Classics Illustrated

 

Some of my favorite early reading as a kid were Classics Illustrated.

They were perfect because I’d outgrown Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse comics and the superhero universe (as its now called) never appealed to me. I loved reading books but wasn’t quite ready for the serious classics, until I discovered them in comic book form.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1941, Russian-American publisher Albert Kanter figured the popular new trend in comic books could be used to introduce young (and often reluctant) readers to the classics of literature. The first issue, published that year under the banner, Classic Comics, was an abridged and illustrated version of The Three Musketeers. When Kanter saw sales reaching half a million, he knew he had a successful franchise on his hands. Today, a first edition of The Three Musketeers is worth around $1,000 US. He followed that with Ivanhoe and The Count of Monte Cristo.

In 1947, the comics were rebranded Classics Illustrated, and it’s those I most remember. I read Mody Dick, A Tale of Two Cities,  Robinson Crusoe, and Hamlet, for example. Several of my friends liked them as much as I did so we traded around our copies and talked about them in our eleven-year-old version of a university seminar.

The adaptations were an approximation and the cover art often garish (a big draw, to most of us kids) but it inspired me to read the original texts when I was a bit older.

Kanter sold his company in 1967. Classics Illustrated limped along, its viability compromised by television, until it was shut down in 1971.