Wonderful article! We had similar youthful experiences with Classics Illustrated. You might enjoy my book, CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED: A CULTURAL HISTORY, now in its third edition (McFarland, 2024). The original CI series is currently being reissued under license by a British publisher, CCS Books.
I began collecting Classics Illustrated during childhood, ordering hard-to find titles from the publisher in New York. I’ve added more as an adult and have all 169 U.S. issues, as well as numerous British, European, Mexican, and Brazilian editions.
I may have to start a collection from scratch. I tend to be a completist, so I need to think very hard about starting. Because if I start, I won't be able to stop. I'm really looking forward to reading your book.
You may find help as a completist in the Appendices in ‘Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History,’ 3d. I compiled complete issue-by-issue and printing-by-printing lists of all U.S. CI titles, indicating cover and interior variants and identifying artists. I did the same for U.S. subsidiary series (Juniors, Special Issues, World Around Us), as well as British, Joint European, Greek, Brazilian, and Mexican lines.
One of my favorite professors at the University of Colorado in the Department of English mostly taught folklore, Old Norse and Norse Mythology. Every few years he was required to teach an English Lit or American Lit 101 course which required refreshing his own memory of various classics. I remarked once how that could be a time-consuming matter on top of his ongoing research in his favored fields. He showed me his “secret weapon,” a complete set of Classics Illustrated comics he had compiled starting in his childhood.
My Uncle discovered the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED at the newsstand where he took the subway home each night after work. I was 4, and cuddled in his arm as he read them to me, I learned to read. They were a valuable learning tool, as later, in school I recognized titles as old friends, and checked the originals out of the library.
I believe now, after almost 70 years, I can admit to the fact that I got through high school english literature with help of Classics Illustrated. Mr. Curtin and Miss Kane are now long gone!
For me, it was "The Little Golden Encyclopedia", an old set of which was in the barn I grew up in.
Golden Books clearly treated this as a labor of love, not only hiring the best writers, educators, illustrators, scientists, historians, theologians, etc. that money could buy (they even got Walt Disney, and he didn't need their money), but also by the tone of the articles, that there was a world out there full of fascinating things, and you could know it, you could master it, and all this was good, there was a whole world out there outside of the little barn in Iowa.
Naturally, that piqued the curiosity of a young tomcat.
I loved those too as a kid, as well as the World Book Encyclopedia volumes. I spent hours completely absorbed in them.
As for comics, my parents weren’t into them, which is why I would hide for hours on end in closets at various friends’ places and read their old superhero comics.
I also read books under the blankets with a flashlight all the time.
Not only that, but it was a quarter for the first volume and a dollar for each subsequent one at the supermarket.
Michael Bierut, the noted graphical designer, had the Golden Book History of the United States as his touchstone. He wrote a wonderful essay "The Best Artist in the World" about the books and the man who illustrated all of them, Alton Tobey.
Classics Illustrated introduced me to so much great literature early on. Then came Landmark Books, which introduced me to so much history. After that it was Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Then came Ian Fleming's James Bond. And then The Beatles.
At Harvard, my grad school professor of Russian literature, Donald Fanger, kept a copy of the Classics Illustrated “Crime and Punishment” on his desk next to silver framed photographs of his family and Groucho Marx. He was a scholar who put his students at ease.
Hey, Ted. Explain why Diomedes loses his mustache halfway through the Classics Comic Iliad. Bugged me as a 10 year old, I've taught The Iliad 40 times but the 'Stache just disappears.
in the late 80s First comics took the classics illustrated (a year or 2) and published 2 dozen or so. which i still have. i had no idea it was an older edition reborn.
Those were great, especially Bill Sienkiewicz’s Moby Dick and Gahan Wilson’s Poe adaptation. I worked in a bookstore at the time, and was able to take home the metal rack the store was sent to display them. I still use it to hold some comics.
Of the illustrated novels currently on my shelf, I can recommend Marvel's Wizard of Oz Adaptation, the Last Unicorn version published by IDW, and Hope Larson's adaptation of a Wrinkle in Time. Robert Crumb's Book of Genesis is also amazing - it's not an adaptation, either, it's word for word a serious translation of the Bible thoughtfully illustrated.
Graphic novels of classics are definitely a thing - I know I have a graphic novel version of the Illiad in there somewhere, and I remember hearing about an Indian publisher that's been putting out a lot of the Puranic myths as classics. I might also add many graphic novels are classics in their own rights, like Maus, Persepolis, Epileptic, and Day Tripper. I won't even get into Japan.
