Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History [2 ed.] 0786438401, 9780786438402

Citation preview

CLASSICS Illustrated SECOND EDITION

CLASSICS Illustrated A Cultural History SECOND EDITION

WILLIAM B. JONES, JR .

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

William B. Jones, Jr., is also the editor of Robert Louis Stevenson Reconsidered: New Critical Perspectives (McFarland, 2003)

Frontispiece: Alex A. Blum, The Man Who Laughs (May 1950, first Canadian edition 30 November 1950).

Classics Illustrated ( TM) is the trademark of Frawley Corporation and its exclusive licensee First Classics, Inc. All rights reserved. By permission of Jack Lake Productions Inc. (www.jacklakeproductions.com).

LIBRARY

OF

CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Jones, William B., Jr., 1950– Classics illustrated : a cultural history / William B. Jones, Jr.— 2d ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-3840-2 illustrated case binding : 50# and 70# alkaline papers 1. Classics illustrated (New York, N.Y.) 2. Kanter, Albert Lewis, 1897–1973. I. Title PN6725.J67 2011 741.5' 973–dc22 2011014281 BRITISH LIBRARY

CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

© 2011 William B. Jones, Jr. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the front cover: Classics Illustrated covers (clockwise, from left) Robin Hood (November 1955); War of the Worlds ( January 1955); Treasure Island (October 1949); Ivanhoe ( January 1957); Cleopatra (March 1961); Mysteries (August 1947); Journey to the Center of the Earth (May 1957) On the back cover: Caesar's Conquests ( January1956) Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

For Yslan, my wife and truest friend, with fondest memories of tracking The Last of the Mohicans, unearthing The Master of Ballantrae, and riding Off on a Comet and again for Will and Stephen, the best of sons and companions, who now know How Fire Came to the Indians, the secret of The Man Who Laughs, and what an all-too-brief thing is A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This page intentionally left blank

Table of Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: “Good Stories” I. Albert Kanter’s Dream

1

9

II. Of Musketeers and Mohicans: The Jacquet Shop III. Louis Zansky: The Painter’s Touch

17

26

IV. Eccentricity Abounding: The War Years

35

V. Arnold Lorne Hicks: Transitional Figure

42

Between pages 48 and 49 are eight pages containing 22 color plates VI. Enter Iger: The Fiction House Artists

49

VII. Henry Carl Kiefer and the Classics House Style VIII. Alex A. Blum: “A Prince of a Man”

76

IX. A “Newer, Truer Name”: The Late Forties X. Blood, Sweat, and Rudy Palais

63 90

104

XI. Painted Covers and an Extra Nickel: The Early Fifties XII. Maurice del Bourgo: A “Man’s World Artist” XIII. Canonical Matters and Classical Curiosities

111

131 135

XIV. Lou Cameron: “If John Wayne Had Drawn Comic Books” XV. Norman Nodel: “A Certain Integrity”

153

XVI. From the Crypt to the Classics: The EC Era

165

XVII. George Evans, Reed Crandall, and the Tradition of EC Realism XVIII. Roberta the Conqueror

144

182

197

Between pages 200 and 201 are eight pages containing 26 color plates XIX. High Tide and Greenbacks: The Late Fifties XX. Gerald McCann: The Colors of the Sky

201 213

XXI. Gray Morrow: “Real People and Real Events” XXII. “Roberta’s Reforms”: The Early Sixties XXIII. William E. Kanter: About a Son

222

240

vii

217

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS XXIV. Five Little Series and How They Grew: Picture Progress; Classics Illustrated Junior; Classics Illustrated Special Issues; The World Around Us; The Best from Boys’ Life Comics XXV. “Frawley’s Folly”: The Twin Circle Era (1967–1971) XXVI. Classics Abroad: The Worldwide Yellow Banner

270 274

XXVII. The Wilderness Years: The Seventies and Eighties

280

XXVIII. Great Expectations: First Publishing’s Graphic Novels

283

XXIX. “Your Doorway to the Classics”: Acclaim’s Study Guides XXX. Restoration: Jack Lake Productions and Papercutz

291

294

XXXI. Classics Collected: Notes on the Evolution of a Pastime and a Passion XXXII.

lCassical Coda

299

306 Notes

309

Appendices A. Classic Comics and Classics Illustrated

317

B. Classics Illustrated Giant Editions

334

C. Fast Fiction/Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated D. Classics Illustrated Educational Series E. Picture Parade/Picture Progress

334

335 335

F. Classics Illustrated Junior

336

G. Classics Illustrated Special Issues

342

H. The Best from Boys’ Life Comics

343

I. The World Around Us

344

J. British Classics Illustrated, First and Second Series

349

K. Classics Illustrated, Second Series (Berkley/First)

353

L. Classics Illustrated, Third Series, Study Guides (Acclaim) M. Classics Illustrated, Fourth Series ( Jack Lake)

353

355

N. Classics Illustrated Junior, Second Series ( Jack Lake)

357

O. Classics Illustrated Special Issues, Second Series ( Jack Lake) P. British Classics Illustrated, Third Series

359

Q. Papercutz Classics Illustrated DeLuxe Editions R. Papercutz Classics Illustrated Editions

359

360 360

S. Correspondence Between Roberta Strauss and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, re: The Dark Frigate 360 T. Letter from Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht to E. Nelson Bridwell Bibliography Index

363 367

361

244

Acknowledgments W

but it hadn’t addressed either the artists who worked for the series or the adaptations of the works that formed the title list. As it happened, Charlotte liked the CI option and told me to begin securing copyright permissions. In my innocence, I thought the process would take a couple of weeks at most. Three years later, a permissions agreement was signed. In the meantime, I had been contacting artists or family members through various search directories in those early Internet days. The first artist I heard from was Rudy Palais. He called me on the evening of 1 November 1993, when I was in charge of my two-year-old and six-weeks-old sons. I took the call while trying to feed both boys their very different meals. “Is this Bill Jones?” I heard a raspy voice on the other end of the line ask. “Yes, it is,” I replied. “This is Rudy Palais. How did you find me?” I was so startled that I nearly dropped baby Stephen. When I recovered myself, I said, “On a computer.” After a slight pause, Mr. Palais half-laughed, half-barked his comment: “Well, that’s scary as hell!” And, truly, I suppose it was. By the time I had completed the original edition of this work, I had only one e-mail listed as a source. That number has grown, to say the least. Social networking played its part this time around, as well. I’ve discovered principal sources for this edition through Facebook, Google, and various websites that, like so many other tools we now take for granted, didn’t exist in the mid–1990s. An international community of people interested in Classics Illustrated as something more than collectibles has grown since the publication of the original edition of this book. Many share my fascination with the story of first- and second-generation Americans who helped to shape the literary experience of two generations. Others have responded to the implicit narrative of underlying political currents in the Gilberton editorial and business offices and the tension between the traditionalism embodied by the publication itself and the progressive views of various editors and scriptwriters. When this book appeared ten years ago, I never dreamed how many doors would be opened as a result. From an invitation to speak at the Library of Congress to an offer to provide introductions for the revived Classics Illustrated series, the ex-

hen I completed the first edition of Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, I thought the song was over. In my mind, I was chronicling a noble idea — the introduction of children to literary masterpieces through the comics medium— that had outlasted its time. But within a year of the publication of the book, I found that Classics Illustrated had been given new life through the efforts of a quixotic dreamer, Jaak Jarve, a Toronto-based publisher with Kanteresque energy. With Canadian, American, and British imprints currently active, the 70-year-old line is on its way to becoming a worldwide presence again. In the meantime, more information about the history of the original series has become available, and an expanded second edition seemed in order. This book had its inception in a very different world. In fact, it began as another book altogether. In the fall of 1992, my friend Stephen Buel, who, as editor of Spectrum, gave me my first opportunity to write for pay in the learn-by-doing school, had been covering the 1992 presidential race in Little Rock for UPI. After the election of Bill Clinton, when for a few weeks anything seemed possible for anyone from Little Rock, Steve suggested to me that we collaborate on a book on the president-elect’s repeated patterns of rising, falling, and rising again. The idea was that we would focus on Clinton’s 1978 election as the nation’s youngest governor, his 1980 gubernatorial defeat, and his 1982 mea culpa resurrection as a sort of predictor of his then-unwritten presidential career. Thanks to novelist and historian Grif Stockley, we were soon in touch with Charlotte Gordon, a New York literary agent. She indicated, by letter and phone conversation in late December 1992, that she wasn’t interested in a collaborative study of Bill Clinton’s early political career. “Who knows if anyone will be interested in him after he’s inaugurated?” she said, in what I suspected even then would qualify as Famous Last Words. Charlotte then asked me to come up with a list of three or four possible book subjects. I dutifully listed four items, which I promptly mailed by snail in those preelectronic-mail days. In fact, I was serious about only one of them: my childhood love, Classics Illustrated. Dan Malan’s superb Complete Guide had appeared a couple of years earlier,

ix

x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

perience has been deeply rewarding. Sometimes I still find it hard to believe that I have had the good fortune not only to write about the series that made me fall in love with reading but also to write for that series. It’s been a beautiful closing of a circle. So many people have shown me so many kindnesses over the past decade in connection with this project that I fear I will never be able to thank them adequately. Their generous contributions to this expanded volume, their warm encouragement of my research and writing, and their moving tokens of friendship during the past ten years have left me forever in awe of the selfless capacities of the human heart. In this extension of my original acknowledgments, I want to reemphasize my debt of gratitude to all those mentioned before. Among that group, I wish to thank in particular Classics historian John Haufe, whose shared research on the Junior series and tireless copying of materials from his own extensive CI archive has materially enhanced the value of the enlarged Appendix; Michael Sawyer, whose documentary materials relating to Gilberton’s incorporation, position during the anticomics crusade, and legal battles with the Post Office have illuminated complex and obscure issues; and Raymond True, whose insights into Classics Illustrated printing history and publication practices have clarified and corrected areas formerly governed by speculation. New friends have made this new book possible. For their willingness to share their memories of Gilberton days, I will always be indebted to William Kanter’s son, John “Buzz” Kanter; former editor and researcher Helene Lecar; former publicist Eleanor Lidofsky; former business manager O.B. “Bernie” Stiskin; and artist Mort Künstler. Those who have contributed with accounts of their roles in the continuing Classics Illustrated saga include Jaak Jarve of Jack Lake Productions and Jim Salicrup and Michael Petránek of Papercutz. ComLou Cameron, original art for ics legend Roy Thomas, forThe Count of Monte Cristo merly of Marvel and pres(single panel), published November 1956 (collection of the ently publisher of Alter Ego, has been an enthusiastic supauthor).

porter of my work on this book and has offered perspectives on adapting classic literature. A group of serious collectors of original Classics Illustrated art have been attempting during the past five years or so to preserve as much of the Gilberton heritage as possible and to prevent the dwindling number of still-intact complete sets from being broken apart, sold, and scattered. These popularculture heroes include Lars Teglbjaerg of Denmark (and resident of Sweden), Øystein Sørensen of Norway, and Lawrence and Eric Chalif of New York. All of these gentlemen have extended their friendship and allowed me the use of images of original paintings in their collections for this edition. The Rev. George Thomas Fisher, author of The Classics Index, sent me a copy of his pioneering reference work; it proved most helpful during my hours spent on expanding the appendices. Shakespearian scholar Mike Jensen has broadened my view of what comic-book adaptations of the Bard can and should achieve; our enjoyable disagreements have led to growth on my part and mutual respect. Pop-culture writer and editor Paul Buhle has contributed not only the benefit of perspectives gained from his association with such figures as Annette T. Rubinstein and Harvey Pekar, but also his comprehensive understanding of the political context of the times. More than that, however, he has become a trusted friend. Warmest thanks are also due to the following: Tim Lasiuta, publicity and marketing director of Jack Lake Productions; John Y. Cole and Brian Taves of the Library of Congress; Jane Thompson, Conservator, Arkansas History Commission; Joe Darr of Southern Reprographics; Jean-Michel Margot of the North American Jules Verne Society; Melissa Conway, Sarah Allison, and Julia D. Ree of the University of California, Riverside; Richard Dury of the University of Bergamo, Italy; Sara Rizzo; Bill Worthen and Patricia Grant of the Historic Arkansas Museum; Ron Wolfe; Jim Scoggins; William Falvey; Emily Woodside; Wayne Munson; Dan Bailey; Bart Lidofsky; Stephen Charla; Jean Cazort; Jacob Dockcroft; Carolyn McNutt; Mary Gay Shipley; Maryalice Hurst; Tommy Sanders; Casey Sanders; Ben Frye; Helen Austin; Paul Gravett; Gary Giddins; Randy Duncan; Calvin Slobodian; Bill Novick; Sabah Siddiqui; Gregory Stone; Robert L. Beerbohm; Susan Pierce; Jim Amash; Mike Cuthbert; Allan J. Stypeck; and the ladies of the Crossett Book Club. My wife Yslan Hicks has taken time from her professional commitments to support my work on this project and has traveled with me to Classics-related speaking engagements from Saranac Lake, New York, to Riverside, California, and points between. She also brought her artist’s eye to bear on any number of panels and paintings. Will and Stephen, my sons, have grown up with the book on the computer and original art on the walls. We still enjoy the occasional firefly hunt and the tales we continue to tell. Finally, between the publi-

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS cation of the first edition of this work and the second, both of my parents died. It was they most of all who nurtured my childhood love of reading, and I am forever conscious of the debt that can only be paid forward.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS : FIRST EDITION Classics Illustrated may be the most misunderstood comic books in the history of sequential art. Assorted cultural arbiters dismissed the adaptations as vulgar corruptions of the literary masterpieces upon which they were based. Certain comics champions, judging them by the standards of what they knew, which is to say superhero comics, condemned them, in essence, because they were not superhero comics. Collectors often ignored the series because of its complexity—with 169 U.S. titles (not to mention the Juniors, Special Issues, and World Around Us), entailing multiple reprints, variant covers, and new interior art, making sense of Classics Illustrated seemed akin to the task of mastering Finnegans Wake. Yet, from the early 1970s onward, a dedicated group of experts in the evolving field of popular culture — including Hames Ware, Jerry Bails, Raymond True, Jim Sands, Bill Briggs, Mike Sawyer, and Dan Malan—made strides in tracing the convoluted history of what was promoted as “the World’s Finest Juvenile Publication” and building a solid foundation for research. Their various labors of love resulted in such reference sources as The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, The Classics Reader, The Classics Collector, and The Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated. I have been fortunate in having the generous assistance of most of the authors and editors of these works while writing this book. I owe an immense debt of gratitude not only to them but also to many others who shared their memories and expertise. I am deeply grateful, as well, to those whose encouragement sustained my efforts during seven years of copyright negotiations, artist interviews, and manuscript drafts. At the inception of this project, the unqualified enthusiasm of Michael Frawley of Frawley Enterprises proved instrumental in setting the copyright machinery in motion. His kind attention to my early inquiries and requests certainly made the crooked straight and the rough places plain. Richard S. Berger of First Classics, Inc., followed through with a permissions grant of liberal scope that has allowed the generous use of illustrations for this book. Without the generous assistance of the Central Arkansas Library System and its director, Dr. Bobby Roberts, who authorized a grant for artwork reproduction, this work would quite literally have been impossible. My thanks extend beyond the reach of words. Hames Ware of Little Rock, co-editor with Jerry Bails of

xi

the original Who’s Who of American Comic Books and internationally renowned comics and animated art authority, was my Virgil, guiding me through the inferno and purgatorio of comics lore — the maze of artists and styles — with unfailing courtesy and patience. He sharpened my critical sight and more than once saved me from what the Earl of Rochester termed “error’s Fenny-Boggs and Thorny Brakes.” So, too, did Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., of Bud Plant Illustrated Books, Palo Alto, California. In a marathon session, he ploughed through the manuscript and called to my attention various matters of nuance and fact that only his trained eye could catch. I am grateful to be the beneficiary of his expertise. Naturally, however, I am solely responsible for any errors of fact, failures of judgment, or lapses in taste. The author of the Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated and a specialist in the history of illustrated books, Dan Malan of St. Louis supplied countless insights and numerous contacts. The importance of his two-volume Complete Guide for any serious collector or student of the U.S. and foreign Classics cannot be overstated. All of us stand on his broad shoulders. Raymond S. True of Libertyville, Illinois, the founding father of the hobby, whose efforts in systematizing the publication sequence in the early 1970s made intelligent collecting possible, has been an invaluable reference source and an untiring champion of my efforts. When I began collecting Classics the second time around, as a law student looking for something to take my mind off Prosser on Torts or Corbin on Contracts, Ray guided me to original editions of The Moonstone and Lorna Doone that I cherish as emblems of more than twenty years of friendship. No words of appreciation can express my heartfelt thanks to John Haufe of Kettering, Ohio, who supplied me with photographs of Albert Kanter, illuminating comments and an article on his friend L.B. Cole, critical essays, filler details, news about recent developments concerning Classics Illustrated, and years of cheering support and helpful advice. His boyhood experiences in Ohio and mine in Arkansas have struck us both as amazingly similar, though he had sense enough to order The Bottle Imp from the publisher before it was too late. Rudy Tambone of El Segundo, California, is an amazing resource for anyone interested in Classics Illustrated. His “Classics Central” website is a research tool of the first order, and it has been strengthened with the copyright acquisition of Dan Malan’s Complete Guide. With deadlines looming, Rudy provided well-documented filler information for early issues missing from my collection, enabling me to complete the Appendices for this volume. A longtime friend and respected Classics dealer, Philip J. Gaudino of Port Washington, New York, has come expeditiously to my rescue too many times on this and other projects over the years. I have enjoyed our phone conversations about

xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the psychology of collecting and the impact of the generational shift on Classics Illustrated. I am much beholden to Bill Briggs of Toronto for his extraordinary gift of the entire run of The Classics Reader, a 1970s and early 1980s fanzine. I am grateful as well to Ron Prager and Jim McLoughlin of New York for lending their time and offering their recollections. These three gentlemen are among the world’s leading experts on the subject of Classics Illustrated, and I have been moved by their kindness and breadth of spirit. For his witty words of encouragement and approval, I am deeply obliged to Hal Kanter, the respected screenwriter and director whose father, Albert Kanter, launched Classic Comics and watched over its growth for thirty years. Mr. Kanter generously supplied an unpublished photograph of the founder of our feast. Among the artists who have taken the time to respond so graciously to my impossibly lengthy queries, I wish to thank Lou Cameron, George Evans, Gray Morrow, Norman Nodel, and Rudi Palais. Herb Feuerlicht was most gracious in sharing memories of his late wife, Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, under difficult circumstances. Harley Griffiths, Jr., provided invaluable details of his father’s life and career. I must single out Mrs. Louis Zansky for her kindness not only in loaning me photographs and articles about her late husband but also for allowing me to examine her file copy of the 1942 Saks-34th Robin Hood Christmas giveaway — one of only a handful of copies known to exist. Special thanks are due to Wade Roberts and Rick Obadiah, whose 1990 conversations with me about First Publishing’s Classics venture were the immediate inspiration for the present enterprise. Madeleine Robins, editor of Classics Illustrated Study Guides, always proved willing to take time from her busy schedule to share our common enthusiasm. I can’t adequately express my gratitude to the many friends, colleagues, comics dealers, or fellow-collectors who have helped me, such as Overstreet advisor Michael Tierney; Philip Martin, Karen Martin, and Ed Gray of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Steve Duin of the Portland Oregonian; Mike Nicastre; Clint Miller; Jan Emberton, Cary Cox, and the staff

of the Central Arkansas Library System; and Ava Hicks (a tireless champion of the civilized institution known as interlibrary loan), Timothy Holthoff, Jacqueline Wright, and Carol Hampton of the Arkansas Supreme Court Library. The generosity of Bonnie Slawson of Hot Springs, Arkansas, who gave me her Classics Illustrated collection when she read about my project, touched me deeply. A substantial portion of the artwork reproduced in this book was taken from the issues she provided. Vida Bolding of Little Rock contributed several Classics Illustrated Junior issues to the cause. For his professionalism and patient endurance, I am grateful to Larry Pennington of Peerless Photography, a division of the Peerless Group, Little Rock. Having spent 11 hours on the artwork shoot for this book, he uncomplainingly allowed me to return two days later to “capture” five overlooked images. Sandra Erbe of Annapolis, my cousin and perpetual booster, and Julie McKenzie of Baton Rouge, who assembled my proposal and suggested layout options, kept the faith even when I had lost it. The persistence of Gary N. Speed, my intellectual-property attorney, helped in a very real sense to make this project possible. My agent, the late Charlotte Gordon of New York, made unstinting efforts on behalf of a book in which she believed while fighting a gallant battle against cancer. Dee Brown — chronicler of the American West, mentor, and friend — was a constant source of encouraging words and good counsel. Stevensonian scholar Barry Menikoff of the University of Hawaii offered invaluable advice and immeasurable moral support, not to mention a well-timed and much appreciated nudge. Novelist and fellow attorney Grif Stockley started me on my way, and I’m grateful to him for the travel tips. It’s been a rewarding journey. Finally, I wish most of all to thank my parents, who have encouraged my writing from the days of the “Isle of Gems” stories to the present; and my sons, Will and Stephen, who have their dad free for fireflies again.

Introduction: “Good Stories” T

hip-shaking singer from Memphis converted me with a revelation about a hound dog.) Up to that moment, I had shown absolutely no interest in comic books; I suppose I was vaguely aware that they were bad for you. Still, I asked Dad to confirm that Davy Crockett was indeed the subject (you never could be too sure at five) and begged him to get it for me. As an only child, I needed to do very little begging. There was something about that yellow rectangle that made an impression. Even where Davy Crockett was concerned, it seemed to confer more authority than the Disney imprimatur. I asked Dad what the large black letters in the yellow rectangle spelled, and he said, “Classics Illustrated.” “What does that mean?” “Good stories,” he replied.

his is a book about memory and a moment in cultural history. It is also about stories and storytellers, both those who use words and those who draw pictures. It begins, as you might expect, with a story. In the 1950s, Hall Drug Store stood at the corner of Kavanaugh Boulevard and Hayes Street in a Little Rock neighborhood known as the Heights. The 19th president’s name would soon be sacrificed in a fit of civic boosterism, and plain Hayes Street would become the grander University Avenue. In time, the Heights, an enclave of quaint bungalows, would succumb to the invasion of overstated affronts to the principles of architecture. My childhood house, on Grant Street, was not immune to the trend; in 2010 it was leveled to make way for a house almost as large as the lot. Meanwhile, the old Hall Drug Store building still stands on its corner, currently hosting a new tenant, a Korean restaurant, after housing an upscale café for some years. Until the pharmacy closed with his retirement in 1997, Bill Dutton, J.V. Hall’s son-in-law and successor, filled prescriptions in bottles adorned with the same blue-and-white labels that he and the original proprietor had used for more than forty years. To step inside the pharmacy was to enter a realm where memories were easily stirred because so little had changed, down to the supply of Dr. Tichenor’s Antiseptic. Apart from out-of-state sojourns for college and graduate school, I remained a loyal, lifelong customer. On an evening close to Christmas 1955, when I was five years old, I went with my father to Hall’s to pick up a prescription for my mother. While Dad was chatting with Mr. Hall, I spotted a spinner rack of comics, each of which bore a bright yellow rectangle in the upper-left-hand corner of the cover. One issue near the top leapt out at me —Davy Crockett— a name I had no difficulty reading, even if the buckskinclad figure on the cover looked nothing like Fess Parker. (The coonskin-cap craze may have died down several months earlier, but I clung to the faith well into 1956, when a sideburned,

For 30 years, from 1941 to 1971, Classics Illustrated (originally known as Classic Comics) introduced GIs, bobby-soxers, and their baby-boom children to “Stories by the World’s Greatest Authors”— a category that encompassed Homer’s Odyssey and Frank Buck’s Bring ’Em Back Alive, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Talbot Mundy’s King —of the Khyber Rifles, Goethe’s Faust and Owen Wister’s The Virginian. Although the comic-book series of literary adaptations and biographies was disparaged by educator May Hill Arbuthnot and attacked by crusader Fredric Wertham, it gradually won the applause of skeptics and the affection of at least two generations. By the middle of the 1950s, with more than 120 titles published, a Junior fairy-tale and mythology series under way, and sales in the millions, the Gilberton Company’s Classics Illustrated had become as much a part of growing up in postwar America as baseball cards, hula hoops, Barbie dolls, or rock ’n’ roll. The ubiquitous yellow banner attracted a variety of young readers, whether they were students who wanted to take short-cuts through A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Eyre or kids who simply enjoyed the exploits of d’Artagnan and Natty Bumppo.

1

2

INTRODUCTION

and The Oregon Trail at the downtown Woolworth. My barber, Loy Scoggins, humored my mania and secured a longtime client, giving me well-worn copies of The Deerslayer and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer from his magazine pile. By age six, I had become a collector. I began circling the numbered titles I had acquired on the back-cover reorder list of Waterloo. The pictures and whatever words I understood carried me through extraordinary adventures. I remember losing myself in a new copy of The Three Musketeers at my parents’ New Year’s Eve party as 1957 dawned. While the Little Rock school crisis unfolded on the other side of town later that year, I was absorbed in the Classics Illustrated retellings of The Last of the Mohicans, The Scottish Chiefs, and Mutiny on the Bounty. By the time I was eight, the series had become the fulcrum of my imaginative life. Photographs from 1958 show me holding copies of Kidnapped near the White House, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea next to Old Ironsides, and In the Reign of Terror beneath our very model of a modern metallic Christmas tree. Wishing to preserve my Classics, I began having them bound at the Little Rock Library Bindery, not realizing — or subsequently caring — that I was seriously compromising their future collectible status. When I should have been learning the rudiments of multiplication and division, I was committing to memory the numbers and titles on the Gilberton reorder list. My mother brought me a get-well issue every bedridden day during bouts of measles or mumps. Returning from business trips to New York, my father would produce from his briefcase crisp copies of the most recent editions, which I always believed came straight from the publisher’s offices at 101 Fifth Avenue. For Christmas 1958, my parents allowed me to order 15 titles directly from the publisher — for $2.25, postage paid. The obsession strengthened its grip in 1959. I discovered that some issues were harder to find than others, so I traded Classics with schoolmates, obtaining out-ofprint editions of Julius Caesar, David Balfour, and Rob Roy in exchange for more readily available titles. During recess at Jefferson Elementary School, a couple of friends and Davy Crockett (November 1955). The author’s introduction to Classics Illustrated. I founded our own short-lived Classics club

I belonged to the latter category. The yellow rectangle was reassuring, and I failed to comprehend that the names “Shakespeare” or “Conrad” or “Dostoevsky” were supposed to be imposing. All I knew was that they — or their adapters and illustrators — told good stories. In the months after my discovery of Davy Crockett at Hall’s, I found Moby Dick and Robin Hood at Corder’s Model Market at the other end of the block, Treasure Island and The Call of the Wild back at the drug store, and Benjamin Franklin

INTRODUCTION

3

and staged playground reenactments of Caesar’s Conquests, The Iliad, and The Three Musketeers. Convinced I was d’Artagnan, I challenged a Hayes Street bully who had taken a Grant Street girl’s bicycle and quickly discovered that comic-book swords were no substitute for a pair of experienced fists. For my ninth birthday, my mother took me to the Siebert News Agency warehouse in Little Rock, where I was allowed to select as many Classics as I wanted from a room that seemed stuffed with piles of them. To my astonishment, I discovered numerous older issues with line-drawing covers (Cyrano de Bergerac, The Prairie) and seven- or eight-year-old reorder lists. Occasionally, when inspecting the spinner rack at Safeway or another store, I would come across a discontinued rarity such as a 1951 original issue of Crime and Punishment or an out-of-print Two Years Before the Mast and would carry the prize triumphantly, like the recovered Grail, to the check-out counter. As a result of an unsuccessful attempt to acquire from Gilberton a copy of the recently dropped Bottle Imp when I was 11, I received an expanded Classics reorder list, which included otherwise unavailable titles such as The Cloister and the Hearth, Mr. Midshipman Easy, and The Forty-Five Guardsmen. My interior world suddenly expanded. Nothing else I read as a child had as significant an impact on my developing imagination, which was peopled with such historical and fictional good and bad guys as Vercingetorix, Lady Macbeth, Ivanhoe, William Wallace, Joan of Arc, Quasimodo, The Last of the Mohicans (painted-cover edition, November 1956). An early favorite. Don Quixote, Cardinal Richelieu, Lorna the power of the stories told by Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Doone, Alan Breck Stewart, Uncas, Ishmael, Hiawatha, HuckTwain, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Sir Walter Scott, and leberry Finn, Flashman, Rima the Bird Girl, and Raskolnikov Alexandre Dumas — as interpreted by artists Louis Zansky, (all pronounced with varying degrees of accuracy). With their Henry C. Kiefer, Alex A. Blum, Lou Cameron, George Evans, childish, improbable plotlines, the tight-underwear guys in Norman Nodel, and others. other comic books — Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and the rest — seemed pitiably weak heroic substitutes for Athos, Of course, I wasn’t alone. Romantic poetry scholar Donna Porthos, and Aramis. When it came to villains, I knew that Richardson, in an article for American Heritage, recalled her Magua and Madame Defarge could wipe the floor with the first encounter with Classics Illustrated—The Iliad, with its Joker and the Riddler. cover painting of “chariots and men wearing skirted armor”— Through the fusion of pictures and text that comics artist purchased at age seven at her local drugstore. “The stories had Will Eisner has termed “sequential art,” I was transformed by

4

INTRODUCTION not only survived the vicissitudes of the postwar anti-comics campaign but also emerged as a juvenile-publication powerhouse in an international market. Along with its companion lines —Classics Illustrated Junior, Picture Progress, Classics Illustrated Special Issues, and The World Around Us—Classics Illustrated embodied the Horatian ideal of mixing usefulness and pleasure, delighting generations of young readers while instructing them. Other comics reserved space for advertisements for Charles Atlas bodybuilding programs or mail-order monkeys that fit in tea cups. Inside cover space and back pages in the Gilberton series were devoted to “Who Am I?” literary quizzes; synopses of great operas; biographies of the particular book’s author, “Pioneers of Science,” historical figures, and sports heroes; articles related to the subject of the book adapted; practical science experiments; and even capsule histories of Great Britain and the American Civil War. A student of popular culture can learn much from Classics Illustrated about postwar America’s assumptions about the interests and capacities of its children. Shakespeare’s language may have been abridged, but it was never rewritten. Sydney Carton may have been painted to look like James Dean on the cover of the 1956 revision of A Tale of Two Cities, but he still went to the guillotine. Though trimmed to 64 or 48 pages, Javert’s obsessive pursuit of Jean Valjean and Edmond Dantes’s implacable quest for vengeance were faithfully represented. The ugliness of racial hatred was not disguised in either Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Pitcairn’sI sland. Goethe and Dostoevsky were not considered too great a risk for the series; Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott were. Boys and girls alike enjoyed Classics Illustrated, but the bottom-line perception at Gilberton, reflecting the prevailing view among other publishers, was that the vast majority of comicbook readers were male. Yet ample evidence to the contrary was available: in 1949, romance comics became the fastest-growing category in the industry; a 1950 Dayton, Ohio, study revealed that comicbook readers were nearly evenly divided by sex, with males accounting for 52 percent and females for 48 percent.5 Even so, the occasional appearance of a Wuthering Heights or a Black Beauty notwithstanding, the The author, age 8, lost in revolutionary France (photograph by Marie W. Jones). Classics reorder list was dominated

the imaginative energy of fairy tales,” she noted, “but seemed more satisfyingly real and serious than the Disney and DC comics available on the same rack. Every week I’d obey the exhortation at the end of each issue: ‘Now that you have read the Classics Illustrated edition, don’t miss the [added] enjoyment of the original, obtainable at your school or public library.’”1 Novelist Anne Rice, whose Tale of the Body Thief and other works have appeared in comic-book adaptations, told an interviewer that, as a child, she “adored” Classics Illustrated. Among the titles she remembered with affection were Jane Eyre, Lorna Doone, and Moby Dick. “Not only did these comics give us an early appreciation for novels we would later read,” she said, “they were a thrilling art form in themselves. I can still remember some of the drawings quite vividly.”2 Writing about collecting the series during the 1940s in his memoir, A Drinking Life, journalist Pete Hamill fondly recalled the original Classic Comics as “a kind of road map to the real books.”3 Demonstrating the hold that the colorful adaptations had for more than half a century, he recited the first ten titles in publication order and threw in another five early editions for good measure. Hamill also notes, in passing, that the series was renamed Classics Illustrated “for some reason.”4 That reason, as this book will endeavor to show, had everything to do with the purpose of the series, as envisioned by its creator, Albert L. Kanter — and with the cultural forces against which the comics industry was contending in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The series

INTRODUCTION

5

by such action tales as Men of Iron, Men Against the Sea, and The First Men in the Moon. Practical experience indicated that, while girls would buy “boys’ books,” boys wouldn’t be caught dead with “girls’ books.” (I can remember vividly the unrelenting ribbing I took in the fall of 1960 from a fifth-grade friend who was with me when I found the long-out-of-print, recently reissued Alice in Wonderland on a grocery-store rack and, innocent completist that I was, searched my pocket for enough change to buy it. “Well,” my father said consolingly, “you’re a collector, aren’t you?”) As late as the early 1960s, whenever editor-in-chief Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht needed a sure seller, she would order another Jules Verne or G.A. Henty script from editor Alfred Sundel. Classics Illustrated was the most significant, successful, and influential publication of its kind. “They were the only comic books my parents would let me buy” is a familiar baby-boomer refrain. Growing up in Pittsburgh under such an injunction, a future attorney who enjoyed the series but wanted to savor the pleasures of the forbidden learned to detach Classics covers so she could hide copies of Batman and other proscribed comics. “If only I had known that I was destroying their value,” she remarked somewhat ruefully.6 Albert Kanter, founder of Classics Illustrated and its subsidiary series, deserves recognition as one of the great teachers of the 20th century. This book tells the story of his various publishing enterprises and explores the subsequent incarnations of the original series under the banners of the Frawley Corporation, First Publishing, AcHenry C. Kiefer, The Cloister and the Hearth (December 1949). A discontinued title claim Comics, Jack Lake Productions, and that was still available by direct order from Gilberton in the early 1960s. Papercutz. It is a cultural history of shifting Frawley Corporation, and I am indebted to their scholarship attitudes toward art, literature, entertainment, education, and and good examples. Their writings were principally directed the once-disfavored but now more-than-mainstream medium to collectors and specialists. It was my intention in the first known as comic books or, more grandly and self-consciously, edition of this book, and remains so in this revised and exgraphic novels. panded text, to address not only fellow travelers but also both Dan Malan, in his indispensable two-volume Complete an academic and general audience interested in the treatment Guide to Classics Illustrated, and Mike Sawyer, in a scrupulously of serious literature in popular culture and in the comic book documented article for the Journal of Popular Culture, have alas a distinctive American art form. ready detailed the fortunes of the Gilberton Company and the

