Jumbo Comics was an adventure anthology comic book published by Fiction House from 1938-1953. Jumbo Comics was Fiction House's first comics title; beforehand the publisher had specialised in Pulp Magazines. The lead feature for Jumbo Comics ' entire run was Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
Notable creators who worked on Jumbo Comics included Jack Kirby (working under a variety of pseudonyms ), Bob Kane , Matt Baker , Mort Meskin , Lou Fine , Bob Powell , Mort Leav , Art Saaf , Dick Breifer , Lily Renee , and Ruth Roche . Jerry Iger was Jumbo Comics ' art director for its entire run.
By the late 1930's, Fiction House publisher Thurman T. Scott expanded the company from pulp magazines to comic books, an emerging medium that began to seem a viable adjunct to the fading pulps. Receptive to a sales call by Eisner & Iger, one of the prominent "packagers" of that time that produced complete comic books on demand for publishers looking to enter the field, Scott published Jumbo Comics #1 (Sept. 1938) under Fiction House's Real Adventures Publishing Company imprint.
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle appeared in that initial issue. The character had debuted in 1937 in the British magazine Wags . Indeed, all the material Eisner & Iger prepared for Jumbo Comics #1 (and the subsequent seven issues) had originally appeared in Wags , which was a tabloid -sized publication. For this reason, Jumbo Comics #1-8 were oversize (10-1/2" x 14-1/2") and exclusively in black and white. (The name "Jumbo" was derived from the oversized publication size.) With issue #9, the title reverted to standard Golden Age comic size (8-1/2" x 10-1/2") and was printed in colour.
Bob Powell's first published comic-book art is tentatively identified as the uncredited three-page story "A Letter of Introduction," featuring the famed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy , in Jumbo Comics #2 (Oct. 1938). Lou Fine 's first published comics art was the strip "Wilton of the West" in Jumbo Comics #4 (Dec. 1938), signed with the house pen name "Fred Sande" (which strip originator Jack Kirby had used in previous issues).
Ultimately, Fiction House published 167 issues of Jumbo Comics from September 1938–March 1953.