public consumed literature, history, and sequential art. Rather than relying solely on highbrow literary texts, Demiray built a vast media empire by focusing on mass-market appeal, pioneering high-circulation illustrated magazines, historical multi-volume encyclopedias, and serialized fiction.
For historians of sequential art, Türkiye Yayınevi is most revered as the true birthplace of the Turkish comic book industry (çizgi roman), largely due to its groundbreaking anthology magazine, 1001 Roman (Thousand and One Novels), launched in 1939. Under the technical and editorial guidance of Burhan Bilbaşar, this weekly publication introduced generations of Turkish readers to legendary American newspaper adventure strips. It was within the pages of 1001 Roman and its dedicated monthly Özel Sayı (Special Issues) that iconic pulp heroes like The Phantom (initially popularized under names like Kızıl Maske or Ölümsüz Ruh), Mandrake the Magician, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, and Secret Agent X-9 made their historic Turkish debuts. The high production values, coupled with expressive translations, turned these characters into immediate cultural phenomena.
Beyond imports, the publishing house acted as a crucial incubator for legendary local talent, shaping the careers of legendary Turkish illustrators and comic creators like Suat Yalaz, Samim Utkun, and Shahap Ayhan. In the 1960s, the company cemented its local legacy by publishing early weekly serialized runs of Yalaz’s masterpiece, Karaoğlan, a historical adventure comic that captured the national imagination. Additionally, Türkiye Yayınevi excelled in educational and mainstream print, producing iconic children’s magazines like Yavrutürk, foundational reference books, and deeply researched historical literature. By bridging the gap between American pulp syndication and authentic Turkish graphic storytelling, Türkiye Yayınevi laid the structural blueprint for all Turkish comic book publishing that followed.
Haftalık Albüm comic books were published in a mix of color and black and white pages, usually containing 24 pages measuring 24cm x 16.5cm. The Phantom was published in the series under his local title of ‘Kizil Maske’, appearing on both the covers and within 11 editions (numbers 3, 11, 12, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 35 and 36).
All 11 editions of Haftalık Albüm the Phantom makes an appearance in can be seen below. Cover illustrations are by Turkish artist Tan Oral.
A sample of internal pages can be seen below.
Although the Phantom is traditionally published in a red colored costume in Turkey, as seen on the front covers of Haftalık Albüm above, internal comic strips show the Phantom in a grey colored costume.
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