6

INTRODUCTION

Enthusiasts have been exceptionally well served by Malan’s thorough studies of the American and international series and definitive survey of Classics-related collectibles. Given the emphasis of this book on art, artists, and adaptations, I have not attempted a detailed discussion of such items as boxes, binders, notebooks, slides, or giveaways — nor have I delved into the minutiae of cover and color variations or the arcana of Long Island Independent or Nassau Bulletin print runs. These topics appeal primarily to hobbyists and are largely outside the scope or the purpose of this work. This volume aims at sympathetic engagement with the past while maintaining, to the extent possible, a certain aesthetic distance from it. The book will explore the nature and quality of Classics Illustrated adaptations and will survey the work of the individual artists who gave them life. No other study has yet attempted a comprehensive review of the art of the series, which has been largely neglected and consistently underrated, or a chronicle of the careers of the artists in connection with their work for Gilberton. Ancillary series, including Classics Illustrated Junior, Picture Progress, Classics Illustrated Special Issues, and The World Around Us, will also be examined. The more recent series issued by First Publishing, Acclaim Comics, Jack Lake Productions, and Papercutz — which have featured illustrations by outstanding contemporary artists, recolored restorations of the original Classics, or occasional new art — have made their contributions to the cultural mix and will also receive attention. A chronological review of Classics Illustrated art and adaptations reveals the evolving seriousness of purpose that animated the efforts of publisher Albert L. Kanter, editors Meyer A. Kaplan and Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, scriptwriters Ruth A. Roche, Kenneth Fitch, and Alfred Sundel, art directors Alex A. Blum and Leonard B. Cole, and artists George Evans and Norman Nodel. When he launched Classic Comics in the fall of 1941, at the peak of the so-called Golden Age of comic books, Kanter was attempting to wean young readers from Action Comics, Detective Comics, and Marvel Comics, employing the same medium to win new adherents to the works of Dumas, Scott, Cooper, Melville, and Dickens. As the series progressed, the emphasis on its character shifted from comics to illustrated books and led to the new name, Classics Illustrated, in March 1947. The change of focus, however, led to something of an identity crisis for Classics Illustrated. Many educators looked at the issues and saw comic books, pure and simple. To the extent that the series in the early years (1941–44) bastardized the originals — and one need only look at the 1943 edition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to see how corrupted a text could become — the critics reviled Classics as worse than regular comic books because they polluted great literature and subverted high

culture. The fact that only a handful of adaptations took the liberties attributed to all was strategically ignored. This point of view persists to the present, and it is not uncommon to hear the assertion that it is impossible to turn a literary masterpiece into a comic book without trivializing it or — the most withering contemporary indictment — rendering it middlebrow. In his strikingly original study, Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean, Douglas Wolk, in a sweeping yet narrow pronouncement, dismisses the “almost uniformly terrible” series as “Classics Illustrated pamphlets” (refusing to confer upon them the pedigree of comic books) and voices the familiar 1950s complaint that “they end up gutting the original work of a lot of its significant content.”7 One might as well argue that Verdi had no business turning Shakespeare’s Othello into an opera or the Coen Brothers adapting Charles Portis’s True Grit into a film. In the face of so absolute a prejudice, one can only offer the Classics Illustrated versions of, say, The Conquest of Mexico or The Octopus or Faust and trust that the adaptations by Alfred Sundel and the illustrations by Bruno Premiani, Gray Morrow, and Norman Nodel will persuade. In any event, the series was never intended to replace the original works (as the Walt Disney versions of Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid threaten to do). It is unlikely that anyone who read the sequential-art abridgments of The House of the Seven Gables or Silas Marner as a means of avoiding Nathaniel Hawthorne or George Eliot would have read those authors in the first place. What Classics Illustrated and its offspring did with increasing skill between 1941 and 1962, when original-title production ceased, was to make the realms of the literary and historical imagination accessible and immediate. While the complaint from one side of the cultural chasm was that the Classics were too much like comic books and were therefore meritless, the cry from the comics camp was that, with their lack of original stories and innovative art, they bore too little resemblance to comic books and were therefore meritless. Indeed, many comics authorities tend to judge Classics Illustrated on the basis of the often badly drawn first 22 issues, published between 1941 and 1944, and to be unaware that some of their culture heroes — Jack Kirby, Reed Crandall, George Evans, Joe Orlando, Al Williamson — worked for Gilberton and helped raise the quality of the artwork in the late 1950s and early 1960s to a level unsurpassed in the industry. Although New York was the center of the comics universe, many of the key figures in the Classics story were out-oftowners — from Russia, Kansas, Hungary, California, Italy. Some, including the founder of the series, were Jewish immigrants who found themselves engaged, somewhat ironically, in a reverse method of assimilation, interpreting and popularizing

INTRODUCTION what had been essentially the cultural canon of the AngloSaxon Protestant establishment of the Northeastern United States. In a sense, Albert Kanter’s experience was merely a refinement on the Jewish saga of “Golden Age” comic-book publishing. Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay (2000) deals with this aspect of comics history with brilliant imaginative insight. The editorial-staff power struggle in the early 1960s between the Old Guard and younger challengers echoed in a curious way the cultural and political divide in the New York Jewish community between a more conservative, pragmatic older generation and an idealistic, leftist-orientedy outhm ovement. At least one of the Classics artists and one of the scriptwriters were African-American, an exception at the time. Two of the artists and two of the scriptwriters were women, another anomaly in the 1940s and ’50s. A collection of steady professionals, a few eccentrics, and a genius or two left their

7

individual imprints. The most forceful personality of all, the editor who reshaped the publication in the 1950s and ’60s, was a young woman with an unswerving devotion to what amounted to a calling. The history of Classics Illustrated is their story, and, whenever possible, I have allowed them, or their surviving family members, to speak for themselves through interviews and correspondence. I have never forgotten the moment when, at the age of ten, I turned from Alex A. Blum’s Classics Illustrated rendering of Hamlet to my mother’s old high-school Riverside edition, and the words danced to life on the page. If this book serves no other purpose, I hope that it will set in perspective the efforts of the artists, editorial staff, and publisher who filled millions of children around the world with an early and enduring passion for what my dad called, quite simply, “good stories.”

Unidentified artist, Robinson Crusoe (January 1956). The moment of discovery in an iconic original cover painting (collection of Dr. Lawrence Chalif ).

I

Albert Kanter’s Dream I

ple had three children, Henry (Hal), William (Bill), and Saralea.3 (The two brothers would play vital roles in the Classics Illustrated story.) Albert passed along his love of history and literature to his children.4 In 1925, seeking to improve his situation, Kanter moved his family to Miami, Florida, where he participated in the real estate boom satirized in the Marx Brothers’ film The Cocoanuts (1929). The venture soured in the wake of the devastating Okeechobee hurricane of 1928, which was followed a year later by the arrival of the Great Depression. With the assistance of Albert’s brothers Maurice and Michael, the family relocated to New York in 1933 or 1934. Kanter landed a job as a publisher’s representative for Colonial Press, selling, among other items, sets of works by Mark Twain, Jack London, and Rafael Sabatini.5 Eventually, he found himself working for Elliott Publishing Company, located at 6 West 46th Street in New York, selling surplus books and designing a widely used appointment diary for doctors and dentists. With his customary inventiveness and energy, he also created and produced a battery-operated toy telegraph set and a crystal radio set that was distributed by the Aldan Manufacturing Company.6 In 1940, Elliott Publishing Company began repackaging pairs of remaindered comic books in a 128-page format called Double Comics. Pairs of coverless comics from different publishers were bound together with new covers and sold for the price of one. It was the new industry’s Golden Age, when fresh series and entire genres were born every few months. Looking at the issues recycled by Elliott and at developments in the market, Albert Kanter had an idea.

t was a quintessentially American dream — an immigrant child, a self-made man, a visionary concept, and an unqualified triumph. Before Classics Illustrated and its companion series were displaced by television and an exploding consumer culture, they could be found in the largest cities and smallest towns of the United States. In time, the books would also appear in 26 languages in 36 countries, including Canada, Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Japan, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, Hong Kong, Germany, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Phillipines, India, Singapore, and Malaysia.1 The dreamer in this case was Albert Lewis Kanter (1897– 1973). Born in Baranovitch, Russia, on 11 April 1897, he was the eldest child of Henry and Ila (Mirsky) Kanter, a Russian Jewish couple who fled the Czar’s pogroms. The Kanters immigrated to the United States in 1904 and settled with their three young sons in Nashua, New Hampshire. (A younger brother, Mike, would figure prominently in the business end of Classics Illustrated.) In 1907, Henry Kanter was naturalized, and the rest of the family became American citizens.2 An eager learner, Albert read voraciously, even after he was obliged to quit high school in 1913 because of his father’s poor health. Buoyed by his lifelong sense of humor, Kanter began working as a doorto-door salesman of notions, novelties, and cooking utensils. The New Englander’s peregrinations in time took him to SavanAlbert Lewis Kanter, circa 1940. nah, Georgia, where, in The entrepreneur with an eye on the future (courtesy John “Buzz” 1917, he met and married Kanter). Rose Ehrenrich. The cou-

From a tradition extending back to 17th-century broadsheets and the 18th-century satirical series of William Hogarth, James Gillray, and Thomas Rowlandson, Victorian England produced the forerunners of comic books in Punch (1841) and other humorous magazines that combined illustrations and text. Gilbert Dalziel, whose Judy (1867) had imitated the Punch format, created what comics art historian Roger Sabin regards as the first comics publication, Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday (1884), a tabloid blend of strips, cartoons, and narrative.7 On the continent, the work of Genevan artist Rodolphe

9

10

CLASSICS Illustrated

Töpffer (1799–1846) marked the transition from the 18thcentury caricature style to a more sustained narrative mode with such works as his Histoire de M. Jabot (1833), about a Restoration-era social climber. As Scott McCloud observes in Understanding Comics, Töpffer’s “light satiric picture stories ... employed cartooning and panel borders, and featured the first interdependent combination of words and pictures seen in Europe.”8 Biographer David Kunzle has noted that “[t]he impact of Töpffer’s new invention was immediate, long-lasting, European wide, and even reached the United States.”9 Indeed, the first American comics-style book was a translation of the Swiss artist’s Les Amours de Monsieur Vieux Bois (1837). Retitled The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, the 40-page, panel-filled supplement to the periodical Brother Jonathan was published in New York in 1842. Töpffer’s work had been translated into several languages and was popular in Europe by this time. American editions of Obadiah Oldbuck and other comic-strip books by Töpffer remained in print until 1877.10 The first American newspaper comic appeared in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1895. Drawn by Richard Outcault, The Yellow Kid was a single panel rather than a strip and featured a streetwise urchin with an attitude as brash as his yellow nightshirt that soon gave its name to a brand of journalism. Outcault went on to create, perhaps as a moral counterweight, the insufferably sanctimonious Buster Brown for the New York Herald Tribune. Les Daniels views Outcault’s odd couple as a microcosm of comics history, a recurring cycle in which subversive impulses are periodically diluted by the power of conformity.11 By the turn of the century, comic strips such as The Katzenjammer Kids by Rudolph Dirks had become popular fixtures in American newspapers. During the next 25 years, the national mythology would be enriched by Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, George McManus’s Bringing Up Father, and Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie. With the appearance of Hal Foster’s Tarzan and Philip Nowlan and Dick Calkins’s Buck Rogers in 1929, the stage was set for the arrival of the next decade’s superheroes.12 Book reprints of popular newspaper strips began in 1897 with The Yellow Kid in McFadden’s Flats, which featured Outcault’s outlandish hero. (Robert C. Harvey notes that The Yellow Kid Magazine, often said to have been the first comic book, merely displayed the attention-getting character on the cover and had no comics content.)13 Funny Folks (1899), a compilation of color and black-and-white comic strips by F.M. Howarth that originally appeared in Puck magazine, was the first book to emphasize sequential narratives.14 The name by which the format would thereafter be known was introduced in Saalfield Publishing Company’s Comic Book (1917).15

In 1922, Comic Monthly, which was closer to the standard comic-book format, began a 12-issue run. At the end of the decade, George Delacorte, who would later gain renown as founder of Dell Publishing Company, produced a 13-issue tabloid series titled The Funnies that included some original features.16 But the publication that sparked the comics revolution was Eastern Color Printing Company’s Famous Funnies, which offered “100 Comics and Games-Puzzles-Magic” for a dime and lasted from 1934 to 1955. Major Malcolm WheelerNicholson’s New Fun followed in 1935 and Dell’s Popular Comics in 1936. With the appearance of Wheeler-Nicholson’s and Harry Donenfeld’s Detective Comics (later the home of Batman) in 1937 and Action Comics (introducing Superman) in 1938, the Golden Age was under way. Captain Marvel, the Blue Beetle, and other caped or masked competitors soon followed.17 In the meantime, a distinctive aesthetic, supported by its own vocabulary and grammar, had evolved along with the medium, and art schools were filled with aspiring comics illustrators. As the demand for original artwork and stories accelerated, New York studios known in the trade as “shops” grew rapidly, beginning with one founded in 1936 by the colorful Harry “A” Chesler (c. 1898–1981). (The “A” was Chesler’s own addition, which stood, he said, for “anything.”) Certain shops established exclusive relationships with different comic-book publishers and developed distinctive house styles. By the end of the decade, four major comics art shops had emerged, headed by Chesler, partners Will Eisner and S.M. “Jerry” Iger, Lloyd Jacquet, and Jack Binder.18 Two of these — Iger’s and Jacquet’s — would figure prominently in Albert Kanter’s enterprise. The New York comics-production world was small, and in time much cross-pollination occurred among the shops and publishers. This periodic shift of affiliation would later have a significant impact on the history of Classics Illustrated. Comic books have generated controversy from the beginning. As early as May 1940, children’s author Sterling North blasted the phenomenon in a Chicago Daily News editorial, terming it a “national disgrace” and urging parents to introduce their children to such adventure classics as Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho! and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. (Both of these works, which contained their share of violence, were later adapted for the Classics Illustrated series.) Magazines exhorted teachers and librarians to fight the good fight.19 It was clear to many, however, that for most children the comic book was simply too compelling a medium. Parents’ Magazine sought to address the problem by producing a series of wholesome, fact-filled comics designed to wean preadolescents from the rapidly proliferating superhero fare. The result was True Comics, which inaugurated its nine-year run in April

I. ALBERT KANTER’S DREAM

11

tained abridgments of individual titles in the comic-book for1941 with features on Winston Churchill, malaria, the Mara20 mat until, in 1941, Albert Lewis Kanter dreamed his American thon run, and Simon Bolivar. dream —Classic Comics. At this point, Albert Kanter’s idea began to take shape. It started in conversations on the Long Island Railroad as Most American dreams, of course, require capital. KanKanter and another commuter, Raymond Haas, traveled beter’s friend and future copublisher, Raymond Haas, brought tween their suburban homes in Long Beach and their work in along his business partner, Meyer Levy, to finance the new enManhattan. Kanter was concerned that his children seemed to be drawn to comic books rather than the literary masterpieces on the family bookshelves.21 With an autodidact’s fervor, he dreamed of a means of introducing young readers to the classic literature that had sustained him over the years. The hundreds of thousands of copies of Double Comics that poured out of Elliott Publishing Company — and perhaps the recent example of True Comics— supplied the immediate inspiration. Kanter would create a comic-book line that would devote each issue to the adaptation of a single literary work. The concept was brilliant in its simplicity and had the merit (and the attendant risk) of never having been tried. Not that there had never been comics-style versions of the classics. In 1921–1922, newspapers carried George Storm’s 22-week comicstrip serialization of Johann Wyss’s Swiss Family Robinson for the McClure Syndicate.22 Major WheelerNicholson had produced a daily newspaper adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in 1925 before revisiting the pirate yarn and introducing a subsequently aborted Ivanhoe ten years later in New Fun. In 1936, Wheeler-Nicholson’s New Comics (National Periodical Publications) serialized Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and H. Rider Haggard’s She.23 Treasure Island, drawn by Harold deLay, began a four-issue run in Doc Savage in 1940, and the popular tale appeared in ten issues of Target Comics in 1941–1942. Still, Malcolm Kildale, Classic Comics No. 1, The Three Musketeers (October 1941). The beginning no one had thought of self-con- of what would become the largest-selling juvenile publication in the world.

CLASSICS Illustrated

12

terprise, which remained nominally an Elliott operation until the spring of 1942.24 Kanter made arrangements with Lloyd Jacquet’s Funnies, Inc., shop for production of the artwork, and Malcolm Kildale, as artist and editor, assumed primary responsibility for the first issue, a 62-page adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers that appeared in October 1941. The novel’s chief protagonist, d’Artagnan, with his vitality and humanity, proved to be an ideal hero for Kanter’s purposes. Two pages at the end of the comic book were devoted to a biography of the author.25 On the inside front cover, a letter “To Our Readers” appeared, in which the publisher stated the objectives of the new series: Here it is! The first edition of the “CLASSIC COMICS LIBRARY.”

We have chosen “THE THREE MUSKETEERS” as the first title because it is the popular choice of thousands. Here you have presented to you Dumas’ immortal masterpiece, complete in all the fire and zest of its original form — the thrills, the romance, the adventures are all here — true, in concise form, nevertheless faithfully reproduced in Dumas’ own text as well as possible in only 64 pages. It is not our intent to replace the old established classics with these editions of the “CLASSIC COMICS LIBRARY,” but rather we aim to create an active interest in those great masterpieces and to instill a desire to read the original text. It is also our aim to present these editions to include all of the action that is bound to stimulate greater enjoyment for its readers. It is our sincere belief that men and women, as well as junior men and women have attained a finer taste in literature, and they will welcome these highly interesting, concise editions of the established works of the masters. Considerable research, writing, re-writing and editing have gone into this book. We have spared no expense in presenting the finest art work, engraving, paper and binding possible in order to produce the most and the best for 10 cents. This is our policy and we will continue it in all future editions of what will be the “CLASSIC COMICS LIBRARY.” On the inside back cover is listed forthcoming editions — they will be published at frequent intervals and will be presented complete in the same entertaining manner. [These included 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Deerslayer, Ben-Hur, and Moby Dick, which were added to the series sooner or later, as well as several titles that were never adapted (at least in Kanter’s series), such as Quentin Durward and Beau Geste.] We have selected them because of their popularity, yet we will welcome your suggestions about any other titles you would like in this form. We hope you will begin your “CLASSIC COMICS LIBRARY” with this edition and that you will receive as much pleasure in building it as we do in presenting these publications to you.

Two things mentioned in this prospectus remained true about the series from its inception. The first was that Albert Kanter intended the comic-book adaptations to serve as an inducement for young readers to encounter “the original text.” Secondly, he anticipated, by the use of the word “Library” in the series’ name, that readers would wish to collect Classic Comics.

In time, this would become a matter of some significance to the publisher, who in 1941 could not have guessed the depth of devotion of future collectors. Production costs for issue No. 1 were approximately $8,000 for an initial run of about 250,000 copies.26 By the 1950s, between 250,000 and 500,000 copies of first editions were printed, and reprints numbered between 100,000 and 250,000 copies.27 According to longtime Classics dealer and authority Raymond True’s analysis of issue availability in the collectors’ market, print runs during the period from 1963 onward, when the series was in decline, appeared to be substantially smaller, perhaps as low as 15,000 per reissued title.28 (This empirical assumption might account for the curious circumstance that it is often harder to find reprints of certain later titles such as The Conspirators or Cleopatra than it is to find first printings of those books.) Distribution was handled from the beginning by a New York firm, Publishers Distributing Corporation, whose initials, P.D.C., appeared on the front covers of first printings until mid–1947. For The Three Musketeers, however, Kanter relied primarly upon his considerable sales skills as he canvassed various outlets in the New York area. Thanks to his efforts, No. 1 did well enough to encourage the publication of a second number, an adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, which was advertised in a “Coming Soon” ad on the back cover of The Three Musketeers. Issue No. 2 arrived on newsstands in December 1941, just about the time daily papers were filled with reports of the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry in the Second World War. By the time Classic Comics No. 3, The Count of Monte Cristo, was issued in March 1942, the new enterprise was outgrowing the limited space it shared with Elliott Publishing Company on West 46th Street. Kanter’s partner Raymond Haas was able to offer not only a building but also an unused corporate name and corporate papers. Some time earlier, Haas had bought out a failing chemical firm that had been named the Gilberton Corporation by its founder, Hamilton Gilbert, who had supplied chemistry sets with illustrated instruction booklets to thousands of young Americans. Although it was impossible, because of America’s sudden involvement in World War II, to secure the dissolution of the original 1935 certificate of incorporation, the charter was amended on 13 May 1942, to permit publishing.29 The Amendment of Certificate of Incorporation, signed by Haas and Levy, set forth “additional purposes” of the Gilberton Corporation, including the authority “[t]o print, bind, publish, circulate, distribute, buy, sell and deal in books, pamphlets, circulars, posters, newspapers, treatises, magazines and other periodicals[.]”30 Thus, as the Gilberton Corporation, Albert Kanter moved Classic Comics to Haas’s building at 510 Sixth Avenue (near the historic Jefferson Market Courthouse),

I. ALBERT KANTER’S DREAM

13

Albert Lewis Kanter, circa 1950. The successful publisher (courtesy Hal Kanter).

suspending publication of Classic Comics until August 1942 to accommodate the changes. On 19 March 1945, with the war winding down, the publisher obtained dissolution of the original certificate of incorporation but retained the first part of the company’s name.31 Gilberton it was, and Gilberton it remained for more than twenty years. In the formal Certificate of Incorporation of the Gilberton Company, Inc., signed on 15 November 1946 by Kanter, Haas, and Levy, the first-stated purpose of the corporation echoed the 1942 document, with a significant addition: “[T]o produce, buy, sell, and generally deal in illustrations, drawings, photographs and drawings on which, or by which, illustrations may be printed or used; to employ artists and illustrators in connection with all of the business aforesaid.”32 The employment of “artists and illustrators” was, of course, a corporate necessity. In the meantime, during the war years when paper restrictions were in force, Kanter was able to purchase paper al-

lotments from New York–area publishers, whose company names—Elliot Publishing Co., Long Island Independent, Island Publishing Co., Nassau Bulletin, Queens Home News, Sunrise Times, The Courier, and Queens County Times, along with Raymond Haas’s Conray Products—appeared in various reprinted editions.33 For example, the third, fourth, and fifth printings of No. 7, Robin Hood, were produced in quick succession in March, June, and October 1944 by, respectively, the Long Island Independent, the Nassau Bulletin, and the Queens County Times. Producing 64-page comic books with a war in progress and paper rations in effect called for some strategic maneuvering, and, although Kanter was able to purchase surplus paper, the amount available was not sufficient for the standard Classic Comics length. In August 1943, with issue No. 13, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the page count dropped to 56, where it remained (with the exception of No. 26, Frankenstein, a 48page issue) until January 1948, when rising paper costs forced a final reduction to 48 pages with issue No. 45, Tom Brown’s

The first Classic Comics reorder list (April 1943). The beginning of another long tradition, and a sign that Gilberton was committed to maintaining a backlist.

Inside front cover, Classic Comics No. 8 (February 1943). Early feedback.

16

CLASSICS Illustrated

School Days.34 Even with the shrinkage, Classics Illustrated (as they were called by that time) were longer than most comic books, which generally ran to 32 pages. From the beginning, Classic Comics were unique in the industry. Apart from in-house promotions such as “Coming Next” notices or reorder lists, the series carried no advertising. It was a deliberate break with comic-book convention on the part of Kanter, who hoped thereby to retain editorial independence and to strengthen the publication’s appeal to educators. In addition, the back-of-the-book section in each issue was reserved for educational or patriotic filler material, including author biographies, poems, and reports on the war.35 By the 1950s, these articles displayed an increasing level of sophistication and were tailored to complement the work they accompanied—for instance, a biography of Bonnie Prince Charlie was appended to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jacobite– inflected David Balfour, No. 94 (April 1952), and a description of Elizabethan playhouses served as an epilogue to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, No. 134 (September 1956). Gilberton’s first competitor appeared in 1942. Famous Stories, a series published by Dell, issued only two titles, Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer, before folding. The artwork in the two Dell books, however, surpassed anything Classic Comics had produced at that point. Meanwhile, the Jacquet shop ended its affiliation with Gilberton after issue No. 4, The Last of the Mohicans (August 1942), and a gifted freelancer, Louis Zansky, who adapted and illustrated issue No. 5, Moby Dick (September 1942), assumed the duties of de facto art director, bringing some improvement to the series as a whole and visual charm to the titles he drew. In 1943, Gilberton received an extraordinary financial boost. Kanter negotiated the sale of Classic Comics editions to the American Red Cross and the army post exchange for distribution to service personnel. He also introduced gift boxes containing five different titles for shipment abroad.36 Classics authority Dan Malan has estimated that between five and ten million copies were sent to soldiers.37 Raymond True, however, suggests that these widely varying figures, in the absence of

firm documentary confirmation, may be “overstated.”38 Whatever the number, it is established that Classic Comics circulated among service personnel in “Gift Boxes” as well as in bulk purchases and that other comic-book publishers also benefited from the reading habits of GIs, who, more than any other demographic group, were responsible for the growth of the comics industry in the early 1940s.39 At home, reader response — from parents and children alike — was enthusiastic. In February 1943, Gilberton published some early encomiums on the inside front cover of issue No. 8, Arabian Nights. Among the three letters featured was one from 12-year-old Quiz Kids star Harve Fischman, who would later make a name for himself, as Harve Bennett, as a producer and scriptwriter for the television hit The Mod Squad and the first Star Trek film series. “Dear Sirs,” he wrote (on Quiz Kids letterhead), “I am sending you a dime for which please send me a copy of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ as my copy has been lost and I can’t seem to get another copy. I have enjoyed the Classic Comics Library very much; and am saving them all to read to my little brother when he grows older.”40 Another significant development for Classic Comics occurred in 1943. Gilberton began reprinting earlier editions, further setting the publication apart from other comic books, which were typically one-shot productions with relatively short shelf lives. Only Classic Comics built a catalogue, keeping its earlier titles in print while regularly issuing new ones. Eventually, more than 1,200 reprint editions would appear in the American series alone, with estimated peak monthly sales of between two and four million.41 The venerable founder would become known in Europe as “Papa Klassiker,” and foreign sales would exceed the figure of one billion.42 For the present, though, Albert Kanter, salesman and idealist, pursued his novel dream of using the same scorned medium to lead young comic-book readers to discover more substantial superheroes in d’Artagnan, Ivanhoe, Hawkeye, and Robin Hood. To keep them hooked, he needed consistently good art and reliable adaptations. He would soon have both, thanks to another energetic entrepreneur named Jerry Iger.

II

Of Musketeers and Mohicans: The Jacquet Shop W

lustrate Classics. Then, too, there was always the intrinsic appeal of the stories and Albert Kanter’s dogged sense of what the publication could become.

hen detractors in the comics field speak disparagingly of Classics Illustrated, what they generally have in mind are the earliest issues. Perhaps the kindest thing that can be said of some of the artwork that appeared in Classic Comics between 1941 and 1944 is that it aspired to mediocrity. A few of the cartoonists who illustrated the first issues produced work that was considered inferior even under the minimal standards of the developing comics industry. A probable reason was the low pay artists and inkers received. Lloyd Jacquet, whose Funnies, Inc., shop had packaged the original Marvel Comics in 1939, apparently contracted with Kanter to launch Classic Comics but supplied only his secondstring artists, presumably because of the fledgling publisher’s inability to pay premium rates for the first few titles.1 The situation evidently had improved by the fifth issue, when freelancer Louis Zansky arrived. His widow recalls that her husband, who came from an impoverished Bronx background, considered Gilberton’s payment of between $400 and $600 per 64- or 56-page book more than adequate.2 In any case, an artist, whether working independently or through a shop, would naturally have been tempted to rush through one project in order to get to another. Comics art historian Hames Ware has pointed out that, in the infancy of comic books, nearly everyone working seemed to be either youngsters developing their stylistic identities or old timers finishing out their careers in a new medium.3 (The more lucrative comic strips, on the other hand, were almost uniformly the work of veteran cartoonists.4) The groundbreaking group of Classic Comics artists conformed to the established pattern, and the unevenness of the product may have resulted from this inexperience or exhaustion. Yet as bad as some of the early work was, it was really not much worse — and in some instances was actually better — than the now celebrated kitsch produced by other “Golden Age” artists. Not everyone employed elsewhere was a Reed Crandall or a Jack Kirby, both of whom would eventually il-

MALCOLM KILDALE Malcolm Kildale (d. 1971) of the Jacquet shop adapted and illustrated issue No. 1, The Three Musketeers (October 1941), and was listed as art director and editor through issue No. 2, Ivanhoe, for which he drew the cover. In the view of comics historian Hames Ware, “Kildale probably would be one of your last choices you’d make to start off a new line of comics.”5 His work, though filled with verve and rather engaging, often lacked polish. Kildale was a veteran of the earliest years of comic books. By the time he came to Classic Comics by way of Funnies, Inc., he had introduced “Captain Fearless” in the first issue of Lev Gleason’s Silver Streak Comics (1939) and had produced artwork for Harvey’s short-lived Spitfire Comics (1941). For The Three Musketeers, Kildale not only supplied the illustrations, but he also provided the faithful adaptation. Here and there in the interior art, barren backgrounds and wooden figures offer evidence of fast work for low pay. Ware has spotted the styles of other illustrators, including Jacquet stalwart and Wow Comics artist Ken Battefield, in various panels. “The final product is erratic, a true shop job,” he observed, “with somebody doing the backgrounds and somebody else doing the inking and lettering.”6 Kildale, however, produced the vast bulk of the character drawings. What he may have lacked in refined technique, Kildale more than made up for in visual narrative energy. The linedrawing cover and the pages leading up to and containing the initial swordplay are filled with a jaunty period swagger. Some of the artist’s connecting panels, such as those depicting M. de Tréville’s major domo and Madame Bonacieux, are quite strik-

17

18

CLASSICS Illustrated

ing. Kildale created distinctive physical presences for the story’s Gascon protagonist and each member of the title trio, striking a balance between the iconic and the strictly representational. D’Artagnan is an unqualified success, animated with the naive, boisterous charm of Dumas’s most appealing character.

If the Musketeers artwork was uneven, the adaptation was faithful, down to the name of the street on which d’Artagnan confronts the Duke of Buckingham. Some of the original’s verve was retained in the dialogue, and neither scriptwriter nor artist flinched in representing the troubling moral ambiguity of Milady’s extralegal beheading near the end of the story. Kildale’s stark image of the executioner raising his sword above the kneeling villainess, her exposed neck and dangling hair eliciting the viewer’s pity, is one of the most memorable panels in the book. The reader was allowed to identify with the mixed emotions of d’Artagnan (“Oh! I cannot behold this frightful spectacle! I cannot consent that a woman should die thus!”) as he witnesses summary justice done to the woman who has murdered his beloved Constance. Albert Kanter had shown that a comic-book version of a classic tale could capture something of the spirit—and a hint of the depth — of the original.

EDD ASHE AND OTHERS

Malcolm Kildale, The Three Musketeers (October 1941, July 1944 recolored reprint). Milady’s execution. This scene was played “offstage” in the 1959 revision.

The second Classic Comics title, Ivanhoe (December 1941), was a spirited but disappointing performance. Gilber ton art director Malcolm Kildale supplied the cover, which was based on his design for the first Classic Comics issue. Edd Ashe, one of the better artists in the Jacquet shop, is generally credited with the artwork, although in a 1972 letter to Raymond S. True, a Classics Illustrated dealer and the founding editor of the Classics Collectors Club Newsletter, the artist recalled that

II. OF MUSKETEERS AND MOHICANS “perhaps I only did a part of it” and that “the pay was lousey [sic].”7 A page-by-page analysis by comics art expert Hames Ware has confirmed that Ashe was responsible for a relatively small number of panels. Some of the work, including the impressive title-page splash depicting a castle, was done by Ray Ramsey.8 As in the The Three Musketeers, minimal backgrounds predominated. A heavy emphasis on brush rather than pen inks gave the issue a distinctive look. While the jousting panels and battle scenes had a certain vitality, one need only compare any episode with its counterpart in Norman Nodel’s 1957 revision to understand why the 1941 edition was replaced. In other respects, the generally faithful script occasionally lacked continuity, and the three Norman villains never achieved individual identities, perhaps because they were drawn by different hands at different times. Years later, Ashe contributed some outstanding pages to various titles in the Gilberton subsidiary series The World Around Us and Classics Illustrated Special Issues, including The Crusades, No. W16 (December 1959); American Presidents, No. W21 (May 1960); and The War Between the States, No. 162A ( June 1961). By then, the artist had arrived at a richer, more complex style. In particular, he captured human figures and animals in motion especially well in the “Holy Lance” chapter of The Crusades and the “Chattanooga” section of The War Between the States.

thralling Alexandre Dumas revenge melodrama featured some of the weakest illustrations published under the Classic Comics banner. To compound matters, the uncredited scriptwriter sacrificed coherence by squeezing too many subplots into 62 pages. Apart from a perversely naive charm hovering between

RAY RAMSEY If the first two issues had their share of redeeming qualities, the third, The Count of Monte Cristo (March 1942), had almost none. The adaptation of the en-

19

Edd Ashe, Ivanhoe (November 1941). The hero’s identity revealed.

20

CLASSICS Illustrated

has conclusively demonstrated in comparisons with panels from the artist’s Last of the Mohicans.9 The hand of Allen Simon is also evident, along, to an even greater extent, with that of Vivian Lipman (Berg), who subsequently illustrated Longfellow’s “Children’s Hour” as a filler item for Classic Comics No. 15. (Years later, Lipman recalled having worked on a full-scale Gilberton project in 1942.)10 It is likely that Ramsey, a veteran of Funnies, Inc., initially received the assignment; hence his cover and the interior drawings of the Count. Perhaps because he was also scheduled to illustrate the fourth issue, Jacquet—or Kanter—turned other pages and characters over to Simon and Lipman. The resulting assembly-line product featured an average of eight small, mostly rectangular panels per page, filled with crowded, unimaginative collections of stiffly posed characters. Even dramatically effective scenes, such as Dantès’s discovery of the hidden treasure or Villefort’s descent into madness, were undercut by the woodenness of the drawings. The Last of the Mohicans, No. 4 (August 1942), was the last Jacquet job and the first not to be parceled out among several artists. The title belonged exclusively to Ramsey, whose specialty was western art. Though he was more at home with 19thcentury cowboys, he adapted Ray Ramsey and others, The Count of Monte Cristo (March 1942). Great story, bad art. reasonably well to 18th-century Indians and redcoats (though kitsch and camp in the interior pages, the best thing about the he gave the French commander Montcalm an ahistorical musbook was Jacquet artist Ray Ramsey’s cover, based on a tache and goatee, perhaps assuming that he looked more Gallic painting by Mead Schaeffer for a 1929 Dodd, Mead edition of with facial hair). the novel. Ramsey drew the protagonist Edmond Dantès Cultural historians Martin Barker and Roger Sabin, in throughout the issue, as former Classics Reader editor Bill Briggs their study The Lasting of the Mohicans: History of an American

II. OF MUSKETEERS AND MOHICANS

Ray Ramsey, The Last of the Mohicans (August 1942). Uncas and Magua locked in mortal combat, with Hawkeye at the ready.

Myth, give Ramsey’s work two thumbs down, stating that it “vies with the 1940 version in the comic White Rider and Super Horse (whose artist wisely preferred anonymity) for sheer awfulness.”11 Certainly, Gilberton’s 1942 Mohicans had more than its share of artistic flaws, as the publisher recognized, replacing it in 1959 with a newly adapted and illustrated edition. But, in terms of the halting development during the not-quitetoddler stage of Classic Comics, issue No. 4 was the equivalent of a tentative step forward.

21 Ramsey’s Mohicans is filled with greater energy and fluidity of movement than any of the preceding titles. The final struggle between the nominal hero Uncas and the evil Magua, depicted on one of the most striking covers in the series, conveys the strengths of Ramsey’s interpretation. In keeping with the rigid dualism of Cooper’s novel, not to mention the lingering attitudes in the 1940s toward “savages,” noble or otherwise, Uncas and Magua are drawn as types rather than individuals. Uncas embodies a natural aristocratic grace while Magua recalls Milton’s fallen and degraded Satan. After drawing Roy Rogers Comics for Dell Publishing Company for a number of years, Ramsey left the comics field altogether but returned to Gilberton in the late 1950s. He supplied illustrations for sections of World Around Us issues No. W6, The FBI (February 1959), and No. W9, Army (May 1959). His chapter “Manhunt!” for Classics Illustrated Special Issue No. 150A, Royal Canadian Mounted Police ( June 1959), was a striking performance in which the artist employed different visual perspectives and light-dark contrasts to heighten the drama of a life-or-death struggle between the Mounties and a man they almost didn’t get. By that point, Ramsey’s Mohicans had vanished, like the tribe in Cooper’s book, replaced by a handsome revision by John P. Severin and Stephen L. Addeo.

ALLEN SIMON Allen Simon penciled covers for Daring Comics and SubMariner Comics, produced illustrations for all four issues of EC’s Picture Stories from American History, and contributed to Classic Comics No. 3, The Count of Monte Cristo. Depending on one’s point of view, he is either the purest hack or the most

Allen Simon, Westward Ho! (September 1943). The influence of Lynd Ward is evident as the hero, Amyas Leigh, loses his sight to regain his vision.

II. OF MUSKETEERS AND MOHICANS

23

Left: Allen Simon, The Corsican Brothers (1944), unpublished original cover art. This suppressed cover was deemed too grotesque by the publisher (collection of Ron Prager). Right: Allen Simon, The Corsican Brothers (June 1944). The toned-down take on the duo.

inspired genius among all the Classic Comics illustrators. For sheer novelty in rendering the human form, he couldn’t be topped. Simon’s characters seem to have stepped out of 17thcentury broadsheets or chapbooks and are either outrageously wooden or impossibly elastic. Still, in his contorted, outlandish figures, the artist created a self-contained world that offered its own skewed visual charm. Simon’s first complete work as a freelancer for Gilberton, an adaptation of Charles Kingsley’s Elizabethan adventure Westward Ho!, No. 14 (September 1943), was also his best. Panels were inventively shaped (a spyglass motif figured prominently), illustrations were well composed, and point-of-view followed narrative flow. The strongest panel, depicting the blinding of the protagonist, Amyas Leigh, suggested the woodcut-style influence of Rockwell Kent or Lynd Ward. For the period in which it was published, Dan Kushner’s adaptation was unusually faithful to the original. The same could not be said for Simon’s next credit. The future EC artist found a truly congenial subject in The Hunch-

back of Notre Dame (No. 18, March 1944). But the adaptation by Evelyn Goodman, a great believer in textual liberty, owed more to the 1939 film starring Charles Laughton than to Victor Hugo’s novel and anticipated the 1996 Walt Disney cartoon in its more-or-less happy ending with brave Captain Phoebus securing Esmeralda’s pardon and uniting with her in anticipated marital bliss. “Esmeralda! My lovely Esmeralda!” the young hero exclaims in a heart-shaped panel. “Come, Djali!” says Gringoire the poet to Esmeralda’s goat in his best 1940s end-of-movie manner. “Don’t you see they want to be alone?” Quasimodo, meanwhile, dies dramatically in the Classic Comics version, rather than forlornly, as in the novel and the 1961 revised Classics Illustrated edition. Pierced by a soldier’s dagger, he falls from the tower and “plunges to the pavement below,” while his beloved bells are heard “ringing by themselves.” Simon’s natural bent was toward the grotesque, and his rather anarchic impulses subvert the sentimental tendencies of Goodman’s script. His line-drawing cover — the campiest

24

CLASSICS Illustrated

the wooden boot. Simon includes nightmarish creatures in two panels to underscore the horrors the gypsy girl is enduring. He clearly relished the Feast of Fools scenes, which included some wartime satire, with Adolf Hitler making a cameo appearance as one of the contestants mugging for the title of Fools’ Pope. The Führer surfaces later in the guise of a meanspirited magistrate who sentences Quasimodo to the pillory. The plight of the poet Gringoire, who is saved from hanging in the Court of Miracles by Esmeralda, is another comical high point in a largely successful issue. Simon also did well with The Corsican Brothers, No. 20 ( June 1944), a melodramatic novel by Alexandre Dumas about telepathic twins whose linked destinies converge fatefully. The original cover design, which featured a skeletal creature threatening the heroes, was withdrawn before publication, and a more restrained line drawing showing the pair on horseback was substituted. Simon’s interior artwork was on the whole more controlled — and much less fun — than hisp roto-punk Hunchback style. As in Westward Ho!, the woodcut influence of Rockwell Kent and Lynd Ward is evident in The Corsican Brothers. For example, Julien’s reaction to the physical pain that informs him of his brother’s death in the panel immediately following the climactic duel sequence is clearly an act of homage in its elemental simplicity and emotional intensity. Despite the relative popularity of Allen Simon, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (March 1944). A campy Quasimodo, who was the title, which went through seven nonetheless a source of nightmares. printings by 1952, the title was discontinued in 1954 and was never revised or reissued in the U.S. in the series — shows an outsized Quasimodo wreaking havoc series. among soldiers attacking the Cathedral. This over-the-top A short piece, The Flayed Hand, attributed to Guy de style is maintained in the action sequence depicting “The Maupassant and included in 3 Famous Mysteries, No. 21 ( July Battle at Notre Dame.” The artist appears to have approached 1944), gave the artist scope to indulge his affinity for bizarre with some relish the scene in which Esmeralda is tortured with

II. OF MUSKETEERS AND MOHICANS characters and situations. The Flayed Hand was a ghoulish tale about the vengeful severed hand of a homicidal madman. Simon’s splash page for the story points the way toward the horror comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s, while the script by Evelyn Goodman features such improvements on Maupassant as “Die! All my enemies die! Ha! Ha! Ha!” Simon’s rendering of the villain, Henry Matson, is a study in overstatement; the artist gives him a sharp nose, sharper teeth, and a bloody ax. More than anything Gilberton had published before, The Flayed Hand simultaneously tested the middlebrow boundaries of what could be considered a “classic” and affirmed the lowbrow status of a series that, after all, included “comics” in its name.

Allen Simon, “The Flayed Hand” in 3 Famous Mysteries (July 1944). Classic Comics pushes the “horror” envelope.

25

III

Louis Zansky: The Painter’s Touch D

The Great Depression had an impact on the artist’s development. From his preadolescent years, young Louis drew— “sometimes,” Mrs. Zansky related, “on smoothed-out paper grocery bags when there were no coins with which to buy unlined white paper”— and experimented “with water coloring and painting when oils were available.”2 Attending DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, the aspiring artist produced black-and-white illustrations for The Magpie, the students’ literary-art magazine, to which schoolmate and future screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky also contributed.3

uring the publication’s first four years, no artist left a greater imprint on Classic Comics than an irrepressible red-haired New Yorker named Louis Zansky (1921–1978). Recalled by his wife Jeanette as a natural charmer with an “impish” personality, 1 the young artist infused each of his Gilberton books with his own exuberance. To turn to Zansky’s first title, Moby Dick, No. 5 (September 1942), from the occasionally leaden Jacquet issues that preceded it is to experience a refreshing expansiveness in the looser, flowing lines and the economical character studies.

Louis Zansky (early 1940s). The Classic Comics art director at his drawing table (courtesy Jeanette Zansky).

26

III. LOUIS ZANSKY

27

Louis Zansky in Austria, ¡946 (courtesy Jeanette Zansky).

After school, Zansky, who couldn’t afford the five-cent subway fare, walked for miles to attend the Art Students League (where he was deeply influenced by teacher John Corbino), the National Academy, and Cooper Union. Upon graduation, he was awarded a full scholarship to New York University’s School of Art and Architecture but was unable to accept because, said Mrs. Zansky, “he had to bring in money to the household. Which brought him to Classic Comics.”4 Golden Age publishers offered a decent, steady, if not spectacular, income for New York’s overpopulated art com-

munity. Albert Kanter was paying between $400 and $600 per book, a substantial if not extravagant sum.5 Thus, in 1942, Zansky began working for Gilberton, where, according to a 1976 autobiographical statement, he became art director.6 He was only 23 when he submitted his last pages to Classic Comics in 1944. Before Zansky’s departure, however, he left his mark on the Gilberton organization in an altogether different fashion. As Mrs. Zansky recounts the tale: “Lou had again been paid with a check which bounced. He fumed throughout the

28

CLASSICS Illustrated

was almost unheard of. Lou’s response: ‘I went in, grabbed his collar, shoved him to the window, and threatened to throw him out. But — it won’t work unless, one, you’re mad enough to say it, and, two, you’re bigger than he is.’ Obviously, Lou Zansky was both.”7 The artist entered the army in March 1944. Even then, however, he could not leave Classic Comics behind. His best friend, etcher Jack Bilander, was serving at the time in North Africa. He reported that one day, while driving a Jeep along a dusty road, he noticed an Arab in the distance, sitting by the side of the road. The man was reading a magazine that somehow looked familiar. As the Jeep moved closer, Bilander could make out the English words on the cover —Classic Comics Presents Moby Dick— Zansky’s first Gilberton title. He knew that, by some measure at least, his friend had arrived.8 After the war and a stint as an art instructor for the United States Information Service in Vienna, Zansky returned to New York and continued to freelance as a comic-book artist, tackling a Western hero, the “Cross-Draw Kid,” for Ace and using his wife as a model for a Fox cover that was “banned in Boston.”9 But, although he never disavowed his comics work, his artistic fulfillment lay elsewhere, and he continued with his work in watercolor, oils, and acrylics. By the 1960s, Zansky had created an impressive body of work as an award-winning painter and watercolorist, retaining the playful quality of his earlier figurative efforts and exploring new, more abstract Louis Zansky, Moby Dick (September 1942). The White Whale takes Captain Ahab for treatments of color and space. a ride. Always a superb visual storyteller subway ride from the Bronx to the publisher’s Manhattan in his Gilberton titles, he never lost the narrative impulse or office. He rushed in past the other bilked artists patiently waithis love for literary and historical themes. Mrs. Zansky noted ing in the ante-room, past the receptionist’s vain attempt to that her husband returned to Don Quixote and Huckleberry stop him, through [the business manager’s] office door—which Finn, two of his favorite Classic Comics subjects, in later years. he theatrically slammed behind him. He emerged within minA painting with a Revolutionary War theme, And Called It utes, waving real money. The artists and writers crowded Macaroni — II, was accepted by the White House in 1976 for around him, wanting to know the secret of his success, which the Bicentennial collection, and the artist proudly posed for a Opposite: Louis Zansky, Robin Hood (December 1942). Robin makes the acquaintance of Little John.

III. LOUIS ZANSKY

31

photograph on the occasion of its presentation in Washington, D.C. Two years later, at the peak of his professional achievement, Louis Zansky died of a heart attack. Mrs. Zansky recalled her husband’s pleasure in spotting in House Calls, the last film they saw together, several of his paintings on the set.10 As a Classic Comics illustrator, Zansky generally gave his panels an open, spacious look, emphasizing the characters at the expense of the backgrounds. In his first three assignments —Moby Dick, No. 5 (September 1942); Robin Hood, No. 7 (December 1942); Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, No. 33 (completed in 1943; issued in January 1947)— the artist worked with inker Fred Eng. Mrs. Zansky remembers him as a financially harried man with a large family who “came to Lou in desperation a couple of times for inking and lettering work.”11 Such a division of labor inevitably resulted in lower fees for the artist, but Zansky was always willing to help his friend. The collaborative efforts produced a lighter line than the nascent painter would employ in his later Gilberton projects. Moby Dick was Zansky’s favorite Classic, and he provided not only the illustrations but also, according to his widow, the adaptation of Melville’s masterpiece. The artist was assisted by the then-unknown Harvey Kurtzman, who was hired to “fill in the blacks” and thus streamline the process. Although Zansky’s abridgment was cast in the third person and paraphrased much of the dialogue and narration (“Call me Ishmael” becomes “Out of the bleak December dusk, walks the lone figure of Ishmael, looking for a night’s lodging...”), it remained faithful to the spirit of the Louis Zansky, Don Quixote (May 1943). The Man of La Mancha meets the windmills novel. on one of the most distinctive Classic Comics covers. The artist’s angular Ahab (derived ters devoted to the mechanics of whaling, the young artist supfrom illustrator Rockwell Kent) is a powerful conception, with plied drawings and descriptions of right and sperm whales and his flashing eyes and thrusting jaw. A portrait of the captain, a detailed side view of the sailing vessel, down to the “Booby framed by a life preserver and linked to images of the Pequod Hatch” and the “Blubber Room.” and the doomed ship’s route, telegraphs the essence of his charWhat is evident in Moby Dick, and elsewhere in Zansky’s acter and obsession. In a kind of visual counterpart to the chapOpposite: Louis Zansky, The Hound of the Baskervilles in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1943/January 1947). The plot thickens.

32

CLASSICS Illustrated

Louis Zansky, The Deerslayer (January 1944). Natty Bumppo of view.

work for Gilberton, is the artist’s keen awareness of his medium. He was not striving to produce a reverent tribute to the genius of Herman Melville; instead, he was attempting to engage young readers in a medium that had its own conventions and resources — and he succeeded handsomely. Yet the artist’s occasionally cartoonish style seemed here and there at odds with the tragic dimensions of Melville’s story. Nevertheless, when Acclaim Books began reissuing Classics Illustrated in 1997, editor Madeleine Robins chose Zansky’s spirited Moby Dick for inclusion in the new line rather than its 1956 replacement.

The next project, Robin Hood, under the auspices of art director Gail Hillson, featured a surprisingly text-heavy script by Evelyn Goodman (who, contrary to later speculation on the part of some Classics collectors, was not Zansky’s wife). In her adaptations, Goodman never let source material stand in the way of her concept of a story, and her treatment of Robin Hood borrowed several plot components from the 1938 Warner Brothers film, interpolated a jousting scene from Ivanhoe, and, on the whole, emphasized the humorous elements of the outlaw’s legend. The scriptwriter evidently decided that Maid Marian would slow down the action, so the outlaw’s love interest had to wait until the 1957 Classics Illustrated revision for her Gilberton debut. Zansky obviously enjoyed himself with Robin Hood, creating an eccentric cast of Merry Men and a comically unhingedlooking Prince John. Despite the broad cultural impact of Errol Flynn’s recent portrayal of the hero, the artist made an effort to give the title character his own identity, shortening his hair and trimming his Van Dyke goatee back to a simple sliver beneath the lower lip. Zansky’s best panels show Robin in action, trading blows with Little John, crossing swords with Friar Tuck, and draw ing his bow on the villains. His cover, featuring Robin in profile, sounding his horn to rally the Merry Men in their battle against the forces of tyranny, undoubtedly had a certain wartime resonance. A wrap-around cover that Zansky designed for a Saks Christmas 1942 giveaway is now among the rarest and most prized of Classics collectibles. explains his point Another rarity is the displaced Adventures of Sherlock Holmes issue — scheduled as No. 9 and released as No. 33 — in which Gilberton paired A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The former mystery, a 17-page adaptation, was the weaker script of the two (the resolution of the story was packed into a 26-line speech balloon in the final panel) and was dropped when the issue was reduced to 48 pages in 1948; it was reintroduced in 1953 as the lead story in Classics Illustrated No. 110, with artwork by Seymour Moskowitz. Zansky’s Holmes is all angularity and coiled energy. The familiar deerstalker cap makes its appearance, and the artist’s leaner-than-usual rendering of the character is iconic in its

III. LOUIS ZANSKY

33

own right. Watson stands independently, an intelligent companion rather than mere comic foil. As he would later in another Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Sign of the Four in 3 Famous Mysteries, No. 21 (July 1944), the artist employed shading and shadows to good effect. The Sign of the Four, though drawn after The Hound of the Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet, marked Sherlock Holmes’s debut in the comicbook medium.12 Despite its heavier, brushed inking style, it has a lighter, jauntier air than its predecessors, thanks to the comic interplay between Holmes and Watson, who is smitten with a young female client. Zansky’s most delightful work, for which his whimsical style was perfectly suited, was Samuel H. Abramson’s adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The affection the artist felt for the hapless, idealistic knight and his faithful, commonsensical squire is evident, and the pair’s exchanges build character and set the tone of the comic book. Each panel exhibits a swift, impressionistic touch, and Zansky excels in such comic sequences as the knighting at the inn, the battle with the windmills, the freeing of the convicts, and the routing of the barber. The striking line-drawing cover, with its large title and series banners above the visualization of the giant Don Quixote sees, is one of the early Classic Comics triumphs. Why it disappeared from print after 1946 remains a Gilberton mystery. Two of the artist’s finest Gilberton titles, in which his distinctive brushwork is pronounced, are a pair from Louis Zansky, Huckleberry Finn (April 1944). Huck lights out for the territory. James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leathercanoe episodes in The Pathfinder are notable for their animated stocking” series, The Deerslayer, No. 17 ( January 1944), and movement. The Pathfinder, No. 22 (October 1944). Both remained in print Mark Twain’s masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn, No. 19 (April until the demise of the American series in 1971. In the two 1944), occasioned some of the artist’s liveliest efforts. Huck books, the central figure of Natty Bumppo is presented as the himself is part Mickey Rooney and part Lou Zansky, an unembodiment of the frontier myth, and the two covers Zansky repentant scamp with sound instincts. Nowhere in his Classic designed amount to a kind of pop-culture apotheosis of the Comics illustrations did the artist come closer to rendering a self-reliant, trailblazing frontiersman. The illustrations in the

34

CLASSICS Illustrated

up of the hero, captures the essence of Zansky’s self-assured, mischievous spirit. Although the dramatic cover illustration of men firing on Huck and Jim had nothing whatever to do with the novel, Evelyn Goodman’s script was better than usual, and the artist obviously relished the project. The Classic Comics titles Zansky illustrated helped to establish a visual identity for the series. Had he not entered the service he might have become as dominant a force at Gilberton as Henry C. Kiefer or Alex A. Blum would become in the late 1940s. But Zansky gave what he could, always in full measure. With a war beckoning overseas, the artist was just beginning to find his style, experimenting on his own with the liberal inking of Classic Comics boards. His widow recalled her husband working “with the tip of his brush in his mouth as he inked, poi13 Louis Zansky, “Dancer #9,” 36 in. ¥ 48 in. (1974). Winner of the Paul Puzinas soning himself without knowing it.” The Memorial Award, Allied Artists of America, National Academy, this painting displays freely brushed lines were the work of an the characteristic feather-touch of Zansky’s later style (courtesy Jeanette Zansky). artist who was ready to move beyond the strictly representational limitations of the self-portrait. A sequence of panels depicting Huck concocting comics formula of the time. And move Lou Zansky did, with his plan to escape from his father’s cabin, with its circular closethe energy that filled every aspect of his life.

IV

Eccentricity Abounding: The War Years T

he year 1942 brought stimulating change to Classic Comics: the arrival of Louis Zansky, the move to new quarters at 510 Sixth Avenue, and the adoption of the Gilberton Company name. Albert L. Kanter, under the pseudonym Albert W. Raymond (a combination of the co-owners’ first names), served as editor and briefly as art director. He was assisted by family member and future editor Meyer A. Kaplan, a New York University graduate with a literature background.1 Gail Hillson acted as art director for a single issue, No. 7, Robin Hood (December 1942), and became managing editor for issues 8 through 17 between February 1943 and January 1944.2 During this period, Louis Zansky assumed the duties of art director, and Evelyn Goodman and other scriptwriters produced a string of loose adaptations that tarnished the reputation of the series in some quarters for decades to come. But the insistent individuality— indeed, the exuberant eccentricity — of the artists employed during the war years often triumphed over the less-thanfaithfuls cripts. In May 1944, Publishers’ Distributor, a trade paper aimed at wholesalers of the Publishers Distributing Corporation (P.D.C.), which handled the Classic Comics account, featured one of the earliest articles on the series. The piece provided the following listing of Gilberton business staff members: Harry M. Adler, managing editor; Harry H. Hyman, sales manager; Annette Pozner, office manager; S.R. Lee, circulation manager; and S.S. Copeland, publicity and public relations.3 Emphasis was given to the role that P.D.C. wholesalers played “in establishing this unique publication.”4 The article noted that “CLASSIC COMICS is becoming an institution. It is not only sold on newsstands but is used extensively in schools as supplementary aid in English classes. It is particularly helpful to the backward student.”5 Looking to the publication’s future, the uncredited writer (who may well have been Kanter himself ) stated “When the war is over and paper is available, CLASSIC COMICS will be published in four foreign languages. There will be five other new publi-

cations similar in type and quality to CLASSIC COMICS. ... There are now 19 titles available, with plans for about 180 more.”6 Things were decidedly looking up.

STANLEY MAXWELL ZUCKERBERG Born on 13 September 1919, native New Yorker Stanley Maxwell Zuckerberg spent his formative years at Long Beach, Long Island, a setting that would have a profound impact on his later work. Zuckerberg, a high-school friend of Hal Kanter, studied at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League of New York. His teachers included anatomy specialist George Bridgman and magazine illustrator Norman Rockwell; he was deeply influenced by the realism they championed. In the 1930s, while a student at Pratt, Zuckerberg met fellow artist Lillian Chestney (see below), whom he married on 22 June 1941. During World War II, he served in the 58th Bombardment Wing of the XXI Bomber Command. Ahead of him lay a fulfilling career as a prizewinning painter of marine life. Before entering the armed forces, Zuckerberg worked as a freelance artist in New York, where he picked up two Classic Comics titles.7 The first, A Tale of Two Cities, No. 6 (October 1942), already had a significant strike against it in the form of a howler of a script by Evelyn Goodman, who must have carried a high-school grudge against Charles Dickens. Few traces of the author’s language can be detected, while several pages consist of material not found in the novel. Speech balloons are filled with such dialogue as, “That head’s a tough one to get off!” In a supreme moment of anticlimax, the executioner says, immediately after Sydney Carton’s abridged “far, far better” speech: “Put your head on the block, Evremonde!” A priest stands by in the unlikely, ahistorical role of French Revolutionary minister to the condemned. A final panel adds an invented moment of bathos as the safely delivered Darnays laud Carton’s sacrifice. The 1956 Classics Illustrated revision,

35

Stanley Maxwell Zuckerberg, A Tale of Two Cities (October 1942). Sydney Carton comes to a far, far worse end in the adaptation by Evelyn Goodman, who didn’t know when to stop. Compare with Joe Orlando’s treatment, page 169.

IV. ECCENTRICITY ABOUNDING

37

Nabokov, Irving Stone, and Norman Mailer. But his finest adapted by Annette T. Rubinstein with art by Joe Orlando, work, reflecting his lifelong love of the sea, was found in his restored the actual Dickensian ending. tranquil waterfront studies of familiar sites in New England, Zuckerberg, who used the name Stanley Maxwell for his Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.8 Zuckerberg died in 1995. Classics pieces, aggravated matters with his studied indifference to historical detail. (At this stage in Gilberton’s history, artists were expected to do their own period research.) The principal male characters, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, are LILLIAN CHESTNEY ZUCKERBERG coiffed and clad as Regency dandies, while Mr. Lorry is costumed as a mid–Victorian swell. Lucie Manette fares better, Although the talents of Stanley Maxwell Zuckerberg were actually landing in the 18th century, though in costumes a perhaps not so well suited to the comics medium, his wife, mere four or five decades out of date; by the final panel (the interpolated post-execution scene), she seems to have added an 1840sstyle dress to her wardrobe. The painter was already evident in the panels Zuckerberg sketched for A Tale of Two Cities. His style was elliptical, to say the least: backgrounds are often nonexistent and merely suggested by the colorist. Human figures occasionally begin to vanish toward the bottoms of panels, giving the reader the impression of torsos floating in air. Even the guillotine partially disappears under the priest’s right elbow. Other illustrations, however, such as a full-page depiction of the attack on the Bastille, gave a more favorable indication of the artist’s abilities. Robinson Crusoe, No. 10 (April 1943), showed some improvement for comic-book purposes; there, Zuckerberg actually finished his panels, not only drawing complete, if still sketchy, bodies in all but two instances, but also filling in the backgrounds more often than not. Anachronisms still surfaced, though not as frequently as in A Tale of Two Cities. A 17th-century sailor is given a 19thcentury cap with bill, and Robinson Crusoe fires a six-shooter. The “savages,” who are accorded great prominence, seem to be derived from 1930s Tarzan films rather than from the pages of Daniel Defoe, whose work more or less served as the source for this popular Classic. A better-illustrated 1957 revision, narrated in the manner of the novel in the first person, was much closer to the mark. After the war, Zuckerberg continued in the vein of book illustration, moving away from comics to cover art for such authors as John Dos Passos, Somerset Maugham, Sin- Lillian Chestney Zuckerberg, Arabian Nights (February 1943). Note the ornate clair Lewis, James Michener, Vladimir panel borders.

38

CLASSICS Illustrated balloons in her script, allowing greater scope for strictly illustrative art. For Arabian Nights, Chestney designed the most unusual cover in the history of the series. She placed the Classic Comics logo, which had not yet achieved the instantly recognizable yellow-banner form, in an ornamented black oval. A barechested jinn looms over two smaller figures, wearing an extremely low-cut loincloth. Generations of readers and collectors have debated whether Chestney or inker Fred Eng had meant to suggest a shadow beneath the navel or pubic hair. The Gilberton editorial staff had its own ideas, and the black blotch disappeared from the cover when the book was reprinted in 1944. In the view of comics historian Hames Ware, “It was refreshing to have a woman render the narrative of Scheherazade.”10 The illustrations for Arabian Nights display a charmingly naive quality that is augmented by assorted rococo embellishments, such as embroidered panel borders, twinkling stars, and bejewelled turbans. Perhaps the childlike mystique was too precious for the boys who comprised so much of the

Lillian Chestney Zuckerberg, Arabian Nights (February 1943).

Lillian Chestney, born on 22 September 1913, carved a small but memorable niche for herself at Gilberton. As a female cartoonist in the 1940s, she was a rarity in the overwhelmingly male-dominated world of shop production. Like her husband, Chestney studied at the Pratt Institute, where the couple met, and the Art Students League of New York. Both dropped the name Zuckerberg in their work for Gilberton. Again like her husband, Chestney illustrated two Classics titles, her only signed comics efforts.9 The pair of works were equally charming in their mixture of realism and fantasy. Chestney’s first freelance assignment was Arabian Nights, No. 8 (February 1943). It was the first of many titles added to the catalogue with an eye to capitalizing on a recently released Hollywood B-movie of the same name, which had next to nothing to do with the Thousand and One Nights. The Gilberton adaptation, a fine effort by Evelyn Goodman, featured four tales: “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”; “The Story of the Magic Horse”; “The Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor”; “Aladdin and His Magic Lamp.” Goodman made minimal use of speech

Lillian Chestney Zuckerberg, Gulliver’s Travels (December 1943). Gulliver wins the war for Lilliput.

IV. ECCENTRICITY ABOUNDING

39

readership; at any rate, Chestney’s Arabian Nights was last reisROLLAND H. LIVINGSTONE sued in 1950, and a single-printing revision of the title, with new art by Charles Berger, did not appear until 1961. One of the most interesting of the early Classics artists, The second Chestney Classic, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Rolland H. Livingstone foreshadowed Henry C. Kiefer with Travels, No. 16 (December 1943), features another collection his beguilingly antiquated style. Livingstone’s panels for Les of beguiling drawings. However, adapter Dan Kushner, in limMiserables, No. 9 (March 1943), Rip Van Winkle and the Headiting the tale to the “Voyage to Lilliput” and allowing himself less Horseman, No. 12 ( June 1943), and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, No. more than a few textual liberties, entirely missed the “savage 15 (November 1943), bore a greater resemblance to earlier styles indignation” of Swift’s satire — there was no colloquy with the of book illustration, from elaborate to naive, than to midKing of Brobdingnag, no encounter with the Struldbrugs, no 20th-centuryc omic-bookd rawings. discourses on truth and “the thing which was not” by talking horses. But then, it is difficult to imagine the fanciful Chestney of the early 1940s decorating panels devoted to Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. In 1954, Gulliver’s Travels was dropped from the Classics Illustrated reorder list, perhaps because the style and the focus on the Lilliputians appealed less to the series’ older readers. Almost two years later, a Dell Junior Treasury edition of the “Voyage to Lilliput” (January 1956) was published; the script stuck much closer to the original than Kushner’s Swiftian improvisations, while the artwork by Alberto Giolitti aimed at a more realistic representation. Gilberton reissued No. 16 in 1960 with a new painted cover by an unidentified artist in response to the release that year of a film titled The Three Worlds of Gulliver. Whatever reader resistance the title had encountered in the mid-1950s, it regained its position as one of the most popular reprints. Chestney spent only a couple of years in the comics field. She turned to commercial art and soon distinguished herself with an award for Best Advertisement of 1948. Later, Chestney received honors as a book and magazine illustrator, producing an evocative painted cover for the Signet Classic edition of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy in 1964 and earning the Citation for Merit from the Society for Illustrators in 1961 and 1965.6 She and her husband enjoyed their travels in New England and Nova Scotia; both drew on the experiences for their paintings in later life of harbor and shoreline scenes. Chestney died on 6 August 2000. Her New York Times obituary noted her work for Classic Comics, singling out Gulliver’s Travels.11 Rolland H. Livingstone, Les Miserables (March 1943). Jean Valjean savors the sewers.

40

CLASSICS Illustrated

makes effective use of atmospheric linework to enhance the suspense of Jean Valjean’s rooftop escape, the battle at the barricade, and the flight through the sewers. Washington Irving’s Sketch-Book tales provided Livingstone ample opportunity to exhibit his skills as a caricaturist and his eye for period detail in the artist’s most accomplished work for Gilberton. The line-drawing cover for Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman shows in particular the influence of turn-of-the-century illustrator Edmund Dulac. Rip Van Winkle’s encounter with Henry Hudson’s crew, his return to the village and ensuing confusion, Ichabod Crane’s efforts at courtship, and his fateful meeting with the Headless Horseman are all engaging illustrations that successfully blend cartoonish figures and realistic backgrounds. The adaptations by Dan Levin are typical of early Classic Comics retellings. Though faithful to the spirit of Irving’s sketches, they contain interpolated material to which the author might have been reluctant to sign his name. Where, for example, Irving writes that Rip told the village children “long stories of ghosts, witches and Indians,”12 the scriptwriter expands the general statement to a two-page account of single-handed combat with and capture by “the redskins.” Levin also adds a shot cow and a menacing boulder to Rip’s adventures. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was seriously marred by the racial stereotyping of the period. Amazingly, given the changing social and political currents between the first printing in 1943 and the 19th in 1970, the book was neither discontinued nor redrawn. It received a new painted Rolland H. Livingstone, Rip Van Winkle and The Headless Horseman (June 1943/1946 cover in 1954, the year the United States reprint). A cover that looked back decades to Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham. Supreme Court handed down Brown v. The unpolished awkwardness that permeated the work Board of Education, and was the only title illustrated by Livof so many other early Classics artists is particularly evident in ingstone to remain on the active list until the series shut down. Les Miserables, where stiff-limbed figures and odd perspectives Uncle Tom’s Cabin was, in fact, one of the 12 best-selling Clasoccasionally defeat the artist’s evident intentions. But Livingsics.13 stone is a natural visual storyteller, and his treatment of Victor A few efforts were made in the painted-cover reissue to Hugo’s masterpiece, though technically surpassed by Norman tone down some of the more overtly racist depictions of black Nodel’s 1961 revision, remains compelling. In particular, he characters. In a retouched panel showing the eye-popping,

IV. ECCENTRICITY ABOUNDING

41

wide-mouthed Sambo and Quimbo fleeing from sheet-draped figures, the grotesquely enlarged eye and lip sizes were reduced and quivering speech balloons were eliminated. Yet the offensive drawing remained, even with its cosmetic enhancements, an inexplicable lapse in editorial judgment. A grave marker bearing the name “Uncle Tom” also disappeared. Otherwise, except for a more assertive Tom on a second painted cover in 1969, the artwork was never revised, even after Livingstone’s better efforts in Rip Van Winkle were axed. If Topsy is a minstrel-show embarrassment (“I didn’ steal nuffin’, I didn’”), Tom himself is allowed a measure of dignity, though in a rather patronizing sort of way (“My soul is myself, so you can’t really harm me”). Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Hollis Robbins, remarking on Tom’s dramatic rescue of Little Eva, have observed that Livingstone’s “depiction of a muscular and virile Uncle Tom suggests his latent sexual prowess. He could easily be a superhero dressed incognito: Uncle Tom as Super Tom.”14 Still, Livingstone’s drawing of his death scene effectively neuters the character and restores the “Uncle” to Tom. Eliza’s flight over the ice (immortalized in The King and I) has a certain stagy period appeal. The episode has a kind of archetypal quality and has been echoed by cartoonists from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s time to the present.15 Livingstone is perhaps at his best in this melodramatic scene. Little Eva’s deathbed ascension is rendered with enough Rolland H. Livingstone, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (November 1943). Eliza makes her great escape, sentimentality (“The ... angels ... are with a little help from a friend. ... coming ... for ... me”) to satisfy overseer inhabits the realm of camp and almost redeems this the most maudlin Victorian tastes. The good white folks, the curious artifact, a work of overwrought illustration art that, Shelbys and the St. Clares, all but wear halos. Simon Legree, even when new, seemed to belong to another age — and that shown slavehunting on the original cover and in various states continues to send as many conflicting messages as the novel of rage in the interior, exudes sheer malevolence with his flaring on which it was based. nostrils, bared teeth, hairy arms, and raised fists. The big bad

V

Arnold Lorne Hicks: Transitional Figure A

rnold Lorne Hicks is a transitional figure in the early history of Classic Illustrated. An older artist, born on 24 April 1888, he was producing pulp covers as early as 1920. Other works included advertising art for Monarch Coffee (1926) and illustrations for Esther Merriam Ames’s Twistum Tales and Samuel Gabriel’s Book of Indians (both 1929). Hicks was the only Iger Shop affiliate to provide artwork for Gilberton before and after Jerry Iger assumed artistic control in 1945. Although he began with an uneven performance, in the end he produced some of the strongest Classic Comics issues. Hicks’s initial title for the series, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, No. 13 (August 1943), has considerable historical significance as the first example of what would become a major genre— horror comics.1 Unfortunately, despite its popularculture credentials, the issue was an overstated clunker afflicted with the endemic crudeness of the early issues. In Stevenson’s story, the doctor describes the projection of the “evil side of my nature” as “so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll.”2 Elsewhere, Hyde is said to be “pale and dwarfish,” giving “an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation....”3 Nothing if not obvious, Hicks’s stocky, “unbridled, monster-like” Hyde came equipped with fangs, the better to scare you with. The script, another Evelyn Goodman atrocity, had even less to do with Stevenson’s study of human duality than the Spencer Tracy movie of that approximate vintage. In fact, Goodman and Hicks both may have called upon memories of the 1931 Rouben Mamoulian film or, more likely, the more recent 1941 Spencer Tracy vehicle to flesh out their conceptions of the tale. As in the movie versions, a love interest

Arnold L. Hicks, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (August 1943). Dr. Jekyll unleashes Mr. Hyde.

