Frank King (cartoonist)

Signed sketch of Frank King by Manuel Rosenberg, 1921

Frank Oscar King (April 9, 1883 – June 24, 1969) was an American cartoonist, most renowned for creating the iconic comic strip Gasoline Alley. King is credited with several innovations, including the introduction of real-time continuity in comic strips, which allowed his characters to age over generations. This groundbreaking approach set Gasoline Alley apart from other strips of the time.

Born in Cashton, Wisconsin, King was the eldest of two sons to mechanic John J. King and his wife, Caroline. At the age of four, he moved with his family to 1710 Superior Avenue in Tomah, Wisconsin, where his parents ran a general store. King developed an interest in drawing during his childhood in Tomah, where he graduated from Tomah High School in 1901. His early exposure to small-town life would later influence his work, particularly in Gasoline Alley, where the strip’s characters and their interactions with each other mirrored the familiar dynamics of a close-knit community.

As a young artist, Frank King entered country fair drawing competitions, with one notable early success being a sign he created for a hotel bootblack, for which he earned just 25 cents. However, this small commission led to a significant opportunity when a traveling salesman saw the sign and learned it was drawn by the son of one of his customers. The salesman arranged an interview for King with an editor at a Minneapolis newspaper.

King began working at the Minneapolis Times, earning $7 a week. Over his four years at the paper, he doubled his salary while honing his skills in creating drawings and doing retouching. He also worked as a courtroom sketch artist, which added to his experience. In March 1905, King further showcased his talents by giving a chalk talk at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Minneapolis, signaling the growing recognition of his abilities in both artistic and public speaking circles.

Chicago cartoonists

In 1905-06, Frank King studied art at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. After working at an ad agency and briefly at the Chicago American, he spent three years at the Chicago Examiner, where he worked alongside cartoonist T. S. Sullivant. In 1909, King left the Examiner to join the Chicago Tribune, where, according to his friend, Chicago cartoonist Lew Merrell, he negotiated a 50-cent increase in his weekly pay. This marked the beginning of his long and successful career at the Tribune, where he would go on to create iconic works like Gasoline Alley. At the Tribune he worked alongside Clare Briggs, Dean Cornwell and Garrett Price. In 1910, Frank King created the short-lived daily comic strip Jonah, a Whale for Trouble, which ran in the Chicago Tribune from October 3, 1910, to December 8, 1910. He followed this with the Tribune Sunday strip Young Teddy, which was published from September 10, 1911, to October 6, 1912. His humorous frog-themed Sunday strip Hi-Hopper debuted on February 1, 1914, and ran until December 27, 1914. These early works helped establish King’s style and laid the groundwork for his later success with Gasoline Alley.

On February 7, 1911, Frank King married Delia Drew, also from Tomah, Wisconsin. The couple, both 28 years old, settled in a series of apartments on the South Side of Chicago. In 1912, they faced a tragic loss when Delia gave birth to a stillborn daughter. However, in 1916, they welcomed their son, Robert Drew King. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to 533 Madison in Glencoe, a more affluent suburb located on the shores of Lake Michigan, north of Chicago, marking a new chapter in their lives. In 1916, King's salary from the Tribune was $5000. By 1925, this had grown to $22,500, a princely sum that was augmented by royalties from Gasoline Alley books and toys.

The Rectangle

Detail from The Rectangle (April 8, 1917), two days after the U.S. entered WWI.

The Rectangle began as a feature in the Chicago Tribune, showcasing a variety of cartoons and serialized content. Frank King’s contributions to the Rectangle Sunday page, which often appeared in black-and-white outside the comics section, became a significant part of its history. On January 9, 1913, King introduced a bounded rectangle containing themed single-panel gags under the heading Hints to Husbandettes. However, these pages did not follow a consistent format until February 1914. The title The Rectangle officially debuted on December 27, 1914.

Within The Rectangle, King created several recurring strips that highlighted his versatile storytelling and humor. These included Tough Teddy, The Boy Animal Trainer, Here Comes Motorcycle Mike, and Hi Hopper (featuring a frog). His first major success in the full-page comic format was Bobby Make-Believe, which ran from January 31, 1915, to December 7, 1919.

During World War I, King expanded his artistic scope by traveling overseas, where he sketched scenes of the war for publication in American newspapers, further solidifying his reputation as a talented and adaptable artist.

Bobby Make-Believe, Here Comes Motorcycle Mike, Hi Hopper, and other pre-Gasoline Alley comic strips by Frank King were reprinted by Sunday Press Books in a hardcover titled Crazy Quilt by Frank King: Scraps and Panels on the Way to Gasoline Alley, Comics from 1909-1919. This collection was released in 2017 (ISBN: 978-1-60913-527-9). The book offers readers a comprehensive look at King’s early works, showcasing his evolution as a cartoonist before his iconic Gasoline Alley strip.