Well, if we're going there, I'm going to put myself out and say that compared to the manga for Akira, or Nausicaa, for instance, celebrated western graphic novelists like Alan Moore strike me as kind of trash. V for Vendetta? We're really just going to take a much better book like 1984 (which I don't mind itself being a rip off of Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We") and turn it into some superhero thing with a couple impotent nods to anarchism? Bleh. A lot of these "greats" who are a little too deep into the mainstream are always just biding their time trying to get to the nearest prostitute, rape, attempted rape, or attempted rape of a proustite, and plodding into that realm of early 20th Century taboo is the best they can muster in an effort towards late 20th Century "adult thematic maturity."
My experience pales to yours- but yes to the limited tropes. My abyss was some years ago in Tokyo- I chanced on a bookstore and thought I'd take a look at the graphic novel "section". Five floors.
Terry Teachout, the late culture editor of the WSJ, was a pioneer of middlebrow culture. He explored these Classic Illustrated comics, but also Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, Willa Cather along with Bugs Bunny, Dostoevsky aside Raymond Chandler. Being from "small town" Missouri, he made big-city high culture less intimidating to the rural and suburban masses. He patiently explained in everyday language Dante's Inferno, the realism of Ernest Meissonier's impact on the birth of French Impressionism, the revolution that was Louis Armstrong's West End Blues and what everyone missed about why David Lynch's Twin Peaks was a popular TV hit.
In India, I gather the childhood cultural touchstone may be Manoj Pocket Books. They defined the way a lot of people in India visualize the stories of the gods, history, places and so on.
It's like childhood encyclopedias. I grew up on the Golden Book version. I remember coming back from college and leafing through it, shocked by the sense of recognition.
Well said. It’s also forgotten that Disney comics were a treasure trove of information from vocabulary expansion ( I remember a Donald Duck episode called “The Pixilated Parrot” & my dad explaining Pixilated..) to History… geography, amazing actually… nothing like it exists today.
Nowadays they are fussier about exposing children to more advanced vocabulary. Kids are supposed to read age appropriate books. It's a way of making sure they don't learn anything.
Wonderful article! We had similar youthful experiences with Classics Illustrated. You might enjoy my book, CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED: A CULTURAL HISTORY, now in its third edition (McFarland, 2024). The original CI series is currently being reissued under license by a British publisher, CCS Books.
I just checked out your book & plan on ordering a copy. How many of the Classics Illustrated do you have in your library?
I began collecting Classics Illustrated during childhood, ordering hard-to find titles from the publisher in New York. I’ve added more as an adult and have all 169 U.S. issues, as well as numerous British, European, Mexican, and Brazilian editions.
I may have to start a collection from scratch. I tend to be a completist, so I need to think very hard about starting. Because if I start, I won't be able to stop. I'm really looking forward to reading your book.
You may find help as a completist in the Appendices in ‘Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History,’ 3d. I compiled complete issue-by-issue and printing-by-printing lists of all U.S. CI titles, indicating cover and interior variants and identifying artists. I did the same for U.S. subsidiary series (Juniors, Special Issues, World Around Us), as well as British, Joint European, Greek, Brazilian, and Mexican lines.
One of my favorite professors at the University of Colorado in the Department of English mostly taught folklore, Old Norse and Norse Mythology. Every few years he was required to teach an English Lit or American Lit 101 course which required refreshing his own memory of various classics. I remarked once how that could be a time-consuming matter on top of his ongoing research in his favored fields. He showed me his “secret weapon,” a complete set of Classics Illustrated comics he had compiled starting in his childhood.
My Uncle discovered the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED at the newsstand where he took the subway home each night after work. I was 4, and cuddled in his arm as he read them to me, I learned to read. They were a valuable learning tool, as later, in school I recognized titles as old friends, and checked the originals out of the library.
I believe now, after almost 70 years, I can admit to the fact that I got through high school english literature with help of Classics Illustrated. Mr. Curtin and Miss Kane are now long gone!
For me, it was "The Little Golden Encyclopedia", an old set of which was in the barn I grew up in.
Golden Books clearly treated this as a labor of love, not only hiring the best writers, educators, illustrators, scientists, historians, theologians, etc. that money could buy (they even got Walt Disney, and he didn't need their money), but also by the tone of the articles, that there was a world out there full of fascinating things, and you could know it, you could master it, and all this was good, there was a whole world out there outside of the little barn in Iowa.
Naturally, that piqued the curiosity of a young tomcat.
I loved those too as a kid, as well as the World Book Encyclopedia volumes. I spent hours completely absorbed in them.
As for comics, my parents weren’t into them, which is why I would hide for hours on end in closets at various friends’ places and read their old superhero comics.
I also read books under the blankets with a flashlight all the time.
Such bad habits, tsk tsk …
Not only that, but it was a quarter for the first volume and a dollar for each subsequent one at the supermarket.