42

V. ARNOLD LORNE HICKS

43

faithful adaptation by Georgina Campbell, Oliver Twist repunknown to Stevenson appears. Goodman begins the Classic resented a decisive step forward for the series. Comic with a wholly invented party scene in which the funCampbell’s script emphasized the melodramatic aspects loving, debonair Jekyll (obviously no relation to his literary of Dickens’s novel, giving considerable prominence to the murprogenitor) exclaims, “To life! To laughter! To a gay evening!” der of Nancy by Sikes and Sikes’s own hanging, accompanied The adaptation ends with another example of the unintentional by the death of his dog. Hicks rose to the macabre occasion, humor that Goodman excelled in providing. Commenting on producing menacing, occasionally horrific panels that hearhis friend Jekyll’s fate, Dr. Lanyon sagely counsels, “[E]vil bekened back to an earlier style of illustration. The artist’s decomes a habit-forming drug. My advice is stay away from that piction of Nancy’s bludgeoning still has a disturbing power, first taste!” Beneath the speech balloon, Hicks helpfully drew while his rendering of the haunting of Sikes by his own a devil’s head and pitchfork. conjured image of Nancy is a memorable sequence. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde proved problematic for Gilberton Fagin’s character has been problematic since the novel’s as the company endeavored to distance itself from the perceived publication. Frequently identified in the novel as “the Jew,” excesses of the comics industry. In 1949, one year before Fagin is an antisemitic stereotype. When the Classic Comics William Gaines raised the bar for horror with the first issue of edition was published shortly after the end of the Second World The Haunt of Fear, Hicks’s original Classic Comics cover, which displayed a rampaging Hyde scattering panicstricken Londoners, was suppressed, and a tamer, more respectable version drawn by Henry C. Kiefer was substituted in the renamed Classics Illustrated series (see page 93). By 1953, however, it was obvious that the issue itself no longer had a place in the series, and managing editor Meyer A. Kaplan authorized a new adaptation, new interior art, and a painted cover, which showed a contemplative, fangless Hyde rising from Jekyll’s green formula. A victim of the mid-fifties anti-comics hysteria, No. 13 was withdrawn in November 1955; when it returned to the reorder list in November 1959, it quickly became one of Gilberton’s best-sellers. A second pre–Iger piece, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 3 Famous Mysteries, No. 21 ( July 1944), evidenced only modest improvements on the part of both the artist and the adapter. With its panels depicting a bright-red pool of blood and a woman wedged upside down in a chimney, the story appeared to be Gilberton’s rather awkward attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Lev Gleason’s sanguinary Crime Does Not Pay series. The artist spoiled the resolution of the mystery by filling the title-page splash with the looming shadow of an ape. Hicks truly came into his own when he received the first assignment of the Iger era, Oliver Twist , No. 23 ( July 1945). Only Henry C. Kiefer equaled the artist among Classics illustrators in his affinity for Dickens. Hicks’s drawings of Oliver, the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Nancy, and Sikes catch some of the robustness of George Cruikshank’s original illustrations without imitating them. His linedraw ing cover, which features a kaleidoscope of characters, remains a striking conception. With its Arnold L. Hicks, Oliver Twist (July 1945). A Dickensian kaleidoscope.

44

CLASSICS Illustrated

Adam from Jules Verne’s novel (Albert Kanter’s favorite), kept the action flowing from panel to panel with cinematic momentum. A departure from the author’s usual science-fiction fare, the early espionage tale moves rapidly through the hero’s dangerous mission to Siberia and his efforts to foil the nefarious schemes of the wily traitor Ivan Ogareff. The Classic Comics version was an exciting union of pictures and words and one of the most artistically successful issues in the early Gilberton series, but the story’s violence (stabbings, shootings, flogging, blinding) made it a target of critics, and it appeared erratically on the reorder lists until a painted-cover edition was published in 1954. Even then, another six years elapsed before Michael Strogoff was reprinted, by which time the comics scare had subsided. The artist’s remaining four works for Gilberton —The Prince and the Pauper, No. 29 ( July 1946), The Black Arrow, No. 31 (October 1946), The Spy, No. 51 (August–September 1948), and Silas Marner, No. 55 (January 1949)— were executed as Hicks approached the age of sixty and represented a return to the lighter-inked style of Oliver Twist. Both The Spy and Silas Marner were originally issued in longer Illustrated Classics newspaper editions in 1947; they were reduced to the standard 48-page format when subsequently published as comic books. Mark Twain’s Tudor-era historical fantasy of switched identities generated controversy with its “horror” cover depicting the young prince in the clutches of a mad hermit. The offending cover was withdrawn after a single printing, but the popular title earned 14 additional printings with two replacement covers (in 1949 and 1955). Hicks supplied some of his best period drawings for the Arnold L. Hicks, Michael Strogoff (1946). Avenging his mother’s lashing, the interior of The Prince and the Pauper. His renderCourier of the Czar delivers “blow for blow.” ings of the interchangeable Prince Edward and Tom Canty were subtly different character studies of the effects War in Europe and the discovery of the horrors of the conof privilege, poverty, and reversals of fortune. Hicks gave the centration camps, care was taken not to emphasize Fagin’s ethheroic Miles Herndon an air of swashbuckling bravado through nicity in either the script or the illustrations. (The 1961 Classics economical pen strokes that added a jaunty mustache. ThroughIllustrated revision made no reference whatsoever to the matter out the comic book, fluidity of movement marks each page. and included a back-of-the-book article about Chaim WeizHicks illustrated what both Jerry Iger and Albert Kanter mann, the first president of the State of Israel.) considered one of the finest of the earlier books in the series, Hicks’s heavily inked, and at times brushed, Michael StroThe Black Arrow.4 It was a skillful if occasionally loose adapgoff: A Courier of the Czar, No. 28 ( June 1946), adapted by Pat Opposite: Arnold L. Hicks, The Black Arrow (October 1946). A page of original art, deleted from reprinted editions because of the violence. Note the Iger Shop address in the upper left corner (collection of the author).

V. ARNOLD LORNE HICKS

47

tation by Ruth A. Roche and Thomas T. Scott of Robert Louis Stevenson’s exercise in Lancastrian-Yorkist “tushery” (as RLS termed the pseudo-medieval dialogue invented for the novel). The details of costuming and backgrounds indicate that the artist spent a respectable amount of time in period research, with more than a casual glance at N.C. Wyeth’s paintings for the 1916 Scribner’s edition of the book. Some coherence was lost when the book was reduced to a 48-page format in 1948; the moral ambiguities of the tale were softened with the excision of pages depicting hero Dick Shelton killing a soldier in the presence of his disguised companion and later, while cloaked as a monk, stabbing and disposing of the body of an enemy spy. Most striking, however, are the emphatically individualized characters, from the “crafty and ambitious nobleman,” Sir Daniel Brackley, to the “best maid and bravest under heaven,” Joan Sedley—the latter being a rare achievement in 1940s comic books, where women were most often either sultry vixens or vapid ciphers. Gestures, expressions, bearing, and movement not only breathed life into the figures but also served to drive the script, so that, unlike some of the more static Classics in the pre–Iger era, the illustrations carried more than their share of the narrative burden. The Black Arrow was worlds apart from Hicks’s previous Stevensonian excursion, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the artist’s transformation seemed to symbolize the new day at Gilberton. For The Spy, James Fenimore Cooper’s Revolutionary War tale of double agent Harvey Birch, the artist produced a thoughtful study of the complex central Arnold L. Hicks, Silas Marner (January 1949). Silas loses his gold, only to find his character. One of the interesting aspects true treasure. of The Spy was Hicks’s success in making which it is drawn. The Cooper issue also featured the most the actions of the titular hero, drawn as an older man, comovert adult nudity in the series, in the episode of Captain Lawpelling to young readers. A page showing Birch’s infirm father ton’s whipping of the “Skinners,” where bare-bottomed men rising from his deathbed and terrifying the outlaw “Skinners” were shown strung up by their wrists, receiving punishment. is an effective sequence that transcends the caricature style in Opposite: Arnold L. Hicks, The Spy (August-September 1948). Captain Lawton spanks the Skinners, and one of the Skinners bites back.

48

CLASSICS Illustrated

It was indeed a different era — the illustration never attracted the attention of comics censors, presumably because the figures in question were male, and the title never went out of print. The Classics edition of Silas Marner, George Eliot’s story of the redemption of a cataleptic miser by golden-haired foundling Eppie, proved a perennial favorite with high-school students whose efforts to dodge the original saw the abridgment through 12 printings. Due to its ubiquity (one couldn’t avoid it on spinner racks in the 1950s and 1960s), No. 55 was taken for granted and undervalued. But Hicks infused the relationship between the weaver and the little girl with a grace note of gentle sympathy, deeper than the comic books of the period demanded. The artist’s depictions of Marner’s parallel

discoveries that his fortune has been stolen and that an unknown child sleeps on his hearth are among his best efforts. A sureness of purpose that informs the economy of linework throughout the comic book makes Silas Marner an unjustly neglected gem — much like the artist himself. Hicks went on to a rewarding career as a landscape painter. In 1960, he won first prize in the inaugural Winter Park Art Festival in Winter Park, Florida. The artist sold four paintings at the festival and returned the $40 he earned to the arts organization, thus contributing to the perpetuation of the long-running event. He won another first-place award in 1961. A resident of Deland, Florida, he continued painting until his death at the age of eighty-two in November 1970.5

C1

Top, left: Rolland H. Livingstone, Les Miserables (March 1943). Line-drawing cover. Top, right: Allen Simon, Westward Ho! (September 1943; June 1946 reprint). Line-drawing cover. Bottom, left: Louis Zansky, Huckleberry Finn (April 1944; June 1946 reprint). Line-drawing cover. Bottom, right: Arnold L. Hicks, The Black Arrow (October 1946). Line-drawing cover.

Left: Robert H. Webb and David Heames, Two Years Before the Mast (October 1945). Line-drawing cover. Right: Arnold L. Hicks, The Prince and the Pauper (July 1946). Line-drawing “horror” cover.

C2

Left: Henry C. Kiefer, Swiss Family Robinson (October 1947). Line-drawing cover. Right: Henry C. Kiefer, Great Expectations (November 1947). Line-drawing cover, noted by Dr. Fredric Wertham in Seduction of the Innocent (1954).

C3

C4

Top, left: Rudolph Palais, The Pioneers (May 1947). Line-drawing cover. Top, right: Aldo Rubano, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (August-September 1948). Line-drawing cover. Bottom, left: Alex A. Blum, The Black Tulip (July 1950; British edition 1954). Line-drawing cover. Bottom, right: Alex A. Blum, Mr. Midshipman Easy (August 1950). Line-drawing cover.

Left: Alex A. Blum, The Master of Ballantrae (April 1951). Gilberton color cover proof. Right: Unidentified artist, David Balfour (April 1952). Gilberton color cover proof.

C5

Left: Mort Künstler, Buffalo Bill (April 1953). Gilberton color cover proof. Right: Mort Künstler, A Study in Scarlet (August 1953). Painted cover.

C6

C7

Top, left: Mort Künstler, Don Quixote (August 1953; May 1960 reprint). Painted cover. Top, right: Unidentified artist, How I Found Livingstone (January 1954). Painted cover. Bottom, left: Victor Prezio, Robin Hood (November 1955). Painted cover. Bottom, right: Unidentified artist, Caesar’s Conquests (January 1956). Painted cover.

Left: George Wilson, The Time Machine (July 1956). Painted cover. Right: Unidentified artist, Off on a Comet (March 1959). Painted cover.

C8

VI

Enter Iger: The Fiction House Artists C

Story of the Commandos, three issues of Bomber Comics, and two issues of Spitfire Comics.6 The following year, using an allotment of book paper obtained through a friend, Kanter published a 12-volume set of children’s books designed to compete with the popular Little Golden Books. Inside-cover ads for the “Little Folks” line (Pee Wee and the Sneezing Elephant, Tickle Tickle Tickle, The Grasshopper Man, among other titles) appeared in various Classic Comics issues. Iger’s assistant editor, Ruth A. Roche, oversaw the unsuccessful project, which proved to be no match for Golden’s Poky Little Puppy.7 Louis Zansky, who had been acting as de facto art director for Gilberton, entered the armed forces in 1944; simultaneously, the impact of paper rations began to be felt, defeating even Kanter’s ingenuity. Classic Comics suspended publication in October 1944 with No. 22, The Pathfinder, Zansky’s last title for Gilberton. Iger turned his attention to the line in the spring of 1945 and began assigning new titles to his shop artists, who were paid salaries rather than per-page rates.8 Gilberton retained final control under the joint direction of managing editor Harry M. Adler (1944–1951) and editor William E. Kanter (1946–1956), the founder’s son. The first issue in the series under the new arrangement was Oliver Twist, No. 23 ( July 1945), illustrated by Arnold Hicks. Iger’s and Kanter’s relationship would last for the next nine years, would cover nearly 100 issues, and would result in some of the finest editions published under the yellow banner. A “house style” would develop that would make Classics Illustrated immediately identifiable. Not only the artwork but the adaptations also dramatically improved — gone were the days of unrecognizable variations on themes by Stevenson and Hugo. The change for the better was due to Ruth A. Roche (1921–1983), who began scripting for Iger in 1940 and later became his coeditor and business partner. She wrote such Fiction House jungle features as “Sheena,” “Kaanga,” “Camilla,” and “Wambi,” as well as Matt Baker’s syndicated Flamingo strip.9

artoonist and writer Samuel Maxwell “Jerry” Iger (1910– 1990) was a major player in the comics field from the 1930s through the 1950s. In 1937, he and Will Eisner formed a shop that offered publishers ready-made original stories and artwork to meet the demands of the booming market. The next year, they approached Thomas T. Scott of Fiction House, a leading pulp publisher, with a proposal for a monthly comicbook series to be called Jumbo Comics, featuring a pin-up-style jungle queen named Sheena. Scott signed on, and Sheena began a lengthy, well-endowed existence on newsstands and in dreams.1 Jumbo Comics begat Fiction House’s Jungle Comics. Other packaged creations from Iger and Eisner were Planet Comics, Hit Comics, and Wonderworld Comics; popular characters included the Blue Beetle, Wonder Boy, and the Flame.2 Eisner left the partnership in 1940 to win a place in the comics pantheon as the creator of The Spirit, an innovative Sunday comics newspaper insert.3 Iger continued running what was then the preeminent comic-book shop, producing a variety of series for Fiction House, Fox Features Syndicate, and Quality Comics Group, and employing a diverse group of artists, including Rafael Astarita, Alex A. Blum, Reed Crandall, Lou Fine, Joe Kubert, and Henry C. Kiefer.4 The Iger shop became particularly identified with “Good Girl Art,” drawings of pouting-lipped, ample-bosomed, minimally clothed heroines, which staffers Matt Baker and John Forte supplied for Fiction House and Fox. In November 1943, Jerry Iger met Albert Kanter, and the fortunes of both men changed. Kanter was well aware of the uneven quality of the artwork in the early Classic Comics, and Iger, who was impressed with the idea of publishing adaptations of great literature in comic-book form, introduced himself and offered the resources of his shop to produce other titles and, incidentally, improve the product.5 Having secured additional paper supplies, Kanter first engaged the services of the Iger shop to produce, between June and December 1944, three war-related comics: the single-issue

49

CLASSICS Illustrated

50

Roche was also the single most important person in Iger’s life — in a personal as well as professional sense. As his friend Ron Prager recalled, “Ruth Roche was the love of Jerry Iger’s life. He loved her till the day she died, and he loved her till his own death several years later.”10 The romantic and creative electricity generated between the two fueled the Fiction House dynamics that made it one of the strongest contenders in the late 1940s comics field. The Gilberton Company was a third-party beneficiary. The young writer displayed a command of narrative pacing in her scripts for Classic Comics and a willingness to trust the authors whose works she adapted. Fewer liberties would be taken with the originals on Roche’s watch, and the textual matter would assume increasing importance during the Iger years, as the educational role of Classics Illustrated grew more prominent. In the end, however, Iger decided that the large-scale adaptations demanded too much time and effort for the amount of compensation.11 He and Kanter reached an amicable parting in 1953, and one of his principal artists, Alex A. Blum, remained with Gilberton as art director. Iger bowed out of the comic-book business in 1955 when the Comics Code effectively shut down his remaining publishing outlets.

tained a higher level of technical achievement. The artist used skillful shading to convey atmosphere and character. Highly individualized facial features that border on the eccentric lift the protagonist, Hank Morgan, almost out of the comic-book realm. Throughout Yankee, Hearne employed unusual vantage

JACK R. HEARNE With Jack R. Hearne’s cover and interior art for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, No. 24 (September 1945), Classic Comics at-

Jack R. Hearne, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (September 1945). Hank Morgan receives an invitation to visit Camelot.

VI. ENTER IGER points to maintain visual interest, as in the episode of Hank’s capture while up a tree. Ruth A. Roche’s adaptation of Mark Twain’s novel was in some respects closer to the darker intent of the original than the 1957 Classics revision, where Morgan awakens in the final panel safe at home in Connecticut. A Connecticut Yankee was Hearne’s only title for Gilberton. Years later, he told comic-book artist Alex Toth that he had been paid $500 for the book.12 Hearne, who had been active in the Binder and Jacquet shops earlier in the decade and had made a name for himself for his work with Novelty, a Curtis comics imprint, apparently had a brief connection with the Iger operation in the mid-forties. Subsequently, he became a well-established magazine and juvenilebook illustrator, providing art for an Alfred Hitchcock line in the 1960s.13

ROBERT HAYWARD WEBB, DAVID HEAMES, ANN BREWSTER , AND ED WALDMAN A man who seemed more content on the waves than under an illustrator’s lamp, Robert Hayward Webb charged his illustrations with his own robust virility. Comics historian Hames Ware describes him as a good-humored man with a hearty laugh. Webb went to work for Jerry Iger in 1940 and spent the rest of his career with him, drawing such features as Sheena, Queen of the Jungle for Fiction House. At his retirement in the 1960s, he held the record as the shop’s longest-tenured artist.14 Webb’s greatest passion was ships and boats, and he drew them with obsessive enthusiasm for Classics in Two Years Before the Mast, No. 25 (October 1945); Mysterious Island, No. 34 (February 1947); Kidnapped, No. 46 (April 1948); and The Dark Frigate, No. 132 (May 1956). After leaving the comics field, he turned to boatbuilding and later roared with laughter as he told Hames Ware, “I used to draw boats, and now I build them.”15 Webb generally inked his own pencils but occasionally worked with collaborators. His favorite was David Heames, a younger artist who ably assisted him on Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast and Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island. The antithesis of Webb’s Sheena illustrations, the images in the Dana and Verne books were as macho as Classic Comics ever got, with their muscular he-men exerting themselves in panel after panel. Two Years Before the Mast ran afoul of comic-book censors in the 1950s for its portrayal of brutal conditions aboard the good ship Pilgrim. The title page had warned readers that what followed was “A voice from the forecastle ... presenting such shocking evidence of the seaman’s life that it revolutionized the entire administration of maritime law!” But the educational

51

disclaimer failed to convince critics that the artists weren’t enjoying the effects of Captain Thompson’s whip just a little too much, and the title was withdrawn from 1955 to 1960. The only instance of Gilberton issuing a sequel before the work that preceded it, Mysterious Island appeared a year before 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was added to the Classics list. The artwork emphasizes one exciting incident after another. Webb lavished attention on the cover illustration of a boat under sail, and the heavily inked panels of the interior show the castaways strenuously contending with the sea, wild animals, and pirates. For his last Classics title, The Dark Frigate, an adaptation of Charles Boardman Hawes’s Newbery Award–winning historical novel, Ed Waldman provided support, but the panels for the most part lacked the brio of Webb’s earlier work. (There were, however, as always, plenty of hairy chests and forearms to go around.) Nestled between issues illustrated by representatives of a newer style, Norman Nodel and Lou Cameron, The Dark Frigate seemed a visual anachronism. The artist joined forces on Frankenstein, No. 26 (December 1945), with Ann Brewster, an Iger inker capable of holding her own with the Good Girl boys. Arriving at the Iger shop in the mid-forties after an apprenticeship with Jack Binder, she inked the Jane Martin and Hawk strips and later gained recognition for her work in the “true crime” genre.16 Between 1958 and 1960, Brewster’s work appeared in assorted World Around Us issues. Her best work for that Gilberton series included the cleanly rendered “Caesar’s Revenge” in Pirates, No. W7 (March 1959), the richly detailed “Rise of Napoleon” in The French Revolution, No. W14 (October 1959), and the crisply inked “Cursed Trick” in Magic, No. W25 (September 1960). Later, Brewster won several fine arts awards. One of the plum assignments of the series, Ruth A. Roche’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic parable remained one of Gilberton’s most popular titles, going through 19 printings between 1945 and 1971. Comics authority Mike Benton lauded the Classic Comics edition of Frankenstein as “probably the most faithful adaptation of the original novel — movies included.”17 Comic-book writer Donald F. Glut singled out Ruth A. Roche’s script for praise: “Her breakdown as interpreted by the artists remains as a veritable storyboard for the definitive movie version..., if it is ever filmed.”18 Glut also noted the similarity between Boris Karloff ’s monster and Webb’s and Brewster’s creature, who was given bare feet and dark-gray skin coloring to avoid legal problems with Universal Pictures.19 Webb and Brewster, like film director James Whale, got the period wrong, garbing the characters in something like Regency style rather than in clothing appropriate to the novel’s 18th-century setting. But most film costumers and, for that matter, book illustrators (Lynd Ward is a notable exception) have made the same mistake.

VI. ENTER IGER

53

By the standards of the midforties, Frankenstein featured the most shocking mixture of sex and violence to appear in Classic Comics. The murder of Victor’s bride Elizabeth and the hanging of the innocent servant Justine were rendered in Webb’s and Brewster’s familiar erotically charged “Good Girl” style. Despite Elizabeth’s plunging neckline and strategically uncovered leg and Justine’s bared shoulder and prominent breast, the issue somehow escaped the scrutiny of the self-appointed upholders of decency in the 1950s, who evidently found the whip in Two Years Before the Mast more offensive. In any event, Frankenstein was neither withdrawn nor redrawn, a fact that may support an alternative view that sales rather than attempted censorship was the critical factor in a title’s survival. By 1971, No. 26 had gone through 19 printings. Perhaps Webb’s finest effort for Gilberton was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, on which he worked alone. Although the manly artist evidently had qualms about giving David Balfour, the red-blooded Scottish Lowland protagonist, 18th-century-style ribboned hair, he caught the dark, mythic overtones of the first section of the bildungsroman, creating a memorable sequence of panels depicting the young hero’s ascent of the unfinished tower. Webb was equally up to the task of swashing buckles with Alan Breck Stewart in the siege of the Round-House. Robert H. Webb and David Heames, Mysterious Island (February 1947). Trouble looms for The only disappointing aspect of Captain Harding in sight of land. the issue was John O’Rourke’s Given his long association with the Iger Shop, it seems a adaptation, which, though faithful to the plot, sacrificed an pity that Webb was not assigned more Classics titles. His apentire layer of meaning by abandoning the novel’s first-person proaches to Treasure Island, The Pilot, Mr. Midshipman Easy, narrative voice. Opposite: A page of original art for Two Years Before the Mast; the artist’s love of ships and boats is revealed in the attention to detail in the lower left panel (collection of the author).

Left: Robert Hayward Webb, Kidnapped (April 1948). Swashbuckling action in the siege of the Round-House. Right: Robert Hayward Webb and Ann Brewster, Frankenstein (December 1945). The Monster pays his respects to Victor’s bride on her wedding night.

VI. ENTER IGER and The Sea Wolf would have given each of those stories an injection of high spirits and nautical authenticity. But at the time, the artist’s prolific Fiction House work took precedence.

HOMER FLEMING An older artist, Homer Fleming (1883–1967) was drawing cartoons as early as 1912.20 By the late 1930s, when the comics boom was underway, he was supplying artwork for Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s More Fun.21 Fleming was a respected cartoonist and magazine illustrator whose style linked the Gibson Girl era and the Golden Age of comic books. In 1946, under Jerry Iger’s auspices, he tackled the first nominally nonfiction Classic Comics title, The Adventures of Marco Polo, No. 27 (April 1946). The factual basis of portions of the Travels has been a matter of dispute for centuries, though Marco Polo’s (if not his collaborator Rustichello’s) credibility is in the main now generally conceded. In the Classics version, however, distinctions between legend and fact were of no moment; the first page announced that “[g]aps in narration have been filled in to make this a dramatic presentation of the travels of the world’s most talked of explorer.” Some episodes appear to have been suggested by Donn Byrne’s popular novel, Messer Marco Polo (1921). Marco’s romance with a Princess Silver Bells (Golden Bells in Byrne’s book), the daughter of Kublai Khan,was derived from the novel. A victory orchestrated by the hero over “Japanese cannibals” (World War II was less than a year in the past) was not only an interpolation but also an egregious example of racial stereotyping in a publication that later stood so firmly against such practices. “I have seen many strange people,” Marco Polo muses, “but never have I hated any except these sneaky men of Japan.” Fleming’s second Gilberton title, Tom Brown’s School Days, No. 45 (January Homer Fleming, The Adventures of Marco Polo (April 1946). Romance blooms for the hero and Princess Silver Bells while intrigue stirs.

55

1948), was a beautifully old-fashioned production. The drawings of Thomas Arnold’s Rugby seemed to belong more to a 19th-century illustrated boys’ book than to a mid-20th-century comic book. Tom Brown is portrayed as the paragon of Victorian boyhood, while the bully Flashman, with his wild shock of hair, is a comically effective caricature. The antique charm of Fleming’s work is evident in both the cover illustration, where Tom is shown in a rugby match as a worthy exemplar of gentlemanly “good form,” and in a final game of cricket, where Tom, as “captain of the eleven,” allows a less accomplished

VI. ENTER IGER

57

player a chance to prove himself. The artist’s well-defined linework visually reinforces the social code championed in the text.

DON RICO Donato Francisco (Don) Rico (1918–1985) was a multitalented artist and writer whose sole Classic Comics title, The Moonstone, No. 30 (September 1946), showed him working at less than his full capacity. Trained at Cooper Union and influenced by Lynd Ward’s and Rockwell Kent’s woodcut techniques, Rico worked for the Chesler, Binder, Jacquet, and Iger shops in the 1940s. During that period, he supplied art for Target Comics and produced a syndicated comic strip called “Johnny Jones.”22 While working for Timely, he substituted for Jack Kirby, who had enlisted to fight in the Second World War. In the late forties, he provided illustrations for Murder Incorporated, a crime-comics series published by Fox Features Syndicate.23 Later, his paintings found homes in private collections and museums, and the artist taught at UCLA. Rico became the first president of the Cartoon Arts Professionals Society in Los Angeles.24 The artist’s interest in writing led to his authoring about 50 novels and screenplays, including scripts for Adam-12 and other television series.25 Rico’s illustrations for The Moonstone strike the right note of alien mystery, but neither they nor Dan Levin’s severely truncated adaptation do justice to Wilkie Collins’s novel of detection, with its mixture of suspense and wit. The artist evidently was given Don Rico, The Moonstone (September 1946). John Herncastle unleashes the curse of the no guidance on character descriptions fatal jewel. or period costuming. An unevenness grounds. Yet, with all its shortcomings, Rico’s work offered an runs from panel to panel, where well-executed homages to otherworldly strangeness and promises of richer wonders in Ward and Kent alternate with stiff-limbed figures. The women the original. appear to be afterthoughts, as do the stylized, minimalist backOpposite: Homer Fleming, Tom Brown’s School Days (January 1948). Well bowled, indeed.

CLASSICS Illustrated

58

showed, there was much more to his art than the Good Girls who made and, in a sense, circumscribed his reputation. An African-American, Clarence Matthew Baker was born Among the most gifted of Iger’s artists was Matt Baker, on 10 December 1921 in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a black who, though chiefly recalled for his curvaceously drawn fecommunity in the Pittsburgh area.26 Like many of his conmales, was a superb all-around artist. He was admired and retemporaries in the comics trade, he received his training at spected by his comics industry peers and others who knew him New York’s Cooper Union. By the mid–1940s, when he was in his all-too-short life. As his brief experience with Gilberton barely into his twenties, the handsome, dapper young artist arrived at Jerry Iger’s studio and said simply, “Looking for a job.” After he submitted a color sketch of, naturally, a beautiful woman, Iger, on the recommendation of Ruth Roche, signed him on. Beginning as a background artist, Baker was soon receiving major assignments.27 His Fiction House resume included the skimpily clad and frequently bound Phantom Lady, the alluring Tiger Girl, and the seductive South Sea Girl.28 Apparently not wishing to divert the artist’s attention from his lucrative Good Girls, Iger gave him only one Classic Comics project, but it was a beauty — Ruth A. Roche’s skillful adaptation of R.D. Blackmore’s historical romance, Lorna Doone, No. 32 (December 1946). Baker seemed right at home in 17thcentury Exmoor, with the broad-shouldered hero John Ridd and jackbooted villain Carver Doone. The royal officer Jeremy Stickles is, in particular, a well-realized character study. Of course, the Good Girl artist couldn’t resist giving the virginal heroine Lorna pouting lips and, on the title-page splash, a plunging neckline. The original splash was replaced in 1957 with the line-drawing cover illustration when a painted cover was substituted and the interior artwork recolored. Fine sequences of visual storytelling fill Baker’s Lorna Doone: the abduction of the heroine as a child; John Ridd’s ascent of the waterfall in Doone Glen; the outlaws’ ambush of the troopers led by Jeremy Stickles; Ridd’s arrest and near execution; the wounding of the heroine at her wedding; the hero’s pursuit of Carver Doone into the Wizard’s Slough. The artist emphasized action and yet supplied a host of arresting images that rewarded scrutiny. As well wrought as Roche’s script is, Matt Baker, Lorna Doone (December 1946). This line-drawing cover had become so iconic by the time it was replaced in 1957 with a painted cover that the Gilber- not a single panel is subordinated to the text; ton editors used a reverse image of it as the first-page splash in all subsequent word and picture are finely balanced in a way editions. that would not be possible in some later issues

MATT BAKER

VI. ENTER IGER

59

where the verbal element impinged on the pictorial. Readers responded warmly and kept the Classics edition of Lorna Doone in print throughout the life of the series, even as the popularity of the novel on which it was based waned. The artist continued drawing Good Girls for Iger, producing, from 1952 to 1956, the syndicated siren Flamingo. Others covered (or uncovered) the same territory, but Baker transcended the Good Girl genre, investing his female characters with strength as well as sex appeal. Lorna Doone showed a greater depth in the artist’s work. From the late 1940s through the 1950s, Baker demonstrated his versatility, supplying illustrations for such publications as Archer St. John’s Northwest Mounties, The Texan, Teen-Age Temptations, and True Love Pictorial; Ajax-Farrell’s Voodoo; Atlas Comics’ Western Outlaws; and Dell’s Lassie series and Movie Classic edition (No. 588) of King Richard and the Crusaders. (The Dell King Richard, based on Sir Walter Scott’s The Talisman, gives one a sense of how the artist might have approached the story in Classics Illustrated No. 111.) In 1949, Baker assumed the duties of art director for St. John, where he remained until 1955.29 The artist continued freelancing until his death a few years later. Comics art expert Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., spotted his posthumous hand in a publication dated as late as 1962.30 Novelist and former com- Matt Baker, Lorna Doone (December 1946). Sex and violence erupt in Classic Comics No. 32. ics artist Lou Cameron knew the assignment he had for you, and how you were going to Baker in the St. John days and wrote that “Matt was an agreemanage it. I never met anyone in the field who didn’t respect able handsome man who reminded one of the younger Harry and like Matt.... I last saw Matt one cold December day [in Belafonte. Matt handled the race bit in a very comfortable 1959] when we were both shopping at Bloomingdales for manner. He never brought it up. The topic of the meeting was

Matt Baker, Lorna Doone (December 1946). “Good Girl” Lorna as eighth-grade English teachers never imagined her.

VI. ENTER IGER

61

Christmas.... The next thing I hear of Matt he was dead. All I know is that the causes were natural. Nobody admits they might be sick when they’re free lancing. Who’d hire a dying swan?”31 Plagued by a rheumatic heart throughout his short life, and dying, on 11 August 1959, before he reached the age of 40, the artist never expected to live as long as he did. But Matt Baker left behind one of the richest legacies in the history of comics.

“EZRA WHITEMAN” (EZRA JACKSON AND MAURICE WHITMAN) Herman Melville’s Typee, No. 36 (April 1947), was adapted by Harry Miller and signed by Ezra Whiteman, whose name appears nowhere else in comics annals. Hames Ware suggests that “Ezra Whiteman” most likely was a joint effort on the part of AfricanAmerican artist, Ezra Jackson, and his frequent collaborator, Maurice Whitman (1922–1983), a young, self-taught Iger regular.32 Jackson, like Matt Baker, was a pioneering figure in the comics field in the 1940s. He illustrated stories and served as art director for Eerie Publications in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The artist was the father of U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston, Texas. Whitman worked in the 1940s for Harry “A” Chesler, Fiction House, and Funnies, Inc., drawing such titles as Nyoka, Kaanga, and Tabu. He also produced a well-toned Sheena on Jumbo ComEzra Whiteman, Typee (April 1947). Exit Toby, pursued by cannibals. ics covers in the early 1950s. More cartoonish than the art in other Iger-era Classics, The two artists are known to have played name games the illustrations for the Melville adventure yarn possess a such as signing their joint ventures “Whit I. Jackson” (for unique charm that make it one of the most appealing issues “Whitman inked by Jackson”). Hence, Ware argues, it is posin the series. The drawings are marked by bold lines and a sible that, for Typee, with its interracial themes, Jackson and simple, primitivist design. Forceful movement predominates, Whitman combined their names in a more straightforward whether of hands, arms, or entire bodies, as most dramatically manner, adding the “e” to Whitman as an inside joke.33

62

CLASSICS Illustrated

shown in the cover drawing of the narrator’s friend Toby dodging a spear. Strong facial expressions fill the panels, as when Mehevi expresses “his displeasure and resentment at the very thought of [the narrator] leaving the valley” or when the narrator discovers shrunken heads inside a bundle. Typee was Melville’s most popular book in his lifetime and for some years thereafter; the title didn’t fare so well in the early years of Classics Illustrated. After a 1949 reprint, No. 36

remained on the reorder list until 1952, when it was dropped. In 1960, Typee was reissued with one of Gerald McCann’s most striking painted covers. Meanwhile, Luis Dominguez prepared a beautiful new interior for a revised edition that, unfortunately, was withdrawn when Gilberton halted newtitle production in 1962. It remained for the British Classics Illustrated series, which outlasted its American parent, to issue the replacement.

VII

Henry Carl Kiefer and the Classics House Style N

o artist did more to define the Classics Illustrated house style in the late 1940s than Henry Carl Kiefer. A prolific illustrator, Kiefer produced artwork for a 1928 edition of Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s Story of a Bad Boy and for more than sixty different comics series between 1935 and 1955. Before

putting his stamp on Gilberton, he had drawn Wing Brady for Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s New Fun and More Fun (National/DC, 1935–1940) and was best known for Wambi the Jungle Boy (Fiction House, 1940–1948).1 Despite his involvement with nearly every major comics

Henry C. Kiefer, Julius Caesar (February 1950). Mark Antony works the crowd. Note Kiefer’s employment of the sequential-art strategy of telescoping time within a single large panel (here, two treated as one). The reader’s eye travels from Antony as he begins his speech, through the text, and then to the reactions of his audience.

63

64

CLASSICS Illustrated

Henry Carl Kiefer, Great Expectations (November 1947). Pip for Miss Havisham.

publisher at one point or another, little information is available about Kiefer’s life. He was born in 1890, but his birthplace is unknown, although Gilberton public-relations director Eleanor Lidofsky stated that he was from what is now the Czech Republic.2 According to comics historian Hames Ware, his contemporaries recalled a tall, imposing figure who affected aristocratic

airs (though these may have been simply misunderstood Old World mannerisms). A sometime Shakespearean actor who had married an actress, Kiefer sometimes sported a cape and declaimed rather than spoke. Eleanor Lidofsky remembered Kiefer as “a sweet, lovely man,” clean-shaven, with dark hair and brown eyes. “He and his wife lived like artists in one big room in a coach house in Westchester,” she said.3 Although under contract to Jerry Iger, he considered himself above the drones who toiled in the rows of the shop’s drafting tables. Kiefer worked at his own studio and made occasional dramatic appearances, delivering his completed pages with a theatrical flourish, tossing his cape over a shoulder. As Ware observed, “He would never have called himself a cartoonist; he would have considered himself an illustrator.”4 Kiefer received his artistic training at the Atelier Julian in Paris and was engaged in the 1930s in supplying art for educational film strips, motion-picture promotional material, and pulp fiction.5 From 1937 to 1940, he illustrated comics under the less-thanpleasant conditions prevailing in Harry “A” Chesler’s shop, producing in 1937 an abridgment of Oliver Twist, in what might be seen as a dress rehearsal for Classics Illustrated a decade later. In 1940, Kiefer became affiliated with Jerry Iger’s operation but freelanced for different publishers. Given his steady, reliable output, it is apparent that the flamboyant artist was a favored star in the Iger Shop. Unlike many other shop-system veterans, he both penciled and inked his own pictures, apparently not wishing to entrust his work and Estella “play” to other hands. After Iger assumed responsibility for Kanter’s series, Kiefer quickly became, along with Alex A. Blum, one of the two dominant Classics Illustrated artists. He shaped the initial imaginative response of millions of young readers to such works as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, David Copperfield, and Wuthering Heights. The artist’s first work for Gilberton, in January 1947, was the bloody-finger, mad-dog cover and two splash pages for issue No. 33, The

Opposite: Henry C. Kiefer, A Christmas Carol (November 1948). A reformed Scrooge pranks Bob Cratchit. Note the heavily inked areas (collection of the author).

66

CLASSICS Illustrated

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Louis Zansky had illustrated the book, which included adaptations of The Hound of the Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet, in 1943, but publication had been delayed because of difficulties with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate.6 Kiefer landed the prestigious assignment of providing artwork for No. 35, The Last Days of Pompeii by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the first issue of the rechristened Classics Illustrated, in March 1947.7 In retrospect, it seems rather symbolic. Between 1947 and 1953, Kiefer supplied covers and interior art for 24 titles and two special “educational” issues, Shelter Through the Ages and The Westinghouse Story: The Dreams of a Man, and

covers alone for nine issues and one “Giant” (an anthology of earlier issues republished under the title An Illustrated Library of Great Adventure Stories, consisting of A Tale of Two Cities, Robin Hood, Arabian Nights, and Robinson Crusoe). Yet, as closely identified with Classics Illustrated as he was, a major rift with Gilberton occurred in 1949. A new competitor in the literary-adaptation market, Seaboard Publishers, Inc., sought out the artist to illustrate their edition of Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood, the second title in the recently launched Fast Fiction series. Of the 13 Fast Fiction/Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated issues between October 1949 and May 1951, when Albert Kanter bought the trademark and stopped production, Kiefer produced covers and interior art for seven titles and covers for two reprints at the same time he was drawing and inking five titles for Classics Illustrated. The artist’s relations with Gilberton were never again the same. A degree of animus was evident during the fall 1951 reprint runs of No. 18, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and No. 33, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, when the presses were stopped so that Kiefer’s name could be effaced from the covers. The name was restored in a 1954 reprint of No. 18, a year after Kiefer’s last work for the series.8 Gilberton offered no assignments in 1951 and only four titles (painted covers and interior art) and three additional painted covers in 1952 and 1953. An old man by comics-industry standards, Kiefer continued working until 1955 for another longtime account, Eastern Color Printing Company’s New Heroic Comics, to which he had contributed numerous covers and some interior art. He died in 1957. Kiefer brought his acting experience and European training to bear in the period pieces he drew for Gilberton. Eleanor Lidofsky recalled that the artist used theatrical props and costuming for his Julius Caesar illustrations.9 As Hames Ware put it, “There wasn’t anyone out there like him. Love his work or hate it, Henry C. Kiefer was an original, and whatever may be said about his efforts for other publishers, he and Classics Illustrated were a perfect match. As a world traveler blessed with an actor’s insight, his style captivated young readers and kept them coming back for more.”7 A certain alienness runs through Kiefer’s work — a willful antiquity that set him apart from other illustrators of his time. It was a quality that Henry C. Kiefer, “The Adventures of Hans Pfall,” in Mysteries (August 1947).

VII. HENRY CARL KIEFER AND THE CLASSICS HOUSE STYLE

67

some never understood or appreciated. He has been dismissed by such perceptive critics as Ron Goulart as “one of the busiest hacks of the forties.”10 Others have taken a different view: Hubert H. Crawford, in a discussion of the Wambi series, saluted Kiefer as a master of animal anatomy.11 This aspect of the artist’s work is best seen in Swiss Family Robinson, No. 42 (October 1947), with its dogs, cattle, monkeys, shark, lobster, kangaroos, sea turtle, sea gull, wild buffalo, donkey, and boa constrictor. Whatever the opinions of others may have been, Kiefer was singlehandedly responsible for investing Classics Illustrated with an air of historical accuracy and almost metaphysical mystery not found in any other comic-book line. This gift, according to Hames Ware, may have derived from his European training and theatrical approach to illustration.12 Kiefer’s illustrations appear to be less in the comics mold than a continuation of the tradition of 19thcentury book or magazine illustration. His drawings for William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, No. 68 (February 1950), for example, often suggest woodcuts, while the characters’ dramatic attitudes recall Victorian or Edwardian stage poses, particularly in Mark Antony’s funeral oration (“Friends, Romans, countrymen...”) or his closing tribute to Brutus (“This was the noblest Roman of them all”), drawn in a manner suggestive of the Henry Irving stentorian style of delivery. (See page 63.) It is equally arguable that Kiefer’s compositional approach is largely based on the proscenium perspective, a nat- Henry C. Kiefer, Mysteries of Paris (December 1947). Screech-Owl (a “horror” comic proural point of reference for a stage ac- totype of EC’s Old Witch) and the Schoolmaster perform their deadly duet. tor. (In Julius Caesar, the staginess of Kiefer’s work, was amply displayed in Julius Caesar. The artist’s the meeting of the conspirators with Brutus, the assassination rendering of Brutus suggested an Aryan poster boy preparscene, and Caesar’s funeral are examples.) Rarely do the cineing to launch into a chorus of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” matic influences that are so evident in the work of younger His rendering of Mark Antony, in Lupercal attire at the becontemporaries, such as Rudy Palais, appear in his panels. ginning of the story, exhibited a pronounced degree of genderAn insistently singular vision, which marked much of

68

CLASSICS Illustrated

working on Victorian-era stories charged with atmosphere. Of the five novels by Charles Dickens adapted in Classics Illustrated, three —Great Expectations, No. 43 (November 1947), David Copperfield, No. 48 ( June 1948), and A Christmas Carol, No. 53 (November 1948)—were drawn by Kiefer. The artist’s rendering of the graveyard scene at the beginning of Great Expectations was regarded as too intense for children by critics in the late 1940s. Kiefer was at his best in the issue in his depiction of the eerie desolation of Miss Havisham’s existence. He effectively conveyed young David Copperfield’s misery under the sadistic Murdstone and presented a vibrant Wilkins Micawber that was equally independent of the original renderings by “Phiz” (Hablôt K. Browne) and the celluloid impersonation by W.C. Fields. In A Christmas Carol, Kiefer’s inking created a striking visual symbolism of the thematic elements of darkness and light; deep blacks alternate with bright spaces in various panels. A less successful period piece was Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, No. 59 (May 1949), in which the artist simply got the period wrong. Donna Richardson has faulted Kiefer for failing to place the characters in the novel’s 18th-century setting.13 But then, few illustrators of the Brontë novel have managed to locate the correct time frame, possibly because the intense Romanticism of the work seems at odds with the visual style of the 1770s and 1780s. In any event, Kiefer obviously had adopted the early–Victorian model of William Wyler’s 1939 film version, basing his Heathcliff and Cathy on Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. Taking his cue from the movie, the artist filled his pages with a brooding atmosphere through his heavily inked Henry C. Kiefer, The Prisoner of Zenda (October 1950). Rassendyll derails Black linework. Michael’s conspiracy, while Princess Flavia takes an interest in the new and improved He was on more comfortable midRudolf. 19th-century ground with Mark Twain’s bending ambivalence not ordinarily found in comics published antebellum thriller, Pudd’nhead Wilson, No. 93 (March 1952), in 1950. and he offered a memorable character study of the villain’s If Kiefer was thus somewhat set apart from his contemmoral degeneration. For the cover, Kiefer painted the climactic poraries, it made him the ideal artist for costume pieces. He scene in which the dissipated young master learns his true seemed most comfortable, and was clearly at his best, when identity from his actual mother. The trial scene, in which

VII. HENRY CARL KIEFER AND THE CLASSICS HOUSE STYLE

69

lawyer Wilson introduces the novel concept of fingerprinting, was dramatically effective in Kiefer’s rendering. Questions concerning mixed race and slavery, which were at the center of Twain’s short novel, may have contributed to the title’s disappearance from the Classics Illustrated reorder list in 1955 after one printing. It returned with a new painted cover by Gerald McCann in 1962. Among the artist’s attributes was a flair for the grotesque, which he shared with William Hogarth (1697–1764), James Gillray (1757–1815), Thomas Rowlandson (1756– 1827), Rodolphe Töpffer (1799–1846), and other 18th- and early-19th-century caricaturists. Kiefer’s illustrations for “The Adventure of Hans Pfall” by Edgar Allan Poe in Mysteries, No. 40 (August 1947), reveal a wry comic sensibility with their shooting stars, pipe-puffing Dutch burghers, and long-nosed inhabitants of the moon.14 More than any other work the artist produced for Classics Illustrated, “Hans Pfall” seems specifically informed by a European tradition of satirical sequential art. On the other hand, Kiefer’s drawings of the hideous criminals Screech-Owl and the Schoolmaster in Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris, No. 44 (December 1947), and his line-drawing cover showing a corpse on the ground behind the hero and heroine were evidently so disturbing to parents and teachers that they helped bring an end to the 1940s run of Classics “horror” issues. The artist’s rendering of the novel’s protagonist, Prince Rudolf, was the prototype for future square-jawed Kieferesque heroes. But Mysteries of Paris was also an example of the ability of the artist to create and sustain a self-contained world with vividly sketched, memorable characters. Panel after panel reveals his attention to what can only be called a stylized nightmare-realism in both background and foreground detail. (See page 67.) Adventure yarns and swashbucklers came naturally to Kiefer. The artist brought a certain Sigmund Romberg Henry C. Kiefer, King Solomon’s Mines (July 1952). Sir Henry and flavor and Ronald Colman flair to Anthony Hope’s The Pris- Twala duel to the death. oner of Zenda, No. 76 (October 1950). The Ruritanian fanaction sequences. The racial climate of 1952 being what it was, tasy of royal impersonation may well be the quintessential Kiefer was obliged to compromise in depicting the interracial Kiefer Classic, with its dashing uniforms, clashing swords, and relationship in King Solomon’s Mines between the white explorer desperate rescue. Vivid characterizations of the hero Rudolf John Good and the African woman Foulata, who was given Rassendyll, the villain Black Michael, and the amoral schemer vaguely Polynesian features and flowing tresses. (It should be Rupert of Hentzau keep the visual style delightfully over the noted, however, that Rider Haggard’s description provides top. Unfortunately, the colorist flooded nearly half the pages some basis for the illustrations.) Apart from such considerwith greens, blues, violets, and the occasional orange or yellow ations, the issue showcases Kiefer in top form, glorying in his highlight in an attempt to convey a nighttime flavor. As a connatural element — the exotic tale of adventure. sequence, Kiefer’s linework is occasionally obscured. Two of the most popular Gilberton titles by the most In H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, No. 97 (July popular Classics author — Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under 1952), a charging elephant, an ancient witch, and a chamber the Sea, No. 47 (May 1948), and Around the World in Eighty of petrified corpses kept the reader turning pages. The artist’s Days, No. 69 (March 1950)— reveal the artist’s strengths and handling of the mortal combat between Sir Henry Curtis and weaknesses. Kiefer’s theatricality served him well in his solid the usurper Twala was one of his strongest Classics Illustrated

VII. HENRY CARL KIEFER AND THE CLASSICS HOUSE STYLE

71

character interpretations of Captain Nemo, Ned Land, Professor Aronnax, Phileas Fogg, Passepartout, and Detective Fix. The artist packed the Verne adaptations with rousing depictions of submarine attacks, battles with giant octopi and marauding Sioux, escapes from ice and flames, and wonders below and above the waves. On the second page of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a dramatic sense of shipboard urgency is conveyed as the crew of a doomed vessel attempts to discern what strange creature approaches. His Captain Nemo is a consistent study in intense monomania, whether he is demanding that Ned Land release a crew member or proclaiming “I am the law, and I am the judge!” Yet, as Swedish Classics authority Lars Teglbjaerg has observed, Kiefer’s notions of geography seem a bit challenged in panel 3 on page 24, where the westward bound Professor Aronnax says, “Bah, we’ve just passed Gibraltar,” and then points eastward to the tip of a rudimentary rendering of Italy on a “not ... very convincing map of Europe.” This gaffe, Teglbjaerg notes, is followed by the inexplicable presence, in panels 4 and 5 on page 26, of “Christmas trees on the South Pole!”15 Around the World in 80 Days is one of the most satisfying of Kiefer’s performances for Gilberton. His Phileas Fogg, another red-haired variant on Prince Rudolf from Mysteries of Paris and Rudolf Rassendyll from The Prisoner of Zenda, is presented as the quintessential firm-jawed, unflappable English gentleman. The servant Passepatout, with his extended side-whiskers, and the Detective Fix, face obscured by a ferocious handlebar mustache, both tend toward caricature. The suttee procession and the rescue of Aouda from her husband’s funeral pyre constitute one of Kiefer’s finest sequences. But once Fogg gets the girl, the artist doesn’t seem to know how to manage the situation. He produces in the culHenry C. Kiefer, Around the World in 80 Days (March 1950). The creator of minating love scene a remarkable degree of stiff- Wambi revisits India in Verne’s suttee episode. ness that can’t be blamed entirely on Fogg’s AngloSaxonr eserve. James, drawn throughout with considerable brio, while Ellen Kiefer extended his range to the medieval realm in his ilmay have been one of his most successful female characters. lustrations for Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of The Talisman was Kiefer’s final Gilberton project (as Iger was the Lake, No. 75 (September 1950)16 and historical novel The closing its Gilberton account) and showed him still at the top Talisman, No. 111 (September 1953). The Lady of the Lake feaof his form, fighting the Crusades with King Richard and Saltured one of the artist’s most appealing heroes, James Fitzadin. A high point of the comic book was the artist’s brief and Opposite: Henry C. Kiefer, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (May 1948). A page of original art from Verne’s submarine story (collection of the author).

Left: Henry C. Kiefer, The Lady of the Lake (September 1950). One of Kiefer’s most striking line-drawing covers. Right: Henry C. Kiefer, Joan of Arc (December 1950). Allons enfants de la Patrie... The Maid leads the charge.

VII. HENRY CARL KIEFER AND THE CLASSICS HOUSE STYLE

73

uncharacteristic detour to the domain of Good Girl art in his depiction of the seductive queen. The Cloister and the Hearth, No. 66 (December 1949), Charles Reade’s account of the thwarted love between the parents of Erasmus, never appealed to young readers and was not reprinted. The comic book, however, is an interesting collection of some of Kiefer’s best and worst work, from handsomely rendered, historically accurate figures and buildings to ludicrously scaled perspectives. By far, the good outweighs the awful, and the transitional late-medieval costuming and martial accouterments rank among the artist’s finest period effects. (See page 5 for cover.) A good candidate for Kiefer’s finest Gilberton effort is Joan of Arc, No. 78 (December 1950). The line-drawing cover, the artist’s last of its kind for Classics Illustrated, is quite simply his strongest, with its charcoal shading and burst of brightness at the center where the Archangel Michael calls the Maid to her duty. Throughout the biography, skillfully scripted by Sam Willinsky, the artist took obvious pains with the composition of both individual panels and full-page illustrations depicting battle scenes and Joan’s martyrdom. If the Maid seems a bit too serene at the stake, it is worth remembering that Kiefer was self-consciously invoking the conventions of religious iconography. He leaves no doubt about his attitude toward the subject. All-purpose artist that he was, Kiefer was also at home in the Wild West. His illustrations for “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” in Bret Harte’s Western Stories, No. 62 (August 1949), are as rough-and-tumble as the mining towns and wilderness they evoke. The tragic endings of the two stories are depicted with an almost classical austerity, particularly in the images of Piney and “the Duchess” facing death in the blizzard and Oakhurst the gambler The “strongest and yet the weakest of the Outcasts of Poker Flat” hands in his discovered buried in snow by a rescue party — checks. “[p]ulseless and cold, with a derringer by his side, and a bullet in his heart.” the political schemer. Nevertheless, a certain heroic dash, esIn Edward Everett Hale’s The Man Without a Country, tablished in the depiction of Philip Nolan directing a naval No. 63 (September 1949), Kiefer included a bare-breasted battle on the line-drawing cover (and echoed in 1960 on Gerald African woman in a slave-ship scene — the only female nudity McCann’s painted cover), is present throughout the book. in the series; somehow, the “headlights”-obsessed Dr. Fredric A singular distinction held by the artist was the exclusion Wertham, comic-book nemesis, missed the panel. The colorist of dialogue balloons from an entire issue, Francis Parkman’s made an odd decision to outfit all the American soldiers (c. The Oregon Trail, No. 72 ( June 1950). In the manner of Hal 1805) in red uniforms. Kiefer himself apparently had found it Foster’s Tarzan and Prince Valiant comic strips, speech was ininconvenient to look at a portrait of Aaron Burr when drawing serted in narrative boxes and surrounded with quotation

Henry C. Kiefer, The Man Without a Country (September 1949). Philip Nolan fights for his forsaken flag.

VII. HENRY CARL KIEFER AND THE CLASSICS HOUSE STYLE

75

marks. Although the issue went through eleven printings, the experiment was never repeated. Even so, it demonstrated the degree to which the artist saw himself as employed in the illustration of books rather than the drawing of comics. Constantly in demand, Kiefer often showed the strain of a rapid production cycle. On one page of Bret Harte’s “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” four panels display slight variations on one static scene. His figures are occasionally wooden, with stiff limbs and flat expressions. The protagonist in Frank Buck’s Bring ’Em Back Alive, No. 104 (February 1953), does a considerable amount of jumping to avoid being mauled or bitten by the wild animals he traps, yet the artist seemed incapable of drawing a credible representation of a person bounding in the air, despite his convincing big cats and elephants. In certain books (notably Mysteries of Paris and The Prisoner of Zenda), Kiefer’s men tend to look like Errol Flynn — and so, one might add, do his women. This ambiguous, androgynous quality is evident in much of Kiefer’s work. It is that aspect of his art, Hames Ware maintains, which is central to his achievement and “which probably accounts for why Kiefer’s work appealed to younger children who had not yet formed clearly defined roles and likewise also would explain why older comics fans disliked his work for other publishers. But as for his Classics work, children did not have to take a very big leap from fairy-tale characters who undergo marvelous transformations to Kiefer’s figures that achieved a universality that transcended gender.”17 Ware notes that a “Germanic darkness” Henry C. Kiefer, The Oregon Trail (June 1950). Adopting Hal Foster’s device, Kiefer permeated Kiefer’s illustrations and ob- used narrative boxes to handle all textual matter. serves that “[t]he difference between endyll, and Joan of Arc were definitive. But at his best, Henry Blum and Kiefer is the difference between Hans Christian An18 C. Kiefer could conjure the essential mood of a literary work dersen and the Brothers Grimm.” or historical period. In that respect, for all his failings, no conHis limitations were obvious, even to the children for temporary comics artist could touch him. He had the magic. whom his Captain Nemo, David Copperfield, Rudolf Rass-

VIII

Alex A. Blum: “A Prince of a Man” S

Illustrated Classics newspaper series. In July 1948, the title was haring with Henry C. Kiefer the honors for ubiquity at reduced to the standard 48-page format and issued as Classics Gilberton in the late 1940s and early 1950s was Alexander Illustrated No. 49. Blum also penciled and inked an Anthony (Sándor Aladár) Blum (1889–1969), an artist whose training as an etcher left its unique stamp on more than 20 Classics Illustrated titles. Born in Budapest, Hungary, Blum studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and the Cincinnati Art Academy. While living in Philadelphia during the 1920s, he exhibited his dry-point etchings and won the Philadelphia Alliance Bronze Medal (1920) and an award from the National Academy of Design (1924).1 Some of his works are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Blum illustrated Mary Hazelton Wade’s juvenile biographies of William Penn (1929) and Captain James Cook (1931), but by 1935, like a number of other marginally successful Depression-era artists, he was working in the rapidly growing comics industry. In that year, he illustrated part of a serialized adaptation of Ivanhoe for Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s New Fun.2 Around 1938, Blum signed on with the Eisner-Iger shop; it was an association that lasted until 1954. The artist’s daughter, Audrey (“Toni”) Blum Bossert, also joined the team in 1938 as a scriptwriter.3 One of Blum’s earliest assignments was the Samson series for Victor Fox’s Fantastic Comics.4 He also produced drawings for Quality, Worth/Harvey, and Fawcett. In 1940, the artist introduced the popular Kaanga in Fiction House’s Jungle Comics. As a Fiction House artist, he also worked under the pseudonym Armand Budd. “Armand” is one of twelve Gilberton-associated names given the princes in the Classics Illustrated Junior edition of The Dancing Princesses, No. 532 (November 1956), along with “Alex” and “Aladar.” Although Iger had been supplying artists for Classic Comics/Classics Illustrated since 1945, Alex A. Blum’s first work for Gilberton did not appear until June 1947, when he provided a 63-page adaptation of Alex A. Blum, Alice in Wonderland (March 1948). Alice unleashes courtLewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland for the short-lived room pandemonium.

76

VIII. ALEX A. BLUM

77

rabbit hole. From Alice’s rapid descent behind the White abbreviated Illustrated Classics newspaper version of Henry Rabbit to the courtroom pandemonium near the end of the Wadsworth Longfellow’s Courtship of Miles Standish, which story, the artist’s clean, controlled linework makes the Carroll appeared complete in a single Sunday section in March 1948. title one of his most consistently successful efforts for the seThe narrative poem was paired with Blum’s newly produced ries. Evangeline, another Longfellow work, and was published in Perhaps because he had already drawn The Courtship of February 1952 as Classics Illustrated No. 92. Miles Standish, Blum was handed another narrative poem by Soon Blum rivaled Henry C. Kiefer in output for the seHenry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha, No. 57 ries; from 1948 to 1951, the two artists illustrated all but four (March 1949), as his third Gilberton project. The old schoolof the titles between No. 57 and No. 80. (Those four—actually room warhorse with its often-parodied trochaic meter proved partial — exceptions to the Blum-Kiefer rule were No. 58, The Prairie [Rudolph Palais]; No. 60, Black Beauty [August M. Froehlich]; No. 65, Benjamin Franklin [Bob Hebberd, and Gustav Schrotter, with some interior art by Blum and a cover by Kiefer], and No. 74, Mr. Midshipman Easy [Bob Lamme, with cover by Blum].) The two very different artists established between themselves a Janus-faced Classics Illustrated house style that alternated between Kiefer’s darkness and Blum’s light. Blum’s work is as distinctively idiosyncratic as Kiefer’s; both have a marked oldfashioned European quaintness about them. Yet Blum’s etching experience translated into a clean, uncluttered style of linework, somewhat reminiscent of neoclassical sculptorengraver John Flaxman (1755–1826), that stood in marked contrast to the heavily scored, Hogarthian panels by Kiefer. A striking compositional balance and pictorial clarity distinguish his best work, along with a self-assured lightness of touch. In Hames Ware’s view, Blum was “essentially a miniaturist and worked best on a small scale.”5 Perhaps the most distinctive trademarks of Blum’s illustrations are the rather angular bodies of his characters and their tapered, feminine hands. At his best, he invests his figures with an almost neoclassical grace. But at times his work appears half-finished and exhibits a startling lack of proportion and a disappointing lack of vitality. These occasional lapses may have been the result of the increasing demands on the artist’s time during his years with Classics Illustrated. The delicacy of Blum’s technique made him especially well-suited for Alice in Wonderland, in which he preserved the flavor of John Tenniel’s wood engravings while producing his own crisp, spare interpretation of Alex A. Blum, The Song of Hiawatha (March 1949). One of the artist’s most accomthe surreal proceedings at the bottom of the plished works, the Longfellow adaptation shows a strong classical influence.

78

CLASSICS Illustrated

Next came a Wilkie Collins mystery, The Woman in White, No. 61 ( July 1949), which was marred either by Blum’s evident unfamiliarity with the text of the original or scriptwriter John O’Rourke’s failure to provide adequate character descriptions. The villainous Count Fosco, for instance, described in the novel as “immensely fat,”7 was portrayed by the artist as a slender, insinuating figure; his fellow conspirator, Sir Percival Glyde, acquired some of the count’s amplitude in Blum’s rendering. Still, the artist managed to convey some of the claustrophobic suspense—or just plain Victorian creepiness — of the novel. The inclusion of the title in the Classics line was probably due to two factors: the 1948 release of a film version that featured the rotund Sydney Greenstreet as Count Fosco (Blum apparently missed the movie, too) and the emergence in 1949 of romance comics as the industry’s fastest-growing category. The Woman in White failed to catch on (it was out of print from 1952 to 1960) possibly because Blum rarely drew a woman whose face didn’t call to mind the skull beneath the skin. The heroine Laura Fairlie was rendered as a walking memento mori. A major assignment followed. Walt Disney was soon to release a film version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and Gilberton, which, inexplicably, after eight years still had not added the boyhood favorite to the Classics Illustrated list, took advantage of the timing and issued an abridgment as No. 64 (October 1949). Kiefer was occupied with Western Stories and The Man Without a Country, so Blum, master of the refined line, stepped in. His memorable line-drawing cover depicted the principal characters in a vertical box along the left side and showed the crow’s nest duel between Jim Hawkins Alex A. Blum, The Woman in White (July 1949). Anne Catherick falls victim to and Israel Hands. the evil machinations of a trim Count Fosco. The artist’s Long John Silver is a leaner congenial to the artist, who cloaked Longfellow’s insistently model of the buccaneer than N.C. Wyeth’s or Norman Price’s rhythmic folk material with an otherworldly fairy-tale air that, familiar depictions, to say nothing of Robert Newton’s or Walat times, approaches what Classics Reader editor Bill Briggs lace Beery’s cinematic portrayals. Stevenson described the termed “mythic grandeur.”6 The illustrations aim at an elepirate as “very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham — plain and pale, but intelligent and smiling.”8 Blum’s Long John gantly elevated visual style that is most effectively conveyed in the line-drawing cover depiction of the chieftain beneficently may be tall, strong, and intelligent, but he has the lean and surveying his people or in the final-page “Westward, westward” hungry features of a Cassius. Still, the artist caught something departure of the retiring hero “into the dusk of evening.” of the character’s ambivalent charm.

VIII. ALEX A. BLUM

79

in a 1989 painted-cover reprint that promoted the Long John Jim Hawkins, for his part, looks like a startled Vassar unSilver seafood-restaurant chain and the Charlton Heston teldergraduate of the Jazz Age, with a page-boy bob. Blum may evision film based on the novel. In 2008, Jack Lake Produchave had at hand stills from the 1920 Maurice Tourneur film tions reissued the title as part of the Canadian publisher’s reversion of the story, in which actress Shirley Mason appeared vived original series. as Jim. The white blouse, red waistcoat, and red knee-breeches in which the artist outfitted Jim from start to finish of the comic book resemble the costume Mason wore in the silent movie.9 Blum had better success with secondary characters. The artist effectively conveyed the hollow bluster of Billy Bones, the embittered malice of Blind Pew, and the sneaking menace of Israel Hands. Squire Trelawney is sufficiently stout and obtuse, while Captain Smollett is abrasively forthright and resolute. Throughout the book, Blum makes creative use of panel shapes to enhance visual interest. Many of the crucial sequences are dramatically potent — Black Dog’s cutlass fight with Billy Bones, the pirates’ search of the Admiral Benbow Inn, Silver’s parley with Captain Smollett, Jim’s shipboard confrontation with Israel Hands, and the treasure hunt itself. Other mythic scenes, however, such as Jim hiding in the apple barrel or the buccaneers storming the stockade, are disappointingly unimaginative in composition or point of view. It is likely that another, more robust artist such as Robert Hayward Webb, who had brought Stevenson’s Kidnapped dramatically to life for Classics, would have infused the pirate yarn with greater energy. Even so, Blum’s interpretation held its own through fourteen printings between 1949 and 1969 and achieved a kind of iconic status with young readers. His Treasure Island illustrations inspired several imitations, the first of which was an anonymous set of drawings for a coloring book published in 1958 by James & Jonathan, Inc. The Classics Illustrated edition attained an afterlife Alex A. Blum, Treasure Island (October 1949). “One more step, Mr. Hands....”

VIII. ALEX A. BLUM

81

Having proved himself in an action tale, the artist went on to a historical romance, The Scottish Chiefs, No. 67 ( January 1950), a skillful adaptation by John O’Rourke, shorn of what Donna Richardson termed “Jane Porter’s florid prose.”10 Using N.C. Wyeth’s illustrations of the novel as a guide, Blum created an equally idealized William Wallace, sword upraised and crying, “Liberty and Lord Mar!” The villainess of the tale, Lady Mar, is among the artist’s few successful female characters. Blum invested her with a sort of serpentine grace as she vainly attempts to seduce the unmoved Wallace. In The Pilot, No. 70 (April 1950), James Fenimore Cooper’s Revolutionary War naval adventure, the artist revealed a prejudice (or blind spot) common to illustrators, film producers, and directors of his generation: a distaste for men’s hairstyles of the 18th century. Most of the principal male characters appear with hair trimmed in the manner of the Napoleonic era. Whenever something resembling a peruke is seen, it ends in a prodigious ducktail with no ribbon to hold it together. Meanwhile, Blum gave Mr. Grey, the mysterious pilot of the title, the features of a rather prim, strongly disapproving John Wayne. Two inspired treatments of a pair of lesser-known 19th-century French classics followed. A somewhat softened adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs, No. 71 (May 1950), featured a less grotesque Gwynplaine than would appear in Norman Nodel’s 1962 revision. Hugo’s plea for downtrodden, “mutilated” humanity obviously moved the artist, whose inking was generally darker than usual in the book. An anachronistic 1890s Ferris wheel in the background of a scene set in the early Alex A. Blum, The Man Who Laughs (May 1950). “I am not laughing!” Compare 1700s failed to spoil one of Blum’s finest Blum’s rendering of this scene with Norman Nodel’s 1962 revision (Chapter XV). covers. The terror of the young GwynEqually impressive was The Black Tulip, No. 73 ( July plaine in the shadow of the gibbet is a memorable sequence, 1950). Alexandre Dumas’s novel of political and personal inas is the revelation of his disfigurement to Ursus (“I am not trigue set in 17th-century Holland highlighted Blum’s predileclaughing”). Despite the comic book’s happy ending, based on tion for working in miniature. Seldom are characters seen at the 1928 Conrad Veidt film rather than Hugo’s novel, The Man close range; most of the panel composition is in midrange or Who Laughs ranks among the artist’s best works for Gilberton. Opposite: Alex A. Blum, The Scottish Chiefs (January 1950). Lord Mar trusts in Wallace, while Lady Mar puts that trust to the test.

VIII. ALEX A. BLUM

83

at an even farther distance. The result is to heighten the reader’s sense that greater forces are at work behind the scenes and that more is at stake than mere bulb envy. Turning to Homeric epic, Blum offered a controlled, austere account of The Iliad, No. 77 (November 1950). Even if the armor is generic Greco-Roman and most of the details anachronistic, the tragedies of combat and the relations between gods and mortals unfold in understated panels evocative of Flaxman’s designs for The Iliad. Especially effective are the sequences depicting dialogue between the Olympians and their acts of intervention in battle. Nowhere else in the series is the artist’s fundamentally classical vision more evident. The following project, Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, No. 79 ( January 1951), continued in the martial vein but with a baroque flavor. Blum’s crowded but wellbalanced panels echo the instructions of scriptwriter Ken W. Fitch and exhibit the artist’s obvious enthusiasm for the material, from the silencing of Montfleury in the theatre to the appointment with Death in the convent. The line-drawing cover was one of his best for the series. Blum’s sketches of the swordsman-poet Cyrano, the inarticulate lover Christian, and the twice-beloved Roxane must be counted among his strongest character studies. The artist was responsible for two of three novels by Jack London that were adapted for Classics Illustrated. Both White Fang, No. 80 (February 1951), which featured the last linedrawing cover, and The Sea Wolf, No. 85 (July 1951), were somewhat out of Blum’s range. He was never at his best drawing animals, and his elegant linework was at odds with the brutality aboard Wolf Larsen’s ship, although both books contained some stirring action sequences. Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, No. Alex A. Blum, The Iliad (November 1950). Blum’s spare linework revealed the 83 (May 1951), a collaborative effort with son- neoclassical influence of sculptor-engraver John Flaxman. in-law and fellow Iger artist William Bossert, his stride again in an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A was a striking, though uneven, venture into more exotic terMidsummer Night’s Dream, No. 87 (September 1951). The ritory. The work was weakest in the wolf-pack scenes and painted cover captured, in its naive style, something of the strongest in “The King’s Ankus,” with its pair of gracefully inmoonlight, madness, and magic that suffuses the comedy. terpreted snakes, Kaa the python and the white cobra. Blum’s treatment of the forest antics of Puck and the theatrical Blum did a fair job on the title piece in Edgar Allan Poe’s effusions of Nick Bottom and his fellow rustics was nothing if The Gold Bug and Other Stories, No. 84 ( June 1951), but hit Opposite: Alex A. Blum, The Black Tulip (July 1950). “Tulipomania” nearly takes its toll.