Gasoline Alley

On Sunday, November 24, 1918, the bottom quadrant of The Rectangle featured Walter Weatherby Wallet and his neighbors Bill, Doc and Avery as they repaired their automobiles in the alley behind their houses. The corner was titled Sunday Morning in Gasoline Alley.

King recalled, "My brother had a car that he kept in the alley with a fellow by the name of Bill Gannon and some others. I'd go to his house on Sunday, and we'd go down the alley and run into somebody else and talk cars. That was the beginning of Gasoline Alley." After King began the daily Gasoline Alley strip (August 24, 1919), The Rectangle appeared sporadically and finally came to an end on February 8, 1920.

Frank King often credited his wife, Delia, for contributing a “woman’s angle” to Gasoline Alley. The character of Walt was based on King’s brother-in-law, Walter White Drew (1886–1941), while his own son, Robert Drew King, served as the model for Skeezix. Other characters in the strip drew inspiration from real-life figures, such as Tomah’s Dr. Johnson, who became the basis for Doc, and Bill Gannon, who inspired the character of Bill.

King also mentored talent, hiring Bill Perry from the Chicago Tribune‘s mailroom and training him to become his assistant. Despite King’s inclination toward homespun and simple Sunday stories, he also explored innovative artistic techniques that stood out in the medium.

Comics critic Paul Gravett highlighted King’s experimental approach to time and space in the Sunday pages of Gasoline Alley:

“Other precedents from America’s newspaper supplements were occasional experiments by Frank King in his Gasoline Alley Sunday pages where he would turn the whole page into one continuous landscape. For example, on 24 May 1931, King uses an unrealistic, almost isometric perspective to turn the page into a single image, like a diagram viewed from above, of the neighborhood and its assorted residents. This angled aerial view he divides into 12 equal panels, each containing at least one fresh character to contribute their own moment of comedy. In more of an ensemble of jokes than a strictly linear narrative, no characters appear here more than once.”

King pushed these creative boundaries even further in 1934, when he devoted three consecutive Sunday pages to depicting a house under construction, using the entire page as a single image. The first, dated 25 March 1934, shows Skeezix and his friend Whimpy exploring the foundations of a house built on their favorite baseball field. The page features 12 identical square panels where the characters move through time in sequence, though sometimes leaping ahead considerably between panels.

The success of Gasoline Alley escalated until it was published in over 300 daily newspapers with a daily combined readership of over 27,000,000. According to Lew Merrell, the strip and its merchandising made King a millionaire. In In 1929, the King family relocated to Florida, where they spent 20 years living between Kissimmee and St. Cloud at their Folly Farms estate on the northeast shore of Lake Tohopekaliga. The estate, originally spanning several acres along the lake, still exists today, tucked away within the Regal Oak Shores subdivision.

In 1941, Frank King reflected on the future of his iconic comic strip, writing: “Just what the future holds for Skeezix and Gasoline Alley nobody knows. If permitted a fanciful prophecy, I should say that Skeezix will eventually marry, probably raise a family and make Uncle Walt a happy foster grandparent. Skeezix’s offspring will in turn grow up, marry and have children. They in turn will thrive and mature and repeat the customary cycle ad infinitum.”

At Folly Farms, during the 1940s, King spent time on his hobbies—sculpting, collecting maps, playing the fiddle and raising amaryllis bulbs. He retired from the Sunday strip in 1951, letting his assistant Bill Perry to take over. King retired from the daily in 1959, turning it over to Dick Moores, his assistant since 1956. The strip continues until the present day.

In later years, King lived in Winter Park, Florida. On June 24, 1969, Dennis Green, a King employee for many years, arrived to prepare King's breakfast. He heard King moving around the house and later found his body on a bathroom floor. King was buried in Tomah's Oak Grove Cemetery beside his wife, Delia, who died February 7, 1959. The couple's son, Robert King, lived in Des Plaines, Illinois.

Awards and exhibitions

Frank King had one-man art shows in Springfield, Illinois, and Buffalo, New York, and his work is part of the permanent collection at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. In 1955, he was honored at Tomah’s Centennial celebration, where he was presented with a Native American headdress. King’s desk is displayed at the Tomah Area Historical Society Museum, and in 1969, Gasoline Alley signs were installed along Superior Avenue in Tomah.

In Florida, King’s Highway was named in his honor, running south from Neptune Road to the King’s Folly Farms estate. The character Mr. Enray, a banker featured in Gasoline Alley during the late 1940s, was inspired by N. Ray Carroll, a real-life banker from Kissimmee. Carroll, who later became a state senator, secured the road’s naming through a resolution by the Florida Legislature.

He was twice honored for his work by the Freedom Foundation, and he received awards three times from the National Cartoonists Society.

• 1949: Silver T-Square Award
• 1957: Humor Comic Strip Award
• 1958: Reuben Award

External links

• Frank King biography
• Sunday Press Books
• Bobby Make-Believe at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on February 22, 2018.