Turok first appeared in Dell's Four Color Comics #596 (December, 1954). In it, Turok and his young friend, Andar, pre-Columbian Indians, were out on a hunting expedition. They stumbled into a large valley surrounded by unscalable cliffs, where dinosaurs (which they called "honkers") still lived, and couldn't find their way back out. They were to spend more than a quarter of a century trying to escape that valley.

The comic was illustrated by Rex Maxon, best known for his work on the Tarzan newspaper strip. Other credits are harder to pin down. Some sources say it was scripted by Paul S. Newman, probably the medium's most prolific writer; others say Gaylord DuBois, also extremely prolific. The character was probably created by editor Matt Murphy, but one prominent source that gives this information also says the first writer was Alberto Giolitti — who was actually the artist most prominently associated with the character over the years.

Be that as it may, Four Color devoted a second issue to Turok ten months later. He then moved out into his own book, starting with a March-May, 1956 cover date. First as a quarterly, then bimonthly, the Turok, Son of Stone title chronicled dozens of adventures Turok and Andar had with dinosaurs, primitive cave men and other anachronisms, for the rest of the 1950s, and beyond. Giolitti (whose other credits include comic book versions of The Twilight Zone, Ripley's Believe it or Not, Star Trek and other licensed properties for Turok's publisher) took over the art early on, and Newman wrote most of the stories.

Like most of Dell's titles, Turok was published at the behest of Western Printing and Publishing, which owned the character. In 1962, Western ended its association with Dell and began an imprint of its own, Gold Key Comics. The first Gold Key issue of Turok was #30 (December, 1962). It continued with Gold Key, same as always (but with the occasional space alien or man-eating plant tossed into the mix), until the publisher itself faltered. The last issue was #130 (April, 1982). Issue #131 was produced but never released.