Alex A. Blum, Cyrano de Bergerac (January 1951). Strong character studies distinguished the artist’s illustrations for Cyrano, the first Gilberton title to bear a “by arrangement with” notice.

VIII. ALEX A. BLUM

85

not charming. The artist seemed to be enjoying himself, adding playful decorative motifs and experimenting with panel shapes and layout. Unfortunately, both Blum and the colorist were confused by the pair of vapid lovers. They reversed the characters of Hermia, who should be dark and short, and Helena, who should be tall and fair; instead, Hermia is depicted as a blonde and Helena as a brunette. When painted covers were introduced in 1951, Blum supplied most of the first dozen. Because his specialty was the thin, supple line applied to paper, some of these works, such as the covers for The Odyssey and The Sea Wolf, seem uncharacteristically strained or indefinite. The artist’s most successful efforts with brushes, such as the covers for The Gold Bug and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, achieve a precision of execution similar to the best of his interior art. Hames Ware has observed that Blum “responded well when text-heavy scripts were assigned, as in the Shakespeare adaptations.”11 The Bard elicited what was perhaps the artist’s greatest single effort for Classics Illustrated— Hamlet, No. 99 (September 1952). The character of Polonius appears to have been modeled to some extent on the actor in the 1948 film by Laurence Oliv ier. The Prince himself, however, was Blum’s own concept, and was rendered with unusual complexity for the artist. Blum’s instinct for pacing was unerring; he broke down short exchanges of dialogue into naturally flowing smaller panels, incorporated dramatic theatrical gestures in larger panels, and kept longer speeches, such as Hamlet’s two soliloquies, intact in large balloons. Alex A. Blum, Hamlet (September 1952). The illustration serves the text in the first of Hamlet’s great soliloquies, encapsulated in a single speech balloon; the fatherly admoRocco Versaci argues that “the visual nition of Polonius also receives, in abbreviated form, the tableau treatment. delivery of these speeches is stagnant,” telling point. Shakespearean scholar Michael P. Jensen made contending that, in the case of the “To be or not to be” solilmuch the same point, independently, at about the same time.13 oquy, “the visual accomplishes little more than to establish 12 The art of Alex A. Blum and, for that matter, his peer Henry staging; the storytelling duties fall completely to the text.” C. Kiefer, is indeed often static because the two men, born in In terms of sequential-art strategies, Versaci makes a

VIII. ALEX A. BLUM

87

Left: Alex A. Blum, Daniel Boone (June 1952). The kidnapping of Jemima Boone and friends. Note Ken Fitch’s text-laden narrative boxes, which appear in three of the page’s five panels. Right: Alex A. Blum, Knights of the Round Table (June 1953). Arthur’s finest, Galahad, prayerfully contemplates the Grail. Blum was at his best in this sort of formal composition.

the nineteenth century, approached comics from the perspective of illustrators trained to focus on the grand dramatic moment. The proverbial old dogs, they failed to master — or perhaps even fully to understand—the new medium’s capacity for dynamic movement. As illustrators, they served the printed word. That, they fervently believed, was their mission. One can only wonder what Matt Baker might have done with W.H. Hudson’s Green Mansions, No. 90 (December 1951), with its jungle heroine Rima, the Bird Girl. Blum’s Rima was the closest the artist ever came to Iger shop Good Girl art; she was drawn as an ethereal, demurely erotic woman, though, of course, more demure than erotic. All the same, she bears little resemblance to the artist’s usual asexual, skeletal creatures. For John Bakeless’s biography, Daniel Boone: Master of

the Wilderness, No. 96 ( June 1952), Blum supplied vigorous drawings of frontier life. The adaptation by Ken W. Fitch was text-heavy even by Classics Illustrated standards, and the artist cleverly compressed panels in which the narrative voice supplanted dialogue, producing lively pictures on the miniature scale in which he worked so well. The page-one splash, the kidnapping panels, and the attack-on-Boonesborough centerfold are memorable images. Gregory Cwiklik observed of Daniel Boone that “Blum’s layout is fluid. Each page has an organic look to it, done ... in the Iger Shop manner of varying panel shape and size.”14 A tale of 15th-century derring-do by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company, No. 102 (December 1952), an outstanding adaptation by Fitch, and a cycle of Arthurian leg-

Opposite: Alex A. Blum, Green Mansions (December 1951). Rima the Bird Girl, perhaps the artist’s most successful female character.

88

CLASSICS Illustrated

sword-wielding combatants against clean, uncluttered backgrounds. Because Knights of the Round Table was published during the heyday of the anti-comics crusade, the scriptwriter omitted the adulterous affair of Lancelot and Guinevere and instead gave prominence to the quest for the Holy Grail. This emphasis elicited one of Blum’s most striking full-page drawings: a study of Galahad kneeling in reverential contemplation before the elevated Grail. Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, No. 105 (March 1953), the artist’s single foray into the realm of science-fiction for Gilberton, featured delightful caricatures of stovepipehatted, high-collared Victorian-era astronauts. The scriptwriter, who combined From the Earth to the Moon and Round the Moon for the adaptation, captured something of Verne’s wit and satirical style, for which Blum found visual equivalents in the portraits and antics of the unlikely space-voyage companions. (The artist seemed, however, to have had difficulty drawing waves in the splashdown sequence; in one panel, green flames appear to be engulfing the U.S.S. Susquehanna.) Issue No. 105 represented the first departure in the Iger era from the use of handlettered speech balloons and the introduction of Leroy lettering. From the Earth to the Moon proved to be the best-selling of all Classics Illustrated titles with a cover number higher than 100. Valuing Blum’s affability as well as his experience, Albert Kanter hired the veteran in 1953 as art director for Classics Illustrated and the newly launched Classics Illustrated Junior Alex A. Blum, From the Earth to the Moon (March 1953). Verne’s Victorian astronauts disand Picture Parade series, just as the cover weightlessness. artist’s former employer, Jerry Iger, was disengaging himself from the Gilberton account. Blum’s ends, Knights of the Round Table, No. 108 (June 1953), superbly duties limited his output to a handful of titles. He illustrated scripted by John Cooney, demonstrated once again Blum’s the first Junior, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, No. 501 affinity for romanticized medieval settings. In both books, he (October 1953), the most “Old World” effort of his career. His drew and inked striking single-page or centerfold splashes of

VIII. ALEX A. BLUM other complete issues in this period were Jack and the Beanstalk, No. 507 (April 1954); Macbeth, No. 128 (September 1955); and The Story of Jesus, No. 129A (December 1955), in which, assisting William A. Walsh, he supplied backgrounds. From 1954 until his retirement in 1957, most of his artwork was confined to painting the odd cover, such as Waterloo, ornamenting filler material in Classics Illustrated and Classics Illustrated Junior, and sketching “Coming Next” ads for both series. The drawings for Blum’s final Classics Illustrated edition, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, displayed continuity with his first in its emphasis on clean linework, but most panels lack the elegant energy of his earlier illustrations. By that point, the artist was 66 — an old man, by the standards of the time, in a young man’s game—and he devoted most of his energies to his duties as Gilberton’s art director. In that role, he remained active, re-

89

cruiting some of the most talented artists ever to work under the yellow banner, including Norman Nodel, Joe Orlando, and George Evans. Colleagues respected him and remembered him fondly. An old acquaintance and fellow Iger-shop alumnus, Rafael Astarita, described him as always impeccably dressed in a suit and tie.15 George Evans “found [Blum] to be one of the nicest, gentlest, kindest people I had ever met. He was quite elderly, and if I were a movie director, I’d have had him play every charismatic older man in every film, even if only to show him as an ‘extra.’ He ‘had it’— and those other artists I know who knew him all agreed with that assessment.”16 But the final assessment belongs to Norman Nodel, who lauded Blum as “a real gentleman, a prince of a man.”17

IX

A “Newer, Truer Name”: The Late Forties A

lbert Kanter was proud of his publication, which was gaining increasing acceptance among parents and educators, some of whom wrote ringing endorsements for Classic Comics. But there was always that second half of the name, and comics were coming under increasing fire as postwar crime series attracted increasingly negative, and even hostile, publicity. Adults who approved of the publication and even some young readers sent letters to the editorial staff urging that Gilberton further distance its series from the “comics” stigma. It was apparently Gilberton accountant Arthur Massin who hit upon the name Classics Illustrated. He contended that it would be more descriptive because the series had little in common with other comic books and offered instead illustrated versions of literary masterpieces. Kanter agreed, seconded by his son, managing editor William E. Kanter, recognizing that the reputation of the line would be enhanced by the image makeover.1 It would prove to be Gilberton’s pivotal moment. In January 1947, the following notice ran on the inside front cover of issue No. 33, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:

their place in the world of literature. Just look at the list of coming titles and you’ll see that we have picked just what you want. Yes, there’s another piece of news for you ... something important that you will want to know and remember! The name of Classic Comics is being changed. Starting in March, with issue number 35, the new name will be “Classics Illustrated.” Why the change? Well, ever since our first issues, you have said that they really aren’t “comics.” We agree with you and so we’re changing the name to “Classics Illustrated.” Remember the date ... March, 1947 ... the issue, number 35, and the new name, “Classics Illustrated.” Ask for them by name, or ask for just plain “Classics”; your dealer will know. Yours truly, The Editors

A NEW NAME BY POPULAR ACCLAIM! Dear Reader: 1947 marks another milestone in the history of Classic Comics ... it is the sixth year that you’ve read and thrilled to these great stories. Because you have demanded the best in literature over these years, that’s exactly what you have received ... the best that money can buy! Thanks to you for your splendid cooperation in making Classic Comics the acknowledged great publication that it is. The stories that you will read this year have been selected for their thrills and excitement, their appeal to young and old, and

“Coming Next” ad for Classics Illustrated No. 35, The Last Days of Pompeii, appeared in the inside back cover of Classic Comics No. 34 (February 1947). A “newer, truer name” is announced.

90

IX. A “NEWER, TRUER NAME”

91

The next month, the new logo was unveiled, and another slogan was added to the announcement in issue No. 34, Mysterious Island, the last title to appear under the Classic Comics ribbon: “Classics Illustrated.... A newer, truer name for Classic Comics.... IT’S NEW! IT’S TRUE! IT’S YOU!” Elaborating on the earlier blurb, the editors explained that The name “Classics Illustrated” is the better name for your favorite periodical. It really isn’t a “comic” ... it’s the illustrated, or picture, version of your favorite classics. The name “Classics Illustrated” is a name that you have suggested. We’ve had scores of letters from you readers, your parents, teachers and clergy urging us that Classic Comics needs a new name ... it’s your idea!

A “Coming Next” ad heralded the imminent arrival of “the great first issue of Classics Illustrated.” Then, in March 1947, with issue No. 35, Sir Edward BulwerLytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii, the “newer, truer” name appeared. The long yellow banner that filled the top of each cover was reduced to a yellow rectangle in the upper left-hand corner that remained a constant fixture (with some retooling of the logo lettering in December 1951) until 1971.

NEWSPAPER CLASSICS During the same month that Gilberton introduced the new series name, the company tried it Illustrated Classic Sunday supplement, Milwaukee Journal (22 June 1947). “Down the out in reverse for a full year in Rabbit-Hole”: the first of four newspaper installments of Alice in Wonderland. Alex A. newspaper comics supplements ti- Blum’s title panel was used in March 1948 as the Classics Illustrated cover; the large illustled Illustrated Classics. Syndicated tration marked “3” was cut from the comic-book edition. through the New York Post, the series ran from 30 March 1947 to 21 Fourteen adaptations appeared in mostly four-week inMarch 1948 and was carried, in whole or in part, by eight pastallments that generally amounted to the equivalent of 64pers: the Post, the Newark Star Ledger, the Queens Home News, page books: Kidnapped, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, David the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Chicago Sun, the Indianapolis Copperfield, Alice in Wonderland, The Spy, The Adventures of Star, the Milwaukee Journal, and the Dallas Home News.2 Tom Sawyer, The House of the Seven Gables, Julius Caesar, Silas

92

CLASSICS Illustrated Marner, A Christmas Carol, The Lady of the Lake, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Toilers of the Sea, and The Courtship of Miles Standish. These were later added as Classics Illustrated titles in editions of reduced length to fit the 48-page format introduced with issue No. 45, Tom Brown’s School Days, in January 1948. In most cases, such as Kidnapped and Alice in Wonderland, entire pages were excised for the comic-book versions with minimal, or at least acceptable, disruption to the narrative flow. Single-page illustrations were the first to be discarded, such as an image, repeated in the next panel, of Alice falling down the rabbit-hole. All that was lost in that instance was Alice’s thought-bubble observation: “How slowly I’m falling.” David Copperfield, however, was another matter. Three pages dealing with the shipwreck that claims the lives of Ham and Steerforth were omitted. Unfortunately, the Gilberton editors chose to use for issue No. 48’s cover one of the weekly introductory splash illustrations that depicted Steerforth and Ham plunging into the waves. Readers unaware of the existence of the newspaper edition searched the comic book in vain for the cover scene. For Julius Caesar, pages were rearranged with a considerable amount of cutting, pasting, trimming, or expanding. Henry C. Kiefer reworked some panels for the comic-book edition. The 1947 newspaper illustration of Casca’s initial blow, for example, showed Caesar’s left arm extended to the viewer’s right in an effort to ward off thrusts from other conspirators’ swords leveled against him. In the 1950 comic book, however, both Caesar’s left arm and the conspirators’ swords are upraised. The episode of the murder of Cinna the poet was dropped, but the greater attention paid to continuity was evident when issue No. 68 finally appeared more than two years later. Some friction developed between Jerry Iger and Albert Kanter concerning the newspaper serials. Iger believed that his shop was entitled to a share of the revenue from each of the papers running the weekly installments. Kanter, however, insisted that Gilberton’s standard contractual arrangement with Iger controlled. Although Iger briefly considered legal action, the dispute subsided, and cordial relations between publisher and art director were soon restored.3

“KEEP

UP THE SWELL WORK”

Meanwhile, endorsements for the renamed Classics Illustrated series came from parents and young readers alike, and some were printed on the inside front cover of No. 36, Typee (April 1947). From Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, a “mother of a Classics Illustrated advertisement in The Instructor (October 1949) (collection of John Haufe).

IX. A “NEWER, TRUER NAME”

93

nine year old girl and a teacher in the elementary school” declared that “I cannot praise your Classics too highly. Books of this type can be successfully used to build a better world, so please give us books that build better character, teach higher ideals and better morals.” The summer-camp contingent was represented by a writer from Chicago: “Your Classics were by far the most popular books at our camp last year, and we are in the act of having them bound in books with hard covers for use at our camp, which should lengthen their life considerably. Your changing your name to Classics Illustrated is excellent. They are in no class to be placed with the trashy so-called comics now on the market. Keep up the swell work.” A student from Smith Center, Kansas, sounded what would become an increasingly familiar note: “I like your adaptations of the Classics very much. In school I have made book reports on nearly every one of these. Of course I read the book along with the Classic magazine. It helped me to visualize the characters and scenes. I have had several compliments on my book reports by the teachers. Your magazine is really a great help.” Many young readers agreed. Other, perhaps weightier, endorsements appeared. For instance, Classics Illustrated appeared on the “white list” of acceptable reading matter compiled in the Catholic Library World by Louis A. Rongione in 1948. However, popular-culture historian Michael Sawyer suggests that Rongione may not have carefully examined the series, which was later attacked by the guardians of public rectitude and decency for its violent and horrific fare.4 In the meantime, Albert Kanter Henry C. Kiefer, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (June 1949). This line-drawing cover, which replaced the original 1943 cover (see first edition of this work), was still courted the educational market, with re- regarded by some critics as too horrific; it was, in turn, replaced in 1953 with a peated ads in The Instructor during the late more contemplative painted cover. 1940s and early 1950s. Special school rates were offered, and the series was said to have been acclaimed THE HORROR! THE HORROR! by “thousands of school officials ... from Maine to California.” A special 48-slide package based on Moby Dick was created, Lurid covers depicting violence and horror themes but, apart from the periodical advertisements promoting it, became common comics fare in the late 1940s and early 1950s. no evidence is available to indicate whether this experiment The Gilberton Company had actually paved the way in 1943 in educational marketing was successful. The fact that a slide with a fanged Mr. Hyde bearing down on a panicked and fleeset was made only for the Melville story suggests that the reing London populace on the cover of No. 13, Dr. Jekyll and sponse from schools was disappointing. Mr. Hyde, the first actual “horror” comic book. A comically

94

CLASSICS Illustrated with even greater regularity. For the cover of No. 40, Mysteries, the protagonist of “The Pit and the Pendulum” was shown directly beneath the menacing blade, covered by rats gnawing on his bonds. The floating corpse on the cover of No. 41, Twenty Years After, was perhaps the most notorious Gilberton cover and is highly prized by collectors. (See page 100.) By the standards of the day, even the substantially tamer covers of No. 43, Great Expectations, and No. 44, Mysteries of Paris, were controversial. The former title figured prominently, several years later, in Dr. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent: There is a comic book which has on its cover two struggling men, one manacled with chains locked around hands and feet, the other with upraised fist and a reddened, bloody bandage around his head; onlookers: a man with a heavy iron mallet on one side and a man with a rifle and bayonet on the other. The first eight pictures of this comic book show an evil-looking man with a big knife held like a dagger threatening a child who says: “Oh, don’t cut my throat, sir!” Am I correct in classifying this as a crime comic? Or should I accept it as what it pretends to be — Dickens’ Great Expectations?5

826 Broadway, New York, site of the Gilberton Company offices, 1948–1952 (photograph by Yslan Hicks, March 2008).

grotesque Quasimodo dominated the original cover of No. 18, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A severed hand was featured on the cover of No. 21, 3 Famous Mysteries, but the depiction of a skeletal figure on the cover of No. 20, The Corsican Brothers, was withdrawn before publication. When the Iger shop took over production of Classic Comics in 1945, it promptly added more “horror” covers to the line. The first was a Boris Karloff knock-off on No. 26, Frankenstein, followed by a controversial “child abuse” scene gracing the front of No. 29, The Prince and the Pauper, which had actually been toned down from the mock-up that had appeared in the “Coming Next” ad. A blood-stained finger and rabid dog added to the newsstand appeal of No. 33, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The change of the series name to the more respectable Classics Illustrated seemed, paradoxically, to encourage the Iger artists to produce, for a brief period, even more horror subjects

The dialogue quoted by Wertham —“Oh, don’t cut my throat, sir!”— appears in Chapter 1 of Dickens’s novel as “O! Don’t cut my throat, sir!” (The cover scene he describes can be found in the first color section.) After the appearance of Mysteries of Paris in December 1947, Iger toned down the terror, and Henry C. Kiefer was assigned to render the worst offenders — Nos. 13, 18, 29, and 41— unobjectionable. Except for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he succeeded too well. The replacements were not only unobjectionable, they were emphatically uninspiring. Meanwhile, Jerry Iger was trying out a variety of hands on the rechristened Classics Illustrated, beginning with Henry C. Kiefer in No. 35. A visual identity for the series was evolving. Thanks in no small part to the energy brought to the family business by William Kanter, the Gilberton Company itself was evolving as well, moving in 1948 to sixth-floor offices at 826 Broadway and raising its international profile with Classics series in Australia and Brazil.

AUGUST M. FROEHLICH Impressionistic linework, subtle character studies, and attention to historical costuming characterize the contributions of August M. Froehlich, an older artist who died in 1949 shortly after completing his last Classics Illustrated assignment. A solo illustrator who penciled and inked his own work, Froehlich had drawn Captain Marvel, Jr., for Fawcett in the mid–1940s and had worked for Jack Binder’s and Bernard Baily’s shops before coming to Iger.6 Yet so consciously antiquated was his style,

IX. A “NEWER, TRUER NAME”

95

Left: August M. Froehlich, Adventures of Cellini (June 1947). Cellini’s problems with the Pope, which led, in turn, to Gilberton’s problems with the Church. Right: August M. Froehlich, The Toilers of the Sea (February 1949). Gilliatt battles the octopus.

so Europeanized was his grounding, that it is difficult to imagine him being associated with any comics of the period other than Classics. The very nature of Gilberton’s publication made what would have appeared hopelessly old-fashioned elsewhere ideally suited for the context. Probably because of their anachronistic look, all of Froehlich’s Classics titles were eventually redrawn or discontinued. An adaptation of Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography was dropped because of the less-than-flattering portrait it painted of the Renaissance Catholic Church.7 Yet for the seven years or less that they remained in print, each offered what seemed a direct passage to another time. Quaintness, however, is only part of the charm of Adventures of Cellini, No. 38 ( June 1947), “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe in Mysteries, No. 40 (August 1947), The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas, No. 54 (December 1948, originally an Illustrated Classic newspaper adaptation, January–February

1948), The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo, No. 56 (February 1949, originally an Illustrated Classic newspaper adaptation, February–March 1948), and Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, No. 60 ( June 1949). Froehlich produced striking line-drawing covers and evocative interiors for Adventures of Cellini and The Toilers of the Sea. The Cellini autobiography is the most concretely rendered of the artist’s Gilberton efforts and provides a robust visual counterpart to the Florentine goldsmith’s lively, self-aggrandizing memoir of life in Renaissance Italy. For the Victor Hugo title, the artist captured the starkness of the struggle of the protagonist, Gilliatt, to salvage an engine from a wrecked ship; his memorable line-drawing cover depicted Gilliatt’s lifeor-death struggle with an octopus. In Froehlich’s hands, The Man in the Iron Mask became something more than a well-executed period piece. The Classics Illustrated version of Dumas’s novel of dynastic intrigue

96

CLASSICS Illustrated artist’s light touch, like a whisper, draws the reader into the panels and demands imaginative collaboration.

HARLEY M. GRIFFITHS Few artists associated with Classics Illustrated seemed so perfectly matched with their material as Harley M. Griffiths. At home with the grotesque, he conjured fevered worlds for such gothic-tinged titles as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, No. 39 ( July 1947), Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Mysteries, No. 40 (August 1947), and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, No. 52 (October 1948). Griffiths also proved himself adept at handling classical matter, with a dash of strangeness, in his illustrations for The Odyssey of Homer, No. 81 (March 1951). The artist completed all of his work for Gilberton in 1947.8 The House of the Seven Gables made its first appearance as an Illustrated Classics newspaper serial in September 1947; the pages for The Odyssey were held for nearly four years and apparently retouched by another hand. Griffiths was born in June 1908 in Brooklyn, where he graduated from St. Augustine’s High School. He attended the Pratt Institute at night while working as a designer for a lighting manufacturer. Later, Griffiths attended the National Academy of Art while employed by Rambusch Liturgical Arts Co., designing art for their August M. Froehlich, The Man in the Iron Mask (December 1948). The deceiver and the publications and religious statdeceived: Aramis, would-be kingmaker, tempts Phillipe, would-be king. utes. This led to work as an illussuggests depths of motive beyond the capacity of most comic trator for “Valiant Lives,” a syndicated strip in Catholic newsbooks in 1948, particularly in the scene, set within the opprespapers.9 sive atmosphere of the Bastille, in which the fallen musketeer During World War II, Griffiths worked for General DyAramis tempts the still-innocent royal twin Phillipe. The namics in San Diego, rendering drawings of engineering plans Opposite: Harley M. Griffiths, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in Mysteries (August 1947). Madeline and Roderick, together at last.

IX. A “NEWER, TRUER NAME”

99

for U.S. aircraft. In 1943, he married in New York, where he entered the comics field as a freelancer. Following a move with his family to Lac St. Joseph, Quebec, the artist submitted his completed assignments for Classics Illustrated by mail. At the same time, he was providing illustrations for Picture Stories from the Bible, a series published by Max Gaines’s Educational Comics (soon to become notorious with its own change of name to Entertaining Comics, or just plain EC). That association lasted until Gaines’s death in a freak boating accident.10 By the autumn of 1947, Griffiths was ready for a change of pace. He returned to New York to assume duties as an advertising art director for B. Altman and Company, where he worked until his retirement in 1973. Afterward, Griffiths found fulfillment as a watercolorist, and his art was shown in a number of one-man exhibits on Nantucket Island, where he spent his summers, in Westchester County, and in New York City. He was an active member of the National Arts Club, the Nantucket Artists Association, and the Hudson River Artists Association until his death in April 1986.11 In Griffiths’s work for Classics Illustrated (with the exception of The Odyssey, which was probably inked by another hand), characters inhabit a realm of shadows in which forms continually threaten to dissolve or mutate into other, possibly sinister shapes. The covers for Jane Eyre and The House of the Seven Gables represent the most concentrated examples of the artist’s unsettling vision. Griffiths creates an atmosphere that suggests extreme emotion barely held in check or breaking violently through conventional decorum. Averted eyes and bent or twisted figures are common. None of his men are conventionally handsome; none of his women are conventionally beautiful. Yet in Jane Eyre, the Harley M. Griffiths, Jane Eyre (July 1947). Mad Bertha leaps. principals exude a barely suppressed sensuality. It is significant that, when earlier Classics editions were With his rendering of Rochester’s deranged wife, Griffiths capbeing revamped in the late 1950s and early 1960s to conform tures extreme emotion bursting through conventional decorum. to the new Gilberton house style, only one title by Griffiths — Near the end of the book, the artist presents a chilling image the atypical Odyssey —survived overhauling and deletion. Like (omitted in the 1962 revision) of mad Bertha leaping to her Rochester’s mad wife, Harley Griffiths’s idiosyncratic art was death. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the consummation removed to the attic, a reminder of a more undisciplined, unof Roderick’s obsession with his sister is grotesquely rendered predictable past. in a sequence that was shortened in reprinted editions. Oppostite: Harley M. Griffiths, The House of the Seven Gables (October 1948). Extreme emotion was the artist’s element.

CLASSICS Illustrated

100

Robert C. Burns, Twenty Years After (September 1947). One of several “horror” covers that were replaced in response to the anti-comics movement.

surface, it was a wonder that Albert Kanter, who had taken pains to disassociate his publication from “comics” by changing the line’s name earlier in the year, allowed the controversial cover to be issued. He didn’t wait long, however, to correct what must have seemed at the time a major gaffe, and when the second printing of the title rolled off the presses in 1949, Henry C. Kiefer had dutifully supplied a soberly bland cover depicting Anne of Austria and the faithful Musketeers. The 1960 painted cover by Doug Roea was an improvement, showing d’Artagnan and the guys in action on horseback, clattering through a darkened street. Robert C. Burns, the artist who drew Twenty Years After, held a B.F.A. from Yale University, a B.A. from Rollins College, and an M.A. and Ed.D. from Columbia University. He was known as a portrait painter, having received a first-place “Our Men in the Service” award from Life magazine during World War II.12 Burns taught at Rollins College and was for many years a professor of art at Trenton State College. He and his wife, Amie Goodwin Burns, lived in Princeton, New Jersey. Burns’s style in Twenty Years After is a mixture of swirling woodcut-style linework and carefully rendered gore — as where, for example, the Executioner of Lille meets his end. It is a meeting of Lynd Ward–influenced modernism and gothic sensibility. When critics complain about the “sameness” of the Classics Illustrated art, they obviously have never seen issue No. 41. Burns displays genuine enthusiasm for the story, faithfully adapted (if necessarily truncated) by Harry Miller, and a certain flair for crossed swords.

ROBERT C. BURNS

ALDO RUBANO

The most violent “horror” cover to appear in the Classics series graced Alexandre Dumas’s Twenty Years After, No. 41 (September 1947), a sequel to The Three Musketeers. With its bloody image of the villain Mordaunt’s corpse floating to the

Aldo Rubano was highly regarded in the Iger organization for his backgrounds and inking. A lover of classical music, he played it continually at his desk in the shop, irritating some of his colleagues whose tastes inclined more toward Hit Parade fare.13

Aldo Rubano, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (August-September 1948). Tom’s whitewashing scheme intrigues a willing dupe.

Left: Robert Hebberd et al., Benjamin Franklin (November 1949). Young Ben Franklin arrives in Philadelphia, amuses his future wife, and begins to make his way in the world. Right: Benjamin Franklin promotional edition (1956). This painted-cover giveaway was distributed by the Ben Franklin 5-10 chain in 1956, the 250th anniversary of Franklin’s birth and the year in which the recently reissued comic book won the Thomas Alva Edison Award.

IX. A “NEWER, TRUER NAME” Iger assigned Rubano one Classics Illustrated title, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, No. 50 (August–September 1948), which originally appeared in newspaper format in August– September 1947. Mark Twain’s tale of growing up on the Mississippi was well served by Harry Miller’s adaptation, and Rubano infused the illustrations with a rough-and-tumble, cartoonlike energy. Caricature predominates over realism, further boosting the high spirits of Tom’s whitewashing scheme and schoolhouse heroics. The darker side of Twain’s story was also well served by Rubano’s evocative shading in the graveyard and cave episodes. The cover illustration was singled out for its violence by Fredric Wertham in Seduction of the Innocent: “An adaptation of one of Mark Twain’s novels has the picture of two small boys in a fight, one tearing the other’s hair — a scene not the keynote of Mark Twain’s novel. Inside, three consecutive pictures show a fight between two boys (‘In an instant both boys were gripped together like cats’) and the last picture shows one boy with a finger almost in the other’s eye (the injury-to-theeye motif again).”14 One of the liveliest of the Classics issues, Rubano’s splendid edition went through eight printings before it was replaced with a stupefyingly pedestrian rendering by an unknown hand in 1961. Fortunately, when Acclaim Comics revived the original Classics series in 1997, editor Madeleine Robins restored Rubano’s unique Tom Sawyer, citing her fondness for its “loopy charm.”15

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: ROBERT HEBBERD ET AL. In November 1949, the Gilberton Company added a biography of Benjamin Franklin to the Classics Illustrated series as issue No. 65. The anonymous script was derived in part from Franklin’s Autobiography and possibly in part from Carl

103

Van Doren’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize–winning biography. At the time, all art for Classics Illustrated was supplied by S.M. “Jerry” Iger’s comics-art studio. Unlike any other Gilberton title since The Count of Monte Cristo (March 1942), Benjamin Franklin was the work of multiple artists, a true “shop job,” supplied by S.M. “Jerry” Iger’s comics-art regulars. Henry C. Kiefer produced the original line-drawing cover, while Robert Hebberd, Gustav Schrotter, and Alex A. Blum contributed to the interior art.16 Despite its hodgepodge of styles that shift in some cases from panel to panel, the book holds together well with its sustained attention to costuming and period details. A substantial amount of cribbing from well-known portraits is evident. The artists convincingly portrayed Franklin at different stages of his life; the boyhood and apprenticeship episodes were especially well-managed, as well as the mission to France. Oddly enough, considering the issue’s educational-market potential, the first printing of Benjamin Franklin failed to attract a substantial audience, and the title disappeared from the Classics Illustrated reorder list in 1952. The year 1956 was the 250th anniversary of Franklin’s birth, and in honor of the occasion Gilberton restored No. 65 to the line, this time with a striking painted cover that referenced the original Kiefer line-drawing cover illustration. The Ben Franklin 5-10 variety-store chain and the Franklin Life Insurance Company, recognizing promotional opportunities in the anniversary year, distributed free editions that sported a variation of the Classics Illustrated painted cover with red background, minus the distinctive yellow-rectangle logo. This time, Gilberton had a winner — quite literally — on its hands. In 1956, Benjamin Franklin received the Thomas Alva Edison Award for juvenile publications. The painted-cover edition, one of the most honored books in the series’ history, was never again withdrawn from distribution and went through five printings by 1969.

X

Blood, Sweat, and Rudy Palais O

ne of the most distinctive Classics Illustrated stylists, Rudolph (“Rudy” or “Rudi”) Palais1 (1912–2004), filled such titles as The Prairie, Crime and Punishment, David Balfour, and Pitcairn’s Island with characters seemingly always on the verge of springing into action or suffering agonies of suspense — muscles tensed, knuckles tightened, and sweat pouring. At his best, he brought a cinematic narrative sensibility to the eccentric, expressionistic panels he drew. Palais came by it naturally — and early. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, he was the son of an artistturned-draftsman who had studied in Vienna.2 “At the age of twelve,” Palais wrote, “I joined a group of students selected by an art professor who had a radical approach to teaching art. Every Saturday morning, we the class

would be lectured by the professor about developing the imagination of the student. By selecting a subject at random, we

Left: Rudolph Palais, circa 1948 (courtesy Rudolph Palais; collection of the author). Right: Rudolph Palais, The Pioneers (May 1947). Natty Bumppo looks on in dismay at the “destruction of the birds.”

104

X. BLOOD, SWEAT, AND RUDY PALAIS

105

Left: Rudolph Palais, The Prairie (April 1949). Sweating horses and determined foes. Right: Rudolph Palais, The Adventures of Kit Carson (October 1953). The hero is wounded in a battle with Mohawk-hairstyled Blackfeet.

would then proceed to paint the subject strictly from our imagination — be it the rainy streets of a town or city—or a series of balloons in beautiful transparent colors. The professor disregarded the basic academic approach, stating that the development of the imagination was most important, and all else would follow in time.” Traveling to various museums and art galleries in New York, the young Palais was captivated by the sunlight-drenched canvases of Georges Seurat.3 After attending the National Academy of Art and the Art Students League of New York, where he came under the influence of illustrators Norman Rockwell, J.F. Kernan, and Montgomery Flagg, among others, Palais spent a total of seven years in the 1930s producing “hundreds of full-color posters” for Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures.4 During his two years with Warner, one of his biggest projects (in the most literal sense) was a twelve-foot-high painting of Edward G. Robinson’s head, done in collaboration with another studio

artist. While employed by Warner Brothers, Palais met Robinson, James Cagney, and other actors.5 After leaving the film company’s advertising and poster department and before a five-year stint as a junior artist for Columbia Pictures, he worked briefly for the Medal Gold Ice Cream Company in Brooklyn, where, he told interviewer Jim Amash, he received $20 (and no royalties) for dashing off the lettering still used for the “Popsicle” trademark.6 Rudy’s younger brother Walter, a comic-book artist, lured him to the fast-growing business and introduced him to Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, in whose shop he had worked since 1941.7 By the mid–1940s, Palais was successfully negotiating his way in his new field, freelancing for a variety of comics publishers, including Fiction House, Quality, Ace, Fox, and Harvey.8 He produced artwork for the “Stormy Foster” series in Hit Comics and the “Deacon and Mickey” series in Catman Comics. In Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay, Palais established his trade-

Rudolph Palais, Crime and Punishment (November 1951). Two consecutive pages of original art; note the artist’s reliance on hands, sweat, and cinematic angles to build suspense.

X. BLOOD, SWEAT, AND RUDY PALAIS

107

mark style, wreathing his panels in smoke, bathing his bad guys in sweat, and clothing his loose women in as little as possible.9 Later, the artist worked for EC, Fawcett, and Charlton. Among his influences in the realm of comics were Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, and associates Milt Caniff, Jack Cole, and Reed Crandall.10 In 1947, the artist began a sevenyear association with Classics Illustrated. His first project for the series, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers, No. 37 (May 1947), was among his finest efforts. The cover, showing Natty Bumppo being placed in the stocks while a dog nips at the heels of the petty official responsible for the indignity, concisely conveys the Hogarthian energy Palais invested in the adaptation. (Indeed, the cover’s concentrated anarchic movement is somewhat comparable to the swarm of activity in William Hogarth’s “Hudibras Encounters the Skimmington.”) Palais’s Pioneers was one of the last two line-drawing covers to be replaced by a painted cover in the American Classics series. Along with Louis Zansky’s cover art for The Deerslayer, another Cooper title, Palais’s original cover for The Pioneers remained in print until 1968. The artist did no work for Gilberton for nearly two years; then he was assigned the final Leatherstocking novel to be published in the series: The Prairie, No. 58 (April 1949). Although the book lacked the verve of The Pioneers, Palais designed a striking cover based on an illustration from a 19th-century edition of the novel. His editors at Gilberton initially rejected his “roughs” for the characters in The Prairie, insisting on period authenticity for the costumes. Other Rudolph Palais, David Balfour (April 1952). The artist keeps the reader’s eye moving in a than that, however, he encountered dramatically effective example of visual storytelling. little editorial interference.11 Both The Returning to Western themes with The Adventures of Kit Pioneers and The Prairie went through eleven printings, and Carson, No. 112 (October 1953), a title issued to capitalize on one suspects that their success had more to do with the energy the popularity of a current television series, Palais produced of the artist’s images than the turgidness of Cooper’s prose.

108

CLASSICS Illustrated

was packed with action and quickly became one of the staples of the 1950s Classics catalogue. From a later perspective, the book seems marred by the usually reliable Ken W. Fitch’s surprisingly sanguinary script. “Drive this tack into your gun, Kit,” a mountain man admonishes the young scout. “That’s the way we keep count ... a brass tack for every Redskin we get!” For his part, the illustrator never quite got the locale or the period right. Although Carson was born in 1809 and died in 1868, as the Classics edition informs the reader, vigilantes use six-shooters, which hadn’t been invented yet, in an 1829 raid on a band ofM ohawk-coiffedA paches. Lapses in Kit Carson notwithstanding, most of the artist’s work for Gilberton revealed his close attention to historical setting. “Research was always a must,” Palais recalled, singling out David Balfour, No. 94 (April 1952), as well as the Cooper books. Robert Louis Stevenson’s sequel to Kidnapped (known as Catriona, after the heroine, in British editions of the novel) gave the artist a grounding in 18th-century costuming, which became something of a specialty for him.13 An almost tactile quality permeates his drawings of men and women in their 1750s clothing. In David Balfour, Palais made excellent use of the comic-book panel’s adaptability, skillfully deploying differently shaped frames and pushing characters outside them to accelerate the pacing and to achieve the desired atmospheric effect. The naive David’s encounters with a fortune-telling hag and the cynical representatives of the Scottish judicial system are given an ominous edge through the constant reRudolph Palais, “The Cask of Amontillado” in The Gold Bug and Other Stories (June location of the viewer’s position. A fight 1951). A perspiring Montressor serves his revenge brick by brick. between David and a hired swordsman an abundance of sweating, bleeding, white-knuckled charmoves from fists to blades in alternating close-up and midacters. In this assignment, he was assisted by “a young kid range panel images. With the artist’s inventive shifting of visual named Schofield who went to Boston Art School” and had a perspective and bold inking and adapter Ken W. Fitch’s smooth love of Westerns. “This kid,” Palais told Jim Amash, “would streamlining of the morally complex tale, David Balfour draw a million and one Indians running around.”12 The issue remains one of the most interesting Classics Illustrated issues.

X. BLOOD, SWEAT, AND RUDY PALAIS The artist’s most characteristic — and memorable — work for Gilberton was Crime and Punishment, No. 89 (November 1951), a natural title for the Lev Gleason veteran. In his illustrations for Dostoevsky’s study of moral ruin and regeneration, the artist was faithful to the intent of the severe and prudish abridgment, which presented the novel strictly as a psychological thriller and omitted entirely Sonya the prostitute, the agent of Raskolnikov’s redemption. (To be fair, the usual “Now that you have read” closing tag was changed in No. 89 to state that “Because of space limitations, we regretfully omitted some of the original characters and sub-plots of this brilliantly written novel. Nevertheless, we have retained its main theme and mood. We strongly urge you to read the original.”) Palais’s protagonist bears an uncanny resemblance to the young Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang’s M, and the murder scene proceeds with Hitchcock-style suspense, Welles-style angles and Palais-style perspiration as the pawnbroker suspiciously regards the intricately wrapped “pledge” her killer uses to distract her. On the page on which the attack occurs, the hands of both Raskolnikov and the pawnbroker are given special prominence, and close-ups alternate with elevated views of the action. (See page 106.) The artist incorporated “angle shots” as “a ploy to heighten interest in the story telling — a method I employed to a great degree in horror and mystery stories.”14 Sweat-soaked protagonists served as another visual hook. The prominence given in Crime and Punishment to the pawnbroker’s and Raskolnikov’s hands was part of the same strategy. Indeed, hands are a central image in much of Palais’s work; the artist stated that “Hands were always extremely important, and I tried to pay extra attention in rendering them. Hands expressed fright, anger, love, devotion, loyalty, etc., as one art instructor pointed out. Anatomically, I became very much aware of the potential....”15 Related to Crime and Punishment in tone is Palais’s artwork for Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” in The Gold Bug and Other Stories, No. 84 ( June 1951). The artist had established a solid reputation elsewhere with his horror illustrations, and the Poe story fell comfortably within the familiar genre.16 Montressor sweats a storm as he walls up his old enemy Fortunato in the 14-page abridgment. The terror of the situation is depicted principally in the narrator’s face. Adding vaporous streaks to augment the ambience in the catacombs and jutting, Caligari-style panels, Palais produced the most successful rendering of a Poe story in the Classics Illustrated catalogue. An almost Düreresque obsession with linework is evident in Men Against the Sea, No. 103 ( January 1953), the second title in the Bounty trilogy by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. The heavily scored waves, sails, and wood grain of the open boat — and even the folds in Bligh’s coat — combine to convey the desperation of the 19 men set adrift by the mu-

109

Rudolph Palais, Pitcairn’s Island (July 1953). Interracial violence descends on paradise — and Classics Illustrated.

tineers. Palais’s crowded, detailed panels endow the book, set mostly on the wide expanse of the sea, with the intensity of a radically narrowed world. Among the strongest sequences are those depicting a 36-hour storm in which Bligh, seated at the tiller, “seemed to have an exhilaration of mind that grew greater as our peril increased.” The final installment of Nordhoff and Hall’s Bounty cycle, Pitcairn’s Island, No. 109 ( July 1953), pushes the emotional intensity of the tale of interracial passion and revenge to the boundaries of the grotesque. The artist depicted the English and Polynesian settlers hacking, clubbing, and shooting each other to death. With more than 30 panels devoted to some representation of violence, including the breaking of arms and the heaving of an enemy over a cliff, Pitcairn’s Island was the most horrific of Palais’s Classics efforts and an easy target for comics censors. The issue was withdrawn in 1955, when Gilberton

110

CLASSICS Illustrated

dropped several objectionable titles, and remained out of print until 1962. Rob Roy, No. 118 (April 1954), one of Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley” novels, was added to the Classics list to capitalize on a current Walt Disney film of the same name. (A month earlier, Dell had issued, with a similar yellow cover, a handsome edition, No. 544, of the Disney Rob Roy, illustrated by Russ Manning.) The Gilberton book was Palais’s final project for the publisher; it was interrupted midway by the illness of the artist.17 He turned the penciling and inking over to his brother and comics mentor, Walter Palais, whose attempt to duplicate Rudy’s style resulted in a pallid imitation. All of the life goes out of the illustrations after a full-page duel between the hero, Francis Obaldistone, and his villainous cousin Rashleigh at the story’s midpoint. Walter inked several of the pages penciled by his brother and improved none. About the time of Rob Roy, Gilberton began exploring a new artistic direction, and Rudy

Palais illustrated no more Classics. A new wave of talent would soon arrive. “I was in the comic field for fifteen years,” Palais wrote, “and I enjoyed every minute of it. The stories were assigned on a random basis at Classic Comics as well as throughout the industry. ... Regarding the work schedule..., it was always a threemonth assignment, because the stories ... were approximately 50 pages long. We were usually paid one-third on the roughs, another one-third on the completed pencils, and finally onethird on the completed and inked page. All assignments created problems that were to be mastered by innovation and creativity.”18 The sum amounted to about $100 a week, which, he said, “in those days was a lot.”19 Rudy Palais earned every penny of it. Any nine-year-old who has anxiously perspired with Raskolnikov, nervously gripped a sword with David Balfour, or strained for a passing bird with Captain Bligh can attest to the indelible force of the artist’s images.

XI

Painted Covers and an Extra Nickel: The Early Fifties T

he dawning of the 1950s saw the appearance of the first Shakespearean Classics title, Julius Caesar, No. 68 (February 1950), illustrated, appropriately enough, by the former thespian, Henry C. Kiefer. (The adaptation had actually run in Gilberton’s newspaper format from 12 October to 2 November 1947.) For Albert Kanter, the inclusion of Shakespeare in the line offered incontrovertible evidence of the seriousness of his publication’s purpose. Even the New York Times found the news fit to print. The nation’s newspaper of record reported (relying on a press release provided by Gilberton publicist Eleanor Lidofsky1) that the “unexpurgated and unsimplified” comics adaptation had been prepared by Gilberton’s “twenty man staff ” with the cooperation of New York University at a cost of $11,000. The Times also quoted Kanter’s estimate that 25,000 schools around the world used Classics Illustrated, which had sold 200,000,000 copies since the Gilberton Company began production.2 Not everyone, however, was impressed. In his polemical diatribe, Seduction of the Innocent, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham noted that David Dempsey, writing in the New York Times Book Review, has said of the comic book Julius Caesar that it has “a Brutus that looks astonishingly like Superman. ‘Our course will seem too bloody to cut the head off and then hack the limbs...’ says Brutus, in language that sounds like Captain Marvel...” and he notes that “Julius Caesar is followed by a story called ‘Tippy, the Terrier.’”3

Of course, the language to which Dempsey and Wertham objected was Shakespeare’s, slightly compressed, from Act II, scene i. The Classics Illustrated abridged line continues with the phrase “for Antony is but a limb of Caesar.” Both the critic and the doctor may have needed to brush up their Shakespeare; the original reads, in relevant part: “Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, / To cut the head off and then hack the limbs, / Like wrath in death and envy afterwards — / For Antony is but a limb of Caesar.”4

Captain Marvel it wasn’t, and, although “Tippy, the Terrier” indeed made his appearance in a “Dog Heroes” filler at page 47, Dempsey neglected to mention, and Wertham failed to discover, that the Classics adaptation of Julius Caesar was immediately followed, on page 45, by a biography of “The Bard of Avon.” On page 46, opposite the offending “Tippy,” Dempsey and Wertham would have found a “Pioneers of Science” biography of Blaise Pascal containing such violent language as “Pressure exerted anywhere upon the surface of a liquid enclosed in a vessel is transmitted equally in all directions, and acts with equal force upon all equal surfaces, and at right angles to the surfaces.” Had either of the learned gentlemen bothered to turn to page 48, he would have been able to read a two-column plot summary of Jules Massenet’s Manon. All in all, No. 68 was a typical issue of the period. With Shakespeare enthroned on the reorder list, Kanter forged ahead to claim more of the literary high ground, issuing adaptations of the Homeric epics, The Iliad, No. 77 (November 1950), and The Odyssey, No. 81 (March 1951). Plans to produce a version of Shakespeare’s Richard III in 1951 were not realized, but Hamlet was published as No. 99 in September 1952. Classics Illustrated versions of works by Caesar, Dostoevsky, Schiller, Zola, Conrad, Sienkiewicz, Gogol, and Goethe would eventually follow. Meanwhile, in April 1950, at the end of The Pilot, No. 70, Gilberton appended the high-minded tag line that would endure as long as the series itself: “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.” With that sort of plug, it was no wonder that the American educational establishment began to come to terms with the series. After all, if kids were going to read comic books anyway, they might as well read The Black Arrow rather than Green Arrow, The Lady of the Lake rather than Phantom Lady. Teachers began distributing Classics Illustrated editions of Ivanhoe and other assigned novels to encourage reluctant readers.

111

CLASSICS Illustrated

112

In time, tens of thousands of schools in the United States, Canada, and other countries adopted Gilberton publications as supplementary instructional aids.5

ENTER CURTIS In 1948, through the efforts of William Kanter, Gilberton signed on with the Curtis Circulation Company for distribution of Classics Illustrated in Canada. At the time, distribution in the United States was handled by Publishers Distributing Corporation (P.D.C.) and was concentrated in larger cities on the east coast. Pleased with Curtis’s Canadian performance, Albert Kanter awarded the company distribution rights for the United States in 1951.6 The move gave Gilberton the displayspace advantage of a nationwide system that stocked newsstands with The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, Holiday, and Esquire. As soon as the deal with Curtis was done, Classics Illustrated found its public profile raised across the country. Meanwhile, from the Gilberton home office, publicist Eleanor Lidofsky landed both Albert and William Kanter interviews on a number of New York–area radio and television general interest programs in 1952 and 1953.7 The message was always the same: Classics Illustrated was not just another comic-book series; it was a proven educational resource. Kanter, although willing to invest in print advertising in educational publications, much preferred to promote the product by “word of mouth” through the more dynamic broadcast media.8 On the advice of the Curtis organization, Gilberton raised

the issue price from ten to fifteen cents in March 1951 with The Odyssey. The Homeric title proved to be a significant milestone in another respect, as well, inaugurating the painted covers that were to reshape the image of the series in the 1950s and boost its sales to spectacular levels. It is impossible to overstate the significance of the painted covers, which further set Classics apart from other comic books and, incidentally, served to justify the five-cent increase.9 For many parents, the higher price seemed a guarantee of greater worth. Another Curtis-inspired innovation was a redesign of the Classics Illustrated logo. The new look — looser and bolder yet still traditional — was introduced in December 1951 on the cover of issue No. 90, Green Mansions. The combination of the 19th-century poster lettering for “CLASSICS” and the flowing modern script for “Illustrated” subtly affirmed the publication’s mission and method. For the next 20 years, until the series came to an end, the logo remained in place.

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED EDUCATIONAL SERIES

Two giveaway titles issued by Classics Illustrated in the early 1950s were part of what was termed the Classics Illustrated Educational Series. These 16-page comic books were commercially generated products that had the merit of making the CI logo visible in less familiar territory. The first, Shelter Through the Ages (1951), was sponsored by the Ruberoid Company and adapted from a book titled Shelter that the roofing corporation had published several years before. The second, The Westinghouse Story: The Dreams of a Man (1953), was issued in four languages (English, French, Italian, and Spanish) with the purpose of promoting the image of the corporate giant. Gilberton’s production and successful distribution of both books showed that Classics Illustrated had the capacity to collaborate with outside entities and deliver desired results. Building on this experience, Albert Kanter would enter into a joint publishing venture later in the decade with the Boy Scouts of America. Most importantly, however, the Educational Series would serve as a prototype for two ambitious instructional Albert Kanter promotes Classics Illustrated on popular talk-show host Virginia Graham’s Food for Thought syndicated television program, WABD-TV (DuMont), New York, 12 October 1953 lines —Picture Progress and The World Around Us. (courtesy John Kanter).

XI. PAINTED COVERS AND AN EXTRA NICKEL

113

As Seaboard Publishers proudly announced in its first Fast Fiction issue, The Scarlet Pimpernel (October 1949): “There’s no ‘waste motion’ when you read famous novels as presented in the Fast Fiction style. ... Long descriptive passages, popular with readers years ago, have been done away with to save your time and bring you nothing but thrills, excitement and drama.” In Famous Authors No. 6, Macbeth (August 1950), which heralded the change in the name of the series, the publisher further assured the reader, “No longer is it necessary to wade through hundreds of pages of text to enjoy these great stories.... When you read FAMOUS AUTHORS ILLUSTRATED you, too, will know the great characters of literature. You, too, can quote the famous lines and impress your friends.” The only problem was that some of the “famous lines” were inexactly rendered: “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh of

Alex A. Blum, The Odyssey (March 1951). The first Classics Illustrated painted cover, a Curtis marketing move that literally changed the face and the fortunes of the series.

FAST FICTION / FAMOUS AUTHORS If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Albert Kanter should have felt flattered indeed by the appearance of Seaboard Publishers’ Fast Fiction (soon to be renamed Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated), a 32- to 48-page competitor that began issuing titles such as The Scarlet Pimpernel, Captain Blood, and She in the fall of 1949. Instead, of course, he was rather annoyed, particularly because the prolific Henry C. Kiefer, whose style was so closely identified with Classics Illustrated, was churning out artwork for the new series, illustrating Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth, neither of which had been issued by Gilberton at that point. Famous Authors was not, in fact, much in the way of competition. Unlike Classics Illustrated, the would-be rival series sacrificed textual integrity for the sake of reader accessibility.

Henry C. Kiefer, Macbeth, Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated No. 6 (August 1950). The artist’s work for Gilberton’s rival caused hard feelings, but the competition proved beneficial to Classics Illustrated.

114

CLASSICS Illustrated copyright by Erich Maria Remarque, John Bakeless, Frank Buck, Talbot Mundy, Charles Boardman Hawes, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Emerson Hough, and Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall.

101 FIFTH AVENUE , NEW YORK 3, N.Y. With the publication flourishing, Kanter decided to vacate the crowded sixth-floor office and warehouse site at 826 Broadway. In September 1952, at the time the 99th Classics title, Hamlet, was issued, Gilberton relocated to its final home, on the third floor of 101 Fifth Avenue, a more prestigious business address. The 11-story building in Albert Kanter (right) promoting Classics Illustrated on the air with Pat and Barbara Barnes the Flatiron district had been part (1952) (courtesy Hal Kanter and John Haufe). of the business life of the old Ladies’ Mile zone since 1908; it also housed mine would melt and release my soul from body,” Hamlet Ian Ballantine’s newly founded Ballantine Books. The focus moans in Dana E. Dutch’s pastiche, No. FA8 (October 1950). at 101 Fifth Avenue would be business and editorial. Kanter’s When Classics Illustrated got around to Hamlet in September brother Michael moved the warehouse to Brooklyn, later to Con1952, adapter Sam Willinsky allowed the prince to use the cord, New Hampshire, and finally to Passiac, New Jersey.10 words Shakespeare had given him. Beginning in 1953, with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, No. 13, Kanter’s answer to the aggravation was to buy out the upand Don Quixote, No. 11, painted covers began to replace the start and kill it, turning one of the unpublished titles in the old linedrawing covers. In the case of No. 13, a new, more series, The Red Badge of Courage, into a Classics issue, No. 98, faithful script and improved interior art were also introin August 1952. A 15-page filler, “An Outline History of the duced — a stylistic makeover that would accelerate from 1956 Civil War,” was added to bring the length into conformity onward as Gilberton reaffirmed its commitment to its cultural with the 48-page Gilberton norm. Famous Authors would beand educational mission. come a subsidiary company and, in 1953, the nominal pubBut ominous signs of trouble ahead surfaced, for anyone lisher of Kanter’s new series for younger readers, Classics Illuspaying attention to the gathering cultural storm clouds. The trated Junior. ratings for Classics Illustrated in Parents’ Magazine dropped Seaboard’s example had the salutary effect of weaning from an “A” (acceptable) in 1951 to a “B” (some objection) and Gilberton from an exclusive dependence on public-domain finally a “C” (objectionable) in 1952.11 The anti-comics crusade material. The inclusion in the Famous Authors series of works was underway, and the publication “Featuring Stories by the still under copyright, such as John Buchan’s The 39 Steps, PerWorld’s Greatest Authors” was yet another target. cival Christopher Wren’s Beau Geste, and Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche, spurred Kanter to take similar steps. In January 1951, a copyright-permissions notice appeared on the title page of No. 79, Cyrano de Bergerac. A proud declaration on the title page of White Fang, No. 80 (February 1951), informed the reader that the edition was “[p]ublished through special arrangement with Charmian K. London, sole and exclusive owner of copyright.” During the next five years, Classics Illustrated would add to its catalogue authorized adaptations of books under

KENNETH W. FITCH, SCRIPTWRITER From 1950 to 1953, Kenneth William Fitch (1908–1965) wrote more than twenty faithful, literate scripts for Gilberton, dramatically enhancing the quality of the series. Formerly a writer for Fox’s Murder Incorporated, he brought a profes-

XI. PAINTED COVERS AND AN EXTRA NICKEL

115

sional’s skills to the task of presenting subject matter of a decidedly different stamp. Fitch’s standard practice was to read the book to be adapted and relevant reference works. The scriptwriter then took extensive notes on the plot, the characters, and the historical setting. In the case of Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness, he corresponded at some length with author John Bakeless. After outlining the book, drafting background memos that amounted to critical essays, and describing the characters for the benefit of the artist, Fitch would prepare a forty- to forty-fivepage panel-by-panelb reakdown. In his work on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Master of Ballantrae, published in April 1951, the scriptwriter first sent editor Harry M. Adler a synopsis on 26 September 1950, noting in his cover letter, “It is, of necessity, a bare outline of plot, and cannot go into the matter of character development, which is a good part of the strength of the story.” Fitch submitted the completed script on 31 October 1950. Dialogue was rendered in a manner similar to play or film scripts. The package included character sketches, including the following notes for artist Lawrence Dresser on the charmingly duplicitous title character, James Durie, Master of Ballantrae: “He is a dashing handsome man in appearance.... He has an arrogant graceful bearing. Make his face if possible one that can be pleasing when he is in the mood and vicious when he is angry. He is tall, erect, well-proportioned. He has a very intelligent look about him.” Of the story’s possibly unreliable narrator, Ephraim Mackellar, Fitch commented: The home of Classics Illustrated in its heyday: 101 Fifth Avenue, New York “Thin, rather tall, scholarly looking man. He is (photograph by Stephen Jones, December 2010). not handsome, but has the appearance of a trusted servant. He is ... educated, but fussy and particular, such a added six pages of duels with assorted Spaniards and a would12 man as Mrs. Henry Durie would once call an ‘old maid.’” bea ssassin. Besides acting as project historian, Fitch played the For Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, the scriptscriptwriter’s usual role of film-director equivalent, providing, writer offered atmospheric context with a discussion of “The for example, the following detailed instructions for illustrating Days of Cyrano”: “Paris in the days of Savinien de Cyrano de the page-one splash in The White Company by Sir Arthur Bergerac was a city teeming with people threading noisily Conan Doyle, referring the artist to N.C. Wyeth’s treatment through her narrow streets. Merchants vended their wares while of the same scene: “The scene is the tilting yard of the Abbey nobles rode in sedan chairs carried on the shoulders of servants of St. Andrews in Bordeaux, France, in the year 1366. High or hirelings. Urchins scampered through the streets between walls of the abbey close in three sides of the yard, while a swiftly men of the church, the robe, or the guard. And among them flowing river borders the fourth side. Show trees and rough all thieves and pickpockets thrived.... A man who could not grass. Two men are dueling desperately. They are Alleyne fight his own way in the world seldom lived past the first flush Edricson and John Trantner. Refer to picture, p. 196. Alleyne’s of youth.” In his script, Fitch interpolated a three-page account sword is being broken by Trantner’s, but instead of showing of Cyrano’s expulsion from school and subsequent lessons in position of men as they are shown in the illustration, place the swordplay at the “Salle d’Armes of Sieur Moussard.” He also

116

CLASSICS Illustrated the scriptwriter points up, in an adjacent narrative panel, the irony of the hero’s situation as he is being marched to the executioner’s block: “As Cornelius followed the guards to the scaffold, his mind dwelt bitterly on fate’s sudden paradox; for where John and Cornelius de Witt had lost their lives for having thought too much of politics, he, Cornelius van Baerle, was about to lose his life for having thought too much of tulips.” It was precisely this sort of emphasis on text that caused friends and foes of Classics Illustrated to revere or revile them as atypical comic books.

BOB LAMME During the period in which Iger was supplying artwork for Gilberton’s rival, Fast Fiction, several unaffiliated artists of varying abilities worked briefly under the Classics banner. Book illustrator Bob Lamme was the childhood best friend of Hal Kanter in Miami, where the two were classmates at Southside Elementary School.13 Lamme, who had no comicbook credits elsewhere, was assigned Frederick Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy, No. 74 (August 1950). Albert Kanter offered to employ him fulltime, but the artist preferred to remain in Florida.14 In a 1977 letter to Classics Index author Charles Heffelfinger, Lamme, an artist for the Miami Herald, stated that he drew his one and only Classics Illustrated title in 1949. He noted that he didn’t keep a copy of the book himself because he didn’t believe he had done a good job on it.15 In another letter, to Michael Sawyer, Lamme stated simply, “It was pretty bad.”16 Indeed, the interior art in Mr. Midshipman Easy, though not without its compensating naive charm, is often flat. Alex A. Blum, The White Company (December 1952). The artist follows (more Lamme recalled that the script for Mr. or less) the scriptwriter’s directions. Midshipman Easy “came to me roughly indimen so that Trantner’s back is to the river. Several squires stand cating what was to go on each page, but I had freedom of how about watching the fight. Wyeth’s illustration of clothes of the to present it. I had some discussions with them because they period are authentic.” left something out of the early part of the story which was relFitch made extensive use of introductory and connecting evant to the rest of it, but they did not change it. I did have rectangular spaces, which in other comics were often reserved to do research about the ships, guns and costumes of that pefor such terse explanations as “Later...” or “Then...,” to include riod. Of course, I had to read the book.”17 more of the story — and the authorial presence — than would Captain Marryat’s lively adventure tale was neatly comhave been possible otherwise. In The Black Tulip, for instance, pressed by scriptwriter Ken W. Fitch, but the novel’s early

XI. PAINTED COVERS AND AN EXTRA NICKEL

117

chapters were dropped, resulting in a lack of context for the transformation of Jack Easy, the spoiled child of privilege and apostle of the theory of equality, on the decks of the warship Harpy. Perhaps under editorial direction, Lamme drew Mesty, the hero’s black mentor and companion, as a white man. Still, a certain period charm is evident in such scenes as Easy and his friend Ned Gascoigne facing a storm at sea or routing Don Silvio’s brigands on land. Always more popular with a British audience, Mr. Midshipman Easy was not in great demand with American readers and was dropped from the reorder list in 1952. So few copies had been sold that it was possible to obtain first and only editions from the Gilberton warehouse as late as 1963. (A plate for a second-printing cover, bearing a 15-cent price mark, was discovered years later in the publisher’s New Jersey warehouse.) Plans to revise the title for a new U.S. edition were abandoned as newartwork production ceased in 1962. A European issue with Lamme’s original art and an independently commissioned painted cover fared somewhat better abroad.

LAWRENCE DRESSER AND GUSTAV SCHROTTER Known primarily as an illustrator of hardcover juvenile books, such as Augusta Stevenson’s George Washington: Boy Leader (1942), Marguerite Henry’s Robert Fulton: Boy Craftsman (1945), and Rita Halle Kleeman’s Young Franklin Roosevelt (1946), Lawrence Dresser brought a decidedly different perspective to his comics assignments for Classics Illustrated. In The Master Bob Lamme, Mr. Midshipman Easy (August 1950). The artist, a childhood friend of of Ballantrae, No. 82 (April 1951), the artist Hal Kanter, regarded his illustrations for the Marryat novel as “pretty bad.” produced a well-researched costume piece, basing some of his drawings, including the shading. A solid grasp of the complex psychological dimensions first-page splash of a midnight duel, on William Hole’s turnof the main characters—the manipulative charm of “The Masof-the-century illustrations for Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale ter,” the thwarted decency of the younger brother — on the of fratricidal hatred. part of both adapter and artist made Ballantrae one of the finest The murky moral atmosphere of the novel is well conClassics titles. The only false note in Fitch’s adaptation was his veyed in the intelligent script by Ken W. Fitch, as well as by the addition of a spoken line by the revived “week-old corpse” of contrast between Dresser’s light linework and frequently heavy James Durie on the final page: “Hello, Mackellar.”

Lawrence Dresser, The Master of Ballantrae (April 1951). The tossing of a coin leads to family tragedy. Right: Lawrence Dresser, Gustav Schrotter, and Harry Daugherty, Men of Iron (October 1951). The artists did their historical homework for the Howard Pyle adventure.

XI. PAINTED COVERS AND AN EXTRA NICKEL Dresser, probably working with Gustav Schrotter and Harry Daugherty (brother of children’s book illustrator James Daugherty), offered homage to author-illustrator Howard Pyle in Men of Iron, No. 88 (October 1951).18 Yet the trio’s work was by no means a mere derivative exercise. The Classics Illustrated retelling of the story of Myles Falworth’s training as a squire and quest for honor is filled with fluid action scenes and carefully observed character development. Schrotter, like Dresser, was a juvenile-book illustrator who also ventured into the comics field. Associated with Jerry Iger, he turned out Nicholas Nickleby, No. FA9 (November 1950), and La Svengali (Trilby), No. FA12 (February 1951) for Famous Authors Illustrated. While his contributions to Gilberton’s Benjamin Franklin and Men of Iron were notable, his best — and only solo — work for Classics was The Red Badge of Courage, No. 98 (August 1952), a title originally scheduled for Famous Authors Illustrated. Stephen Crane’s masterpiece received less than its due from the unknown adapter, who, in Famous Authors fashion, invented dialogue when needed and ignored the author’s ironic inflections. Still, Schrotter’s drawings, based in part on the 1951 John Huston film, evoked to some extent the rush and confusion of battle and rout. After his episodic stint with Gilberton, Schrotter returned to juvenile books, illustrating such works as H.C. Thomas’s Noah Carr, Yankee Firebrand (1957), A. Van der Loeff ’s Avalanche! (1958), and Esther Willard Bates’s Marilda and the Bird of Time (1960).

119

Gustav Schrotter, The Red Badge of Courage (August 1952). “The youth” improves his battlefield performance.

JIM WILCOX The identity of the artist who provided the unusual drawings for Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” in The Gold Bug and Other Stories, No. 84 ( June 1951), has been something of a mystery. Comics authority Hames Ware initially judged

the work to be that of Jim Lavery but was never comfortable with the tentative attribution. In notes to himself, he had observed that “this artist resembles Jim Wilcox” of the Jacquet shop. Yet because the Iger shop was in charge of Gilberton’s art in 1951, Ware assumed that it would have been impossible for a Jacquet artist to receive an assignment.19

120

CLASSICS Illustrated period when Henry C. Kiefer was busy supplying artwork for Gilberton’s competitor, Seaboard’s Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated. In any event, Wilcox’s illustrations for the macabre tale are among the most distinctive to appear in any Classics Illustrated issue. The spare linework and studied primitivism, which may seem at first glance a throwback to the awkward art of the early 1940s, succeed splendidly in conveying the narrator’s mad obsession through the very strangeness, the “otherness,” of the artist’s style.

MORRIS WALDINGER Issue No. 100, Mutiny on the Bounty (October 1952), was a prize for Albert Kanter. Not only had Classics Illustrated reached a publishing milestone, but Gilberton had acquired the rights to adapt the other two novels in Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall’s Bounty trilogy, Men Against the Sea and Pitcairn’s Island. Yet the choice for illustrator of the 100th issue was unusual, considering the availability of Kiefer (who provided the painted cover), Blum, Palais, and del Bourgo. Morris Waldinger, who received the nod, had no previous Gilberton assignments to his credit. His principal work elsewhere consisted of filler material and lettering for DC.21 He also provided illustrations for Forbidden Worlds and Wonder Woman. In Mutiny on the Bounty, the artist was at his best depicting action sequences — Bligh’s acts of brutality, Christian’s seizing of the ship, and the suffering of the captured mutineers aboard the Pandora. These scenes are as powJimWilcox, “The Tell-Tale Heart” in The Gold Bug and Other Stories (June 1951). erful as anything that appeared in Classics Illustrated at the time. Spare linework and studied primitivism support the macabre narrative. Yet some of the work shows signs of Meanwhile, Classics collector Bill Briggs discovered Wilhaste, particularly in panels where one figure positioned parcox’s signature on an unpublished line-drawing cover for The tially behind another is missing a leg or a shoulder at the point Odyssey, the title that appeared as the first painted-cover issue where the rest of the body should appear again on the other in March 1951, a few months before “The Tell-Tale Heart.” side of the foreground character. The narrator, midshipman Ware reexamined the evidence and concluded that Jim Wilcox’s Roger Byam, is not quite 18 years old when the story begins, was indeed the hand responsible for the Poe story.20 It is but his apparent age changes from panel to panel — here he possible that, although Wilcox was tied to the Jacquet operaseems a callow youth and there a man well past his prime. tion, he may have subcontracted with Jerry Iger during the Matters weren’t helped by the colorist’s decision to endow

XI. PAINTED COVERS AND AN EXTRA NICKEL

121

Byam and most of the other male characters with powdered hair, which gave the Bounty the appearance of a floating retirement community. Waldinger was never assigned another Classics project. Rudy Palais was given the remaining Bounty stories. And Albert Kanter, whose fortunes had improved to the point that he was able to pay royalties for a best-selling trilogy of contemporary fiction, threw a party at a restaurant for Gilberton personnel to celebrate reaching the 100th issue. A short film of the occasion exists, but the faces are barely discernible — lost, it seems, to time and poor lighting.

SEYMOUR MOSKOWITZ Seymour Moskowitz, a veteran of Atlas Comics, illustrated two Classics Illustrated titles in 1953: King — of the Khyber Rifles, No. 107 (May), and A Study in Scarlet, No. 110 (August). Had Fredric Wertham been aware of either book, he probably would have heaped abuse on them in his Seduction of the Innocent. Talbot Mundy’s King — of the Khyber Rifles was one of an increasing number of adaptations of works of marginal literary stature that were added to the Classics list during the mid- and late-1950s. A novel still under copyright that had recently been the basis of a motion picture, the tale of British imperial intrigue remained in print even during the peak of anti-comics hysteria in 1954 and 1955 — despite three pages dealing with the hero’s discovery that he is holding his brother’s severed head in his hands. Like King Solomon’s Mines, King — of the Khyber Rifles depicted a white man romantically involved with an exotic, darkskinned woman. In this case, the woman not only lived, but she also got her man. It probably helped, in 1953, that she had blonde hair. Two Sherlock Holmes stories were included in A Study in Scarlet—the title mystery and “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.” The title story had originally appeared in the 1947 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes but had been cut when the 56page issue was trimmed to the standard 48 pages in 1948. The new edition of A Study in Scarlet was criticized for its perceived

Morris Waldinger, Mutiny on the Bounty (October 1952). Mr. Christian assumes command.

Seymour Moskowitz, King — of the Khyber Rifles (May 1953). A severed head — and the hero’s brother’s, for good measure — that managed to escape the notice of anti-comics crusaders.

122

CLASSICS Illustrated soon disappeared. Despite the popularity of Sherlock Holmes, it was never again reissued. Moskowitz was the first representative of a new, leaner technique of comics illustration that came to dominate the Gilberton house style in the mid- and later-1950s. The baroque amplitude of Henry C. Kiefer and Rudy Palais gave way to crisp linework and less ornately wrought panels.

PETER COSTANZA As various comic-book publishers folded or shrank in the mid–1950s, succumbing either to the overburdened market or to the relentless anticomics campaign, different groups of freelancers found themselves calling on the editorial offices at 101 Fifth Avenue. Among the first were Peter Costanza (1913–1984) and Kurt Schaffenberger, two talented fugitives from the 1953 Fawcett shutdown, occasioned by the publisher’s decision not to engage in protracted copyright-infringement litigation with DC Comics concerning Fawcett’s Superman-clone, Captain Marvel. Faster than you could say “Shazam,” Fawcett abandoned not only superheroes but also the publication of comics.22 Costanza possessed one of the most individualistic styles of any artist whose work appeared in Classics Illustrated. A former pulp illustrator, he had assisted Charles Clarence Beck on Captain Marvel in Fawcett’s Whiz Comics and on Captain Tootsie for Tootsie Rolls during the 1940s.23 Fawcett artist Marc Swayze recalled Costanza as a “fast layout artist,” a “great joker,” and a “wonderful man to know,” who, as Beck’s assistant, never fully emerged from the older artist’s shadow.24 Where Rudy Palais emphasized hands and Seymour Moskowitz, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” in A Study in Scarsweaty brows, Costanza highlighted eyes and let (August 1953). Dr. Roylott discovers that what goes around.... toothy mouths, bestowing on his characters a anti–Mormon bias, a factor that may have resulted in its delekind of cartoonlike cuteness that made him especially well tion from the reorder list in 1955. The macabre elements of suited to illustrate Andy’s Atomic Adventures (September 1953) the plot, with a bloody message inscribed on a wall and a forcefor the first Picture Parade issue, and Cinderella, No. 503 (Defed poison pill, probably played a part, as well. As for “The cember 1953), and The Sleeping Beauty, No. 505 (February Adventure of the Speckled Band,” a depiction of a snake 1954), for the newly inaugurated Classics Illustrated Junior sewrapped around a victim’s head did little to endear the issue ries. to critics of “horror” comics. A reprint surfaced in 1962 and The artist illustrated three sea tales for the regular Classics Opposite: Peter Costanza, The Red Rover (December 1953). The bright-eyed Rover shows his true colors.

124

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: Peter Costanza, Captains Courageous, original art (March 1954). Rich kid Harvey and captain’s son Dan listen to another of Long Jack’s yarns. Right: Peter Costanza, The Mutineers (September 1954). The good guys decisively beat the bad guys.

Illustrated line: James Fenimore Cooper’s The Red Rover, No. 114 (December 1953), Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous, No. 117 (March 1954) and Charles Boardman Hawes’s The Mutineers, No. 122 (September 1954). In each book, Costanza’s light, almost comic touch seems occasionally at odds with the violent world depicted, though the tension between the competing elements makes the artist’s efforts invariably compelling. Captains Courageous, the strongest of the trio, presents a credible visual account of spoiled rich boy Harvey Cheyne’s education and transformation, from his rescue at sea to his immersion in the fisherman’s life. The artist also produced fine characterizations of Disko, Dan, Manuel, Penn, and others aboard the fishing vessel We’re Here. In his work for Gilberton, Costanza always seemed most comfortable — and his art most natural — when his subjects were youthful protagonists. Ben Lathrop, the 16-year-old narrator of The Mutineers, is a less complex figure than Harvey Cheyne but an equally sympathetic figure in the artist’s rendering of the novice sea-

man’s experiences with pirates and other perils. A charming pirate was the central character in The Red Rover; as drawn by Costanza, his appearance suggested a maritime Robin Hood, with his distinctive feathered hat, which is shown floating on the waves at the end. During the 1960s, the artist worked for DC Comics, illustrating Jimmy Olsen stories. Costanza also illustrated Martha and Charles Shapp’s Let’s Find Out About (Firemen, Houses, Indians) children’s books.

KURT SCHAFFENBERGER Another Fawcett veteran and Captain Marvel artist, German-born, Pratt-trained Kurt Schaffenberger (1920–2002) brought Charles Clarence Beck’s emphasis on humor and clarity of design to his one Classics Illustrated assignment, Soldiers of Fortune, No. 119 (May 1954), Richard Harding Davis’s

XI. PAINTED COVERS AND AN EXTRA NICKEL

125

imperialistic potboiler about dashing gringos foiling a Latin American revolution to ensure that the benighted natives will enjoy the disinterested guidance of the benevolent North American mining interests that employ the mercenaries of the title. Schaffenberger portrayed the suave protagonist Robert Clay, “civil engineer and soldier of fortune,” with wit and panache, and the drawings are distinguished by their vitality and economy of line. A year later, Schaffenberger produced artwork for a Classics Illustrated Junior title, Aladdin and His Lamp, No. 516 (May 1955). Introduced in Gilberton’s series for younger readers to replace the discontinued Classics Illustrated No. 8, Arabian Nights, the comic book offers a more robust aesthetic than the typical simplified Junior fare. The artist’s style is engagingly comic and exotic. Schaffenberger moved from Gilberton to DC, where he became the lead artist for the newly introduced Lois Lane series in 1958.25 He later illustrated Patricia Relf ’s Adventures of Superman (1982) for Golden Books and inked Curt Swan’s pencils in Alan Moore’s Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? (1997) for DC.

MORT KÜNSTLER , COVER ARTIST Still a fledgling artist, Mort Künstler (b. 1931) supplied Classics Illustrated with nine cover paintings before he went on to a successful career as a painter of American Civil War scenes and other historical subjects. As a young man, he studied at Brooklyn Kurt Schaffenberger, Soldiers of Fortune (May 1954). Robert Clay, “civil engineer and solCollege, the University of California dier of fortune,” makes South America safe for New York–owned iron mines. at Los Angeles, and the Pratt Institute, from which he graduated in 1951.26 As the artist recalled, “It was a tough time for illustrators. Künstler was soon in demand in New York as a book and magMagazines that used illustrations were shrinking or folding in azine illustrator. He produced two painted covers a month for the early Fifties; the field was dying. Fiction was being watched various men’s adventure magazines and received invaluable trainon TV rather than being read in the pulps.”28 A friend who 27 ing in his association with National Geographic Magazine. knew someone at Gilberton managed to open the door for

126

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: Mort Künstler, Pitcairn’s Island (July 1953). A painting that packs a punch; the artist recognized the original as his own work when it appeared in an auction-house catalogue. Right: Mort Künstler, The Talisman (September 1953). The future Civil War historical artist gets practice in showing men and horses in combat.

Künstler’s association with Classics Illustrated. At the time, for one who aspired to a better-paying future in advertising art, the experience seemed something of a step backward. Indeed, as the artist later confessed, “I was embarrassed that I was doing comics.”29 During this period, Künstler received assignments from Gilberton for what turned out to be most of the cover art for the year 1953: Buffalo Bill, No. 106 (April 1953); King — of the Khyber Rifles, No. 107 (May 1953); Knights of the Round Table, No. 108 ( June 1953); Pitcairn’s Island, No. 109 ( July 1953); Don Quixote, No. 11 (reprint, August 1953); A Study in Scarlet, No. 110 (August 1953); The Talisman, No. 111 (September 1953); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, No. 13 (new edition, October 1953); The Adventures of Kit Carson, No. 112 (October 1953).30 In these early works, the artist already exhibited a gift for dramatic images (King — of the Khyber Rifles) and an affinity for historical settings (The Talisman). Two of Künstler’s paint-

ings for Gilberton, Don Quixote and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, were among the most iconic of Classics Illustrated covers. The Jekyll and Hyde dual portrait, later parodied by the Harvard Lampoon, was something of a private joke on the part of the artist. “Jekyll was a self-portrait,” Künstler revealed in an interview. “And Hyde was actually a portrait of my mentor, George Gross, a pulp artist.”31 Until the artist recognized the original cover painting of Pitcairn’s Island while perusing a Heritage Galleries auction catalogue in 2008, his work for Classics Illustrated had been noted as “unattributed.”32 It is perhaps significant that the subjects of Künstler’s first and last paintings for Gilberton, Buffalo Bill and The Adventures of Kit Carson, were Western historical subjects. As his work came to the attention of serious collectors in the early 1970s, interest was primarily focused on pieces with Western themes. Following a major museum retrospective exhibition and a one-man show in New York, Künstler became known

XI. PAINTED COVERS AND AN EXTRA NICKEL

127

and highly regarded for his historical paintings. Then, in 1982, when CBS-TV commissioned the artist to produce a painting for the miniseries The Blue and the Gray, a major shift in interest and direction occurred. Since that time, Künstler has centered his attention on meticulously researched paintings documenting personalities and battles of the American Civil War.33

JO POLSENO, COVER ARTIST The cover of The Red Rover, No. 114 (December 1953), depicted a figure who in no way resembled the title character of the story as drawn by interior artist Peter Costanza. Rather, the image of the hero in the rigging with sword in hand was a stirring tribute to the swashbuckling tradition, painted by Jo Polseno (1924–1991), who had studied at the École des Beaux Arts, Marseilles, and the Whitney Art School. A native of Bridgeport, Connecticut, the artist discovered a wildlife area known as the Redding Glen at the age of sixteen. It was a decisive experience, and Polseno later produced striking renderings of wild birds. These works made his reputation as a serious artist.34 For twenty-five years, Polseno was active as a freelance artist. In 1958, he illustrated a Grosset and Dunlap “Signature” biography of Robert Louis Stevenson and in the 1960s supplied artwork for Stevenson’s Kidnapped, Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood in Grosset and Dunlap’s Companion Library series.

THE CHARLTON CONNECTION : SALVATORE A. (“SAL”) TRAPANI, MEDIO IORIO, AND SAL FINOCCHIARO

Jo Polseno, The Red Rover (December 1953). Though a memorable swashbuckling cover image, the artist’s painting made little visual reference to the story inside.

At about the time that Jerry Iger was finding Gilberton a less than satisfactory channel for his own shop’s talents, various artists associated with Charlton Comics were brought on board to illustrate two titles, Sir Henry Morton Stanley’s How I Found Livingstone, No. 115 ( January 1954), and a western biography, Wild Bill Hickok, No. 121 ( July 1954). Neither book had a distinctively Classics Illustrated look about them, and both seemed to suggest that Gilberton, which had recently launched its Junior line and the educational Picture Parade series for schools, was allowing its main product to drift toward a new, undefined post–Kiefer identity. Salvatore A. (“Sal”) Trapani (1927–1999), a Charlton artist whose later credits included DC’s Metamorpho and Dell’s Fab Four, worked on both issues. He was assisted by other Charlton artists, including Sal Finocchiaro, on How I Found Livingstone. Trapani’s style is noted for its heavy inking, a signature trait that is plainly in evidence in No. 115.

The comics version of Stanley’s journalistic quest for the missing missionary was all too often an unsatisfactory hodgepodge of derivative drawings, many of which, according to Hames Ware, had been “lifted in toto from the work of Dell artist Alberto Giolitti.”35 Some of the depictions of Africans are reflexively racist in the offhanded way of 1930s jungle movies, as in the case of an eye-popping medicine man who is given a whiff of ammonia. “Wah!” he cries, falling on the ground, “Medicine too strong! You keep! You keep!” The adaptation, however, was fast-paced and filled with dramatic episodes, including a fierce sandstorm and the famous greeting itself. Despite other instances of racial stereotyping, the true hero of the tale proves to be Selim, Stanley’s intelligent, multilingual African guide, who “can tell what kind of animal broke a leaf of grass, if only one hair of his body has fallen on it.” Joining Trapani for Wild Bill Hickok was Medio Iorio;

128

CLASSICS Illustrated

ACE ARTIST: LIN STREETER Lin Streeter, a veteran of the fading Ace Comics, came to Gilberton in the early 1950s. With writer Joe Blair, he had created Captain Flag for MLJ Magazines’ Blue Ribbon Comics in 1941. Streeter had worked on the Marine comic strip, Sergeant Stony Craig, in 1946 and was known for his cartoonish style.36 An affable man who supported a large family,37 he drew Frank Buck’s Fang and Claw, No. 123 (November 1954). A brisk, sketchy technique brought a light-hearted energy to the adaptation of the famous animal collector’s tales of tracking clouded leopards, wild boars, crocodiles, orangutans, and elephants. The artist’s best drawings in the book were reserved for the larger panels that introduced each of the stories or the action sequences within each of the tales, such as the capture of the fearsome Naga Besar in “Crocodile Tears.” Streeter’s most characteristic work for Gilberton appeared

Sal Trapani et al., How I Found Livingstone ( January 1 954). Selim looks on as Stanley delivers the inevitable payoff line.

the pair gave the Western biography an unmistakable Charlton stamp. Trapani (inks) and Iorio (pencils) most likely were hired for the project because they had collaborated on Charlton’s “Wild Bill Hickok and Jingles” stories for Cowboy Western Comics. Published to capitalize on the popularity of the longrunning television series starring Guy Madison and Andy Devine, the Classics version, like Mr. Clemens in Tom Sawyer, “mainly ... told the truth.” Still, the artists opted for a clean-shaven, short-haired hero somewhat like the one on TV rather than the mustachioed, hirsute gunslinger of history. (Gilberton later set the pictorial record straight in Men, Guns and Cattle, a 1959 Special Issue that revealed a more complex figure in fewer pages.) Although Wild Bill Hickok was one of the most popular of the later Classics titles, with eight printings between 1954 and 1969, the book always seemed a stylistic anomaly in the series.

Lin Streeter, Fang and Claw (November 1954). Catching a croc. The artist, however, found the fairy tales of Classics Illustrated Junior more congenial.

XI. PAINTED COVERS AND AN EXTRA NICKEL in the Classics Illustrated Junior series: Thumbelina, No. 520 (November 1955); The Frog Prince, No. 526 (May 1956); The Golden Bird, No. 530 (September 1956); Rapunzel, No. 531 (October 1956); The Three Fairies, No. 537 (April 1957); The Enchanted Fish, No. 539 ( June 1957); The House in the Woods, No. 543 (October 1957); and The Wishing Table, No. 547 (February 1958). Of these, the finest are The Enchanted Fish and The Wishing Table, which display the artist’s abundant capacity for visual humor with his portraits of the overreaching wife in the former title and the thieving innkeeper in the latter. On the other hand, Thumbelina and The Frog Prince exhibit a consciously simplified generic cuteness. In addition to these works, Streeter also provided illustrations for the educational Picture Parade/Picture Progress series. One of these, A Christmas Adventure, Picture Parade Vol. 1, No. 4 (December 1953), was reissued as a giveaway in 1969. Another title, The Birth of America, Picture Progress Vol. 1, No. 6 (February 1954), subsequently found its way as a reprinted section in The Story of America, Special Issue No. 132A ( June 1956). Streeter also illustrated “From Tom-Tom to TV,” which appeared in Adventures in Science, No. 138A (June 1957). The artist contributed two chapters to the first number of the World Around Us series, The Illustrated Story of Dogs, No. W1 (September 1958). Like Costanza, Trapani, and others, Lin Streeter can be seen as playing a transitional role in the Gilberton story as the publisher searched for a style in the aftermath of the severing of ties with the Iger shop. It remained for his fellow Ace colleagues, Lou Cameron and Norman Nodel, to transform Classics Illustrated.

129

Among her earliest publicity successes was an arrangement with RKO to have copies of the recently published Classics Illustrated edition of Treasure Island available for sale in theatres showing the Walt Disney film version of the Robert Louis Stevenson pirate adventure. (A Disney comicbook treatment of the movie was not issued by Dell until 1955.) But the young publicist’s greatest coup came in 1950 with the landing of the New York Times article on the preparation of the Classics Illustrated edition of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.40 Responding to Lidofsky’s engaging, vivacious personality as much as to her achievements with movie tie-ins with Joan of Arc and Cyrano de Bergerac, Albert Kanter promoted her in 1951 to a position he had created for her — public relations director. In that capacity, she promoted new issues on television and radio programs hosted by the likes of Virginia Graham and Jim Ameche. She also sparred on the air with anti-comics crusader Fredric Wertham. “I made scrambled eggs of him,” she remembered proudly.41 Meanwhile, with sales increasing and foreign affiliates growing, Albert Kanter saw in Lidofsky a representative for his product who would be at ease with all the people calling at the headquarters of what was becoming an international op-

ELEANOR LIDOFSKY, PUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTOR For several years spanning the end of the 1940s to 1954, Eleanor Lidofsky was the public face of the Gilberton Company. A graduate of Brooklyn College, the young woman had been doing publicity for the United Way when she learned that Classics Illustrated needed a publicist. At the time, few women in New York had ventured into the field of public relations. “There were only fifty women in the New York City Publicity Club at the time,” Lidofsky recalled.38 She was hired at Gilberton as a combination publicist, copy editor, and researcher. “I spent a lot of time at the 42nd Street Library,” she reminisced. Lidofsky’s salary was $50 a week. In addition to other responsibilities, she wrote synopses for the back-of-the-book “Famous Operas” series. “I began at 826 Broadway,” Lidofsky recalled, “in a wonderful neighborhood, next to the Strand bookstore.”39 Eleanor Lidofsky, Gilberton publicity director, 1952.

130

CLASSICS Illustrated

eration. A move to the greater comfort of 101 Fifth Avenue in 1952 facilitated the publicist’s efforts. “I took foreign publishers and their wives out to lunch,” she said. She also flew to Hollywood to attend pre-release screenings of movies that had tiein potential. She often met with Hal Kanter, the publisher’s screenwriter-director son, though the two never quite established a comfortable working relationship. “I assumed he thought I was too young for the job,” Lidofsky said.42 In any event, she was recognized as the go-to person in New York, as evidenced by a notice in the 23 January 1954 issue of Boxoffice, a trade paper, where her name was given as the Classics Illustrated contact for movie tie-in promotions for the film version of King — of the Khyber Rifles. That project and a movie-poster campaign for Knights of the Round Table were among Lidofsky’s last flagship-series assignments at Gilberton. She left in early 1954 to have a baby. In her last year at 101 Fifth Avenue, Lidofsky embarked on the work that gave her the greatest satisfaction of all her efforts for Classics Illustrated. It was an educational series to be marketed directly to schools. The concept was Albert Kanter’s, but it was Lidofsky’s advocacy that shaped the purpose. “At the time, there was little information in school textbooks about the United Nations,” she recalled. “And there was also a lot of fear among schoolchildren about the atomic bomb. I said I thought schoolchildren should know about the UN and should learn about the benefits as well as dangers of nuclear energy. Then Al said, ‘Go write ’em.’”43 Lidofsky named the new publication Picture Parade, and

Kanter made her both editor and chief scriptwriter. She wrote the contents of the first nine issues, which covered the 195354 school year. Not long after the line was launched in September 1953, lawyers for the newspaper supplement Parade insisted that the name be changed. “I just hadn’t given any thought to that,” Lidofsky said. And so Picture Parade became Picture Progress.44 The first issue, the now-legendary Cold War artifact Andy’s Atomic Adventures, was Lidofsky’s pet project. (Andy was named for Kanter’s grandson.) She wrote the script, assisted by her husband, Leon J. Lidofsky, a renowned nuclear physicist and professor at Columbia University. For the inside front cover, Dr. Lidofsky was asked to pose for a photo wearing a jacket, shirt, and tie. “But it was a hot July day in New York City,” his wife recalled. “So that’s exactly what he wore for the picture: a shirt, a tie, a jacket — and nothing else. All these years later, the photo makes me laugh.” 45 Of her time at Gilberton, Lidofsky said, “It was a lark. I loved it.” She remembered Albert Kanter with affection. “He was a very warm person,” she said, “and a good businessman. He was very close to his children.” He was also physically very close to his comics. Current issues were kept in the rear offices, and, Lidofsky recalled, “Al Kanter would go running to the back, screaming at the man in charge there to get the stock moving. He wasn’t yelling because he was angry. It was just that the man was hard of hearing and wore a hearing aid. But when he heard Al coming, he would turn off his volume control.”46

XII

Maurice del Bourgo: A “Man’s World Artist” A

superb illustrator who, in the words of Hames Ware, “never produced a disappointment,” Maurice del Bourgo had worked for Ace, Hillman, and Prize.1 At one point, he provided art for DC’s Green Arrow. Although he was not associated with the Iger shop, he became a Gilberton regular between 1951 and 1953. Among the younger Classics artists of the early 1950s, only Rudy Palais equaled his dramatic energy; no one surpassed his pictorial narrative skill. Like Robert Hayward Webb before and Lou Cameron after him, del Bourgo was a decisively masculine presence on the Gilberton roster. He was, in the words of Classics Reader editor Bill Briggs, an “outdoorsy, blow-by-blow, give-no-quarter, man’s world artist.”2 His confidently inked work, whether set in the Alaskan wilderness or the North African desert, the trenches of the Western Front or the plains of the Wild West, seemed “all vigor, all struggle, all male bonding.”3 But del Bourgo was also an intellectual among illustrators, an introspective artist who set high aesthetic standards for himself. He would never allow anyone else to do his inking, and he sought, unsuccessfully, to have some input in the coloring of his pages. As the artist observed in a written interview with Classics Reader editor Jim Sands, he “would ... agonize over things that ultimately didn’t mean much of anything, but had a lot of significance for me.”4 Although he “deplored some of the illustrations” he saw in other Classics Illustrated issues, he concluded that “the publisher wanted mass production with reasonable competence, and that’s just what he got.”5 Del Bourgo studied “sporadically” for six years Maurice del Bourgo, Under Two Flags (August 1951). Cigarette gives all for love.

131

132

CLASSICS Illustrated Cigarette was the most vibrant Classics heroine since Matt Baker’s Lorna Doone. Her sacrificial intervention before the aristocratic English hero’s firing squad broke many a preadolescent reader’s heart. Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, No. 91 ( January 1952), as adapted by Fitch, featured minimal dialogue and showcased del Bourgo’s skill in creating character and conflict with animals. The artist approached the novel with his characteristic self-tasking vitality, consulting the original 1903 illustrations by Philip R. Goodwin and Charles Livingston Bull in his handling of Buck, the central figure of the novel. Buck’s mortal combat with Spitz, his growing bond with John Thornton, and his ultimate transformation into the feared “ghost dog” are rendered without verbal or visual sentiment. The devastation of war brought forth the artist’s most harrowing work in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, No. 95 (May 1952), published, interestingly enough,

Maurice del Bourgo, The Call of the Wild (January 1952). The “dominant primordial beast” makes his kill.

at the Art Students League in New York under George Bridgman, who taught him anatomy, and Ivan Olinsky and William von Schlegell, two fine-arts painters. The artist’s resources were limited, and he would from time to time “play saxophone with dance bands until I could get enough $$$ to resume my studies. This was possible at the ASL. After this I managed to latch on to some illustration and commercial art jobs with art studios, newspapers and ad agencies.”6 Meyer Kaplan recruited freelancer del Bourgo for Gilberton; editor and artist would later collaborate on a project for NBC, with Kaplan acting as agent.7 The first title assigned to del Bourgo was Under Two Flags, No. 86 (August 1951), an 1867 French Chasseurs d’Afrique melodrama by Ouida (Maria Louisa de la Ramée), whose works have slipped from popular consciousness since Hollywood lost interest in them in the early 1960s. It is arguable that the overripe Under Two Flags was actually improved by scriptwriter Ken W. Fitch’s pruning. As for the artist’s contribution, his

Maurice del Bourgo, All Quiet on the Western Front (May 1952). The horrors of war are on display in a timely title published during the Korean conflict.

XII. MAURICE DEL BOURGO

133

Among the finest of del Bourgo’s efforts, William Tell, No. 101 (November 1952), features consistently interesting panel composition, vivid character delineation, and striking background detail. Tell’s escape from a storm-tossed boat and the assassination of the tyrant Gessler are dramatically executed tableaux. Most memorable, however, is the famous episode in which the hero is forced to shoot an arrow through an apple placed on his son’s head. Del Bourgo placed it at the center of William Tell, spreading the scene across two pages and adding to the tension, as the arrow speeds on its way, by rendering the reactions of the gathered witnesses. Shifting to a Western setting posed no problem for the artist in Buffalo Bill, No. 106 (April 1953), which remained one of the most popular tiMaurice del Bourgo, William Tell (November 1952). Grace under pressure. tles in the series through the early 1970s. A centerfold illustration of William Cody earning his soduring the Korean War, in a year when war comics such as briquet is an epic-scale scene of cheerful mayhem among the War Adventures (Atlas/Marvel) and Star Spangled War Stories 8 bison. Equally impressive is the sequence of panels, carefully set (DC) were proliferating on newsstands. The artist recalled up on the preceding page by a narrative box explanation of that “I was delighted with the chance to do All Quiet. I had read “bleeding Kansas,” in which young Cody witnesses a near-fatal Erich Maria Remarque and had been tremendously moved by attack on his free-state father by a group of pro-slavery “Missouri it. Once I got the script, I determined to pull out all the stops.”9 men.” Del Bourgo made effective use of shading in close-up So disturbingly true to the antiwar novel were Fitch’s adapdrawings of characters’ faces, lending greater nuance and depth tation and del Bourgo’s illustrations that the title was withdrawn to the most extroverted of his Gilberton performances. in 1955, when several other “objectionable” issues were disconThe artist’s final title for Classics Illustrated was a beautitinued. Violent images, such as the graveyard-scene splash or fully drawn adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s relatively unthe hand-to-hand combat centerfold, were scrutinized in the known historical novel, The Forty-Five Guardsmen, No. 113 wake of legislative hearings on the alleged harmful effects of (November 1953), part of the Valois cycle that included Queen comic books on American youth. All Quiet on the Western Front Margot and Chicot the Jester. The abridgment itself was deftly was not reprinted for another decade, when another, more diachieved, but, with its emphasis on the dynastic struggle bevisive, war was beginning to capture the nation’s attention. tween Henri III and Henri of Navarre, the book demanded a If there was a single instance to disprove Hames Ware’s better acquaintance with 16th-century French history than dictum that del Bourgo never produced a disappointment, it most young American readers could claim. In The Forty-Five was the artist’s work on “An Outline History of the Civil War.” Guardsmen, the artist presented a rich panoply of period cosThe 15-page filler item for issue No. 98 could be said to have tumes. At the same time, del Bourgo’s compositional technique paved the way for the Special Issues and World Around Us series shifted toward the clean lines and uncluttered backgrounds of the late 1950s and was the first of three Classics Illustrated that would characterize the Gilberton house style from the treatments of the national conflict. Designed to extend the mid–1950s onward. length of the issue containing the Famous Authors edition of Standing always apart, the artist saw himself as a serious The Red Badge of Courage, the “Outline History” suffers from illustrator who understood but resisted the traditional, comuncharacteristic lapses, including a panel depicting Abraham mercialized comic-book formula. Meyer Kaplan hired him for Lincoln, alone in his box at Ford’s Theatre, clutching his chest specific projects if he thought his style was “compatible with and tilting his head backward as a rather simian John “Wilks” the story.”10 Del Bourgo never met any other Gilberton artist (a letterer’s, not the artist’s, mistake) Booth leaps to the stage.

134

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: Maurice del Bourgo, Buffalo Bill (April 1953). Young Bill Cody is introduced to a “bleeding Kansas” political discussion. Right: Maurice del Bourgo, The Forty-Five Guardsmen (November 1953). The artist’s eye for period detail is evident throughout the adaptation of the Dumas novel of dynastic intrigue.

and always worked in his home studio, devoting a month to six weeks to each Classics script while simultaneously engaged in other projects. The artist stated in his interview with Jim Sands that “Kiefer and Blum were in the traditional comic-book mold. I was not.”11 As for the other artists who worked for Gilberton at the time, “I neither looked up to them nor did I feel contempt for their work. They were much more favored than I was because their pages were so much more useful to the employer. He wanted mass production with reasonable competence, and that’s just what he got.”12

At the time, according to the artist, Gilberton’s standard rate was $15 per page, a low pay scale in keeping with the company’s policy of getting the most for the least. But there were compensating factors in terms of page layout (six panels on average rather than eight), book length (44 pages), and creative control. “We had total freedom in interpretation,” del Bourgo declared. “We developed our own guidelines.”13 That state of affairs would change significantly within a few years, thanks to a young woman hired at about the time the artist finished his last Classics Illustrated assignment.

XIII

Canonical Matters and Classical Curiosities “THE WORLD’S GREATEST AUTHORS”

T

he cover of each Classics Illustrated issue boasted that the series featured “Stories by the World’s Greatest Authors.” Reorder lists in the early 1950s declared that “There Have Been No Greater Story Tellers Than These Immortal Authors” whose names were then catalogued. But who were they? And who weren’t they? A quick answer to both questions might be the “usual suspects.” Most of the writers represented were European or American males. With ten books in the series, Jules Verne was the most adapted author, followed by Alexandre Dumas (nine); James Fenimore Cooper (eight); Robert Louis Stevenson (seven); a tie among Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and H.G. Wells (five); and a tie among Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.A. Henty, Victor Hugo, and co-authors Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall (four). Also-rans included Frank Buck, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, and Edgar Allan Poe (three titles); and William Wilkie Collins, H. Rider Haggard, Charles Boardman Hawes, Homer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Frederick Marryat, Herman Melville, Francis Parkman, and Ernest Thompson Seton (two titles). Some of these were writers whose stories appealed primarily to boys, who, most industry analysts believed, bought most of the comic books in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, although available data suggests a more even distribution. Indeed, the year 1949 witnessed a surge in the sales of romance comics, and Gilberton responded with the publication of three titles in a row aimed primarily at female readers: Wuthering Heights, Black Beauty, and The Woman in White. In any event, only eight women authors were represented in Classics Illustrated: Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, George

Eliot (Mary Ann or Marian Evans), Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée), Jane Porter, Anna Sewell, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. With respect to 19thcentury women authors, two omissions are glaringly obvious.

Alex A. Blum, From the Earth to the Moon (March 1953). With ten Classics Illustrated adaptations from his “Extraordinary Voyages” published between 1946 and 1962, Jules Verne was the most popular author in the Gilberton catalogue.

135

136

CLASSICS Illustrated

edged” (at least by Gilberton’s editorial board and inventory control) that, where comic books were concerned, it was a boys’ world. At least it was thought to be so, whatever the available data might have said to the contrary. The received wisdom maintained that boys drew a distinction between women writers and what they perceived as girls’ books. Thus, despite the battlefield cover of the 1949 edition of Black Beauty, most boys of the era would have had some difficulty in regarding it as a wartime story. Other books, although written by women, passed what might be called the “genderneutral test.” These included Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Frankenstein, The Scottish Chiefs, and Under Two Flags. Of course, Shelley’s Frankenstein was sui generis, existing outside all conventional categories; the Classics Illustrated adaptation went through 19 printings between 1945 and 1971. Then, too, there was the matter of the frequent appearance of the Brontë sisters and George Eliot on high school required-reading lists (though that still doesn’t explain the absence of Austen). Of the titles by the eight women authors, three —Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Black Beauty— were, at one time or another, dropped from the reorder list; these were more explicitly “girls’ books.” Some honorary “girls’ books” by male authors, such as Alice in Wonderland and The Woman in White, were out of print for long periods of time. The Cloister and the Hearth, a borderline half-adventure, half-romance case, disappeared from the reorder lists after a single printing. Yet others, such as Lorna Doone, enjoyed continuous runs. For that matter, the best-selling Unidentified artist, Joan of Arc (first painted cover, 1955). Although few “girls’ books” biography published in the series was Joan were included in the series, Joan of Arc transcended gender appeal and was the bestof Arc. These latter two titles, naturally, selling Classics Illustrated biography. were packed with action. If Silas Marner made the cut, why didn’t Little Women? No black authors appeared in the Classics catalogue; at (The Louisa May Alcott favorite appeared in a 1956 Simon & the time little attention was paid to African-American literature Schuster Golden Picture Classic edition, a sort of Classics Illusin either popular or academic culture. A well-intentioned effort trated “Senior.”) If there was room for the Brontës, why was to make amends in 1969 resulted in the final Classics Illustrated Jane Austen excluded? Perhaps Pride and Prejudice was conedition, Negro Americans —The Early Years. When it hit the sidered too sophisticated in its deployment of irony. Whatever newsstands a year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther the case might have been, it was “a truth universally acknowlKing, Jr., the title was already an anachronism.

XIII. CANONICAL MATTERS AND CLASSICAL CURIOSITIES Classics Illustrated, in effect, established a literary canon for its young readership that to some degree mirrored the canon endorsed by high school and college English departments and that reflected the cultural assumptions of the period. Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe was the single best-selling title in the series, but the plays of Shakespeare clearly held pride of place. Except for the first Classics Illustrated title by the Bard, Julius Caesar, each of the Shakespeare adaptations was issued in September —1951, 1952, 1955, 1956 — to coincide with the beginning of the school year. Ivanhoe, Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, Huckleberry Finn, Jane Eyre, Silas Marner, The Call of the Wild, The Red Badge of Courage, and Lord Jim were among the most often-assigned works in postwar American schools, and Classics Illustrated ratified these and other pedagogical preferences. (On the other hand, not a single work by Thomas Hardy was adapted by Gilberton, despite the classroom omnipresence of The Return of the Native and Far from the Madding Crowd.) Sixty-six of the titles that appeared in the series were recommended in the 1957 Boy Scouts of America Reading manual (Merit Badge Series), including such relative obscurities as Henryk Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword and Frederick Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy. At the same time, the series extended the shelf lives of second- or third-tier authors such as Charles Kingsley, R.D. Blackmore, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Eugene Sue, Edward Everett Hale, Charles Reade, Jane Porter, Anthony Hope, Ouida, W.H. Hudson, Talbot Mundy, Richard Harding Davis, G.A. Henty, and Winston Churchill (the American author, not the British prime minister). By mid-century, these writers had largely receded from popular consciousness; they were introduced to another generation thanks to the childhood reading habits of Albert Kanter, William Kanter, Meyer Kaplan, and other Gilberton staffers — or the impending release of a Hollywood film.

FILLERS

AND

FEATURES

In keeping with Albert Kanter’s insistence on the educational role of Classics Illustrated, extra pages at the end of each issue were devoted to informative articles that, by the early 1950s, were often related to the subject matter of the book. During Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht’s editorial tenure in the late 1950s and early 1960s, nearly all of the filler material had some thematic connection. From issue No. 1 onward, a biography of the author accompanied the adaptation. Dumas, Scott, and Cooper, the first authors included in the series, received two-page profiles; later sketches were reduced to a single page. For the most part, the brief lives were accurate and occasionally entertaining. Sir

137

Walter Scott’s embarrassing and painful mishap with George IV’s brandy glass was duly recorded, along with an anecdote about James Fenimore Cooper’s impulsive decision to become a novelist while reading a book he disliked. However, concessions to propriety were made in certain instances: the circumstances of Jack London’s death and the marital status of Fanny Osbourne at the time she met Robert Louis Stevenson were treated with an excess of delicacy (Fanny was described as “an American widow”). In the 1941 edition of The Three Musketeers, readers were assured that, whatever his racial ancestry, Alexandre Dumas “had a fair skin, light hair and blue eyes.” The comment was cut in 1959. Issue No. 3, The Count of Monte Cristo, contained the first