If you can recall who was “The Man Without a Country” or “The Prisoner of Zenda,” you likely owe your erudition to the nation’s schools and libraries, its Great Books Societies and, of course, Al Kanter.
For those of us whose formative years came between the end of World War II and the advent of the Twist, a taste for classic literature often was developed by reading Kanter’s Classic Comics, a publishing innovation that — as evidenced by its most recent revival by Acclaim Comics — has proved amazingly durable.
Dan Malin, author of “The Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated,” attributes the longevity of the series to Kanter’s genius.
“He was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who worked at this and that through the Depression, then became a sales representative for a publishing company,” Malin said. “He had the idea that you could publish illustrated books, each title a different literary classic. You could sell them as comics to kids and as books to adults.”
And many of the works were in the public domain — in other words, free.
Beginning in 1941 with Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers” and continuing until 1962, 167 titles were published. The first 34 came out as Classic Comics, which often is used as the generic term for the series as a whole. From No. 35 on (and reprints of earlier titles), they were known as Classics Illustrated. The comics were a dime each early on, then 15 cents, and, finally, a quarter.
Though available by mail, most copies were bought in the sort of mom-and-pop corner grocery stores that served every neighborhood. The children who read them — sometimes by flashlight late into the night — were not yet greatly exposed to television. Classic Comics were a cheap and easy way to sample a bit of the Brontes, a taste of Twain, a dram of Dumas. For many of us, they gave the first inkling of a great reservoir of wonderful stories. They led us to Western culture and made us drink.
Many of the titles offered a generous rendering of the original texts. In Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” for example, Mark Antony’s eulogy to Caesar is rendered complete in huge text balloons on three full pages.
They could be, obviously, an educational shortcut.
“I used Classic Comic books to get through grammar school,” claimed Charles Schwab, chairman of the financial services company that bears his name, in a 1995 interview.
Novelist, essayist, teacher and editor of the American Scholar, Joseph Epstein has noted that his boyhood book reports were based on Classic Comics.
Collector and dealer Raymond True related, “The teacher would say, `Turn to Page 347. For you, Raymond, that’s Page 19.’ “
Many of the Classic Comics titles carried concise, well-crafted introductions, putting the work in a historical context. Most contained, in the back of the book, a biography of the author and the quirkily combined, delicious triple treat of “Pioneers of Science,” “Famous Operas” and “Dog Heroes.”
At some point, a notice appeared at the end of each story: “Now that you have read the Classics Illustrated edition, don’t miss the added enjoyment of reading the original, obtainable at your school or public library.”
A large number of readers took that advice.
Rudy Tambone, growing up in New York City, “got the bug when I was 8 or so.” He bought the comics at a Woolworth’s store and developed a yearning for titles he had missed, so he called the publishers, Gilberton Company Inc. Impressed with such boldness at such an early age, they asked him to stop by the company at 826 Broadway.
“They took me into the office of the man himself,” Tambone said. “Kanter had a stack of 35 Classic comics books on his desk with my name on top of them. He gave them to me, and I have them today.”
Tambone sells old Classic Comics through his Web site (http://www.Rudyclassics.com/index.html). He talks of his search for the rare old editions as “a grail quest in which the journey is the joy.”
The competition from rapidly spreading TV, the necessity of raising the price to 25 cents and the loss of the second-class mailing permit combined to force Gilberton to sell Classics Illustrated to another publisher. Kanter had two sons, William and Hal, who became writers but did not take over the business. (Hal became well-known as a writer for the Bob Hope-hosted Oscar shows.)
Two more works were published by the new owner, bringing the series to 169 titles (the last being not a classic but a sort of educational enrichment titled “Negro Americans: The Early Years”). Reprints of earlier releases continued until Spring 1971, giving Classics Illustrated a huge and probably unequalled number of editions — 1,200.
The name Classics Illustrated has changed hands a number of times throughout the years. Most recently, it was bought by Acclaim Comics, which is reissuing titles in a digest-size format with scholarly essays added. They sell for $4.99.
“The original idea was to have them as study guides for when you read `Hamlet’ at the begining of the semester, and you’ve read 16 things since, and, oh my God, there’s a test tomorrow,” said Acclaim’s Classics Illustrated editor, Madeline Robbins.
Acclaim faced more decisions than format in reissuing the comics. Some titles had had as many as 25 editions, and the artwork sometimes was redone. Robbins said they chose the first version of the art for “Tom Sawyer” rather than the ’50s version.
“The old art had more of the tang and flavor of the novel,” Robbins said.
Though she finds the comics generally faithful to the original works, she rewrote a page of dialogue of Jane Eyre to “make it less like a Joan Fontaine movie and give it more Bronte-tude.”
Robbins thinks the Acclaim reissue comes at a fortunate time:
“Jane Austen is hot now. The Brontes are in revival. `The Odyssey’ is on TV and an `Ivanhoe’ film is coming. I think it is a return to story values. `Hamlet’ endures because there is more than one way to look at it. You see `Die Hard’ at the movies and it’s as deep as a thimble.”
Raymond True, with 26,000 copies of Classic Comics, is likely America’s largest dealer. He has hired an artist to create seven-foot reproductions of Classic Comics covers on his ceiling — “A Sistine Chapel of Classic Comics,” he calls it.
True’s catalog is sent to 1,500 collectors (most of them men between the ages of 35 and 65) who live all over the planet from Abu Dhabi to New Zealand. (To get the free catalog, write the Classic Comics Library, P.O. Box 784, Libertyville, Ill. 60048.)
“The stories are new to each generation,” True said in answer to the question of why these comics have endured.
Tambone’s reply to the same question? “Well, hey, they’re classics.”