Michael Bierut, the noted graphical designer, had the Golden Book History of the United States as his touchstone. He wrote a wonderful essay "The Best Artist in the World" about the books and the man who illustrated all of them, Alton Tobey.
https://designobserver.com/the-best-artist-in-the-world/
They clearly weren't doing this as a fast buck operation.
Those supermarket sales are what got the encyclopedia that I read.
The most classic moment in Classics Illustrated was the Hamlet soliloquy in one panel!!!!! You can find it here: https://hyperion2satyr.blogspot.com/2011/10/iiii-to-be-or-not-to-be-classics.html
(another entry was the Viewmaster 3-d images stories.
Classics Illustrated introduced me to so much great literature early on. Then came Landmark Books, which introduced me to so much history. After that it was Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Then came Ian Fleming's James Bond. And then The Beatles.
At Harvard, my grad school professor of Russian literature, Donald Fanger, kept a copy of the Classics Illustrated “Crime and Punishment” on his desk next to silver framed photographs of his family and Groucho Marx. He was a scholar who put his students at ease.
Hey, Ted. Explain why Diomedes loses his mustache halfway through the Classics Comic Iliad. Bugged me as a 10 year old, I've taught The Iliad 40 times but the 'Stache just disappears.
Absolutely love this, Ted.
As a lifelong career cartoonist, I can attest to the staying power of sequential art. 🙏
Thank you for bringing attention to this art form.
in the late 80s First comics took the classics illustrated (a year or 2) and published 2 dozen or so. which i still have. i had no idea it was an older edition reborn.
Those were great, especially Bill Sienkiewicz’s Moby Dick and Gahan Wilson’s Poe adaptation. I worked in a bookstore at the time, and was able to take home the metal rack the store was sent to display them. I still use it to hold some comics.
Kyle Baker’s Alice in Wonderland was great too and I liked JK Snyder’s Jekyll and Hyde. They got some excellent artists to work on that series.
Of the illustrated novels currently on my shelf, I can recommend Marvel's Wizard of Oz Adaptation, the Last Unicorn version published by IDW, and Hope Larson's adaptation of a Wrinkle in Time. Robert Crumb's Book of Genesis is also amazing - it's not an adaptation, either, it's word for word a serious translation of the Bible thoughtfully illustrated.
Graphic novels of classics are definitely a thing - I know I have a graphic novel version of the Illiad in there somewhere, and I remember hearing about an Indian publisher that's been putting out a lot of the Puranic myths as classics. I might also add many graphic novels are classics in their own rights, like Maus, Persepolis, Epileptic, and Day Tripper. I won't even get into Japan.
I laughed at "I won't even..." Like staring into the abyss.
Well, if we're going there, I'm going to put myself out and say that compared to the manga for Akira, or Nausicaa, for instance, celebrated western graphic novelists like Alan Moore strike me as kind of trash. V for Vendetta? We're really just going to take a much better book like 1984 (which I don't mind itself being a rip off of Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We") and turn it into some superhero thing with a couple impotent nods to anarchism? Bleh. A lot of these "greats" who are a little too deep into the mainstream are always just biding their time trying to get to the nearest prostitute, rape, attempted rape, or attempted rape of a proustite, and plodding into that realm of early 20th Century taboo is the best they can muster in an effort towards late 20th Century "adult thematic maturity."
My experience pales to yours- but yes to the limited tropes. My abyss was some years ago in Tokyo- I chanced on a bookstore and thought I'd take a look at the graphic novel "section". Five floors.
Terry Teachout, the late culture editor of the WSJ, was a pioneer of middlebrow culture. He explored these Classic Illustrated comics, but also Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, Willa Cather along with Bugs Bunny, Dostoevsky aside Raymond Chandler. Being from "small town" Missouri, he made big-city high culture less intimidating to the rural and suburban masses. He patiently explained in everyday language Dante's Inferno, the realism of Ernest Meissonier's impact on the birth of French Impressionism, the revolution that was Louis Armstrong's West End Blues and what everyone missed about why David Lynch's Twin Peaks was a popular TV hit.
In India, I gather the childhood cultural touchstone may be Manoj Pocket Books. They defined the way a lot of people in India visualize the stories of the gods, history, places and so on.
It's like childhood encyclopedias. I grew up on the Golden Book version. I remember coming back from college and leafing through it, shocked by the sense of recognition.
Me too!
Well said. It’s also forgotten that Disney comics were a treasure trove of information from vocabulary expansion ( I remember a Donald Duck episode called “The Pixilated Parrot” & my dad explaining Pixilated..) to History… geography, amazing actually… nothing like it exists today.
Nowadays they are fussier about exposing children to more advanced vocabulary. Kids are supposed to read age appropriate books. It's a way of making sure they don't learn anything.
So true.
I didn't know Dean Martin was in the Count of Monte Christo.
thought eggzactly the same! (Dino made a good drunken cowboy tho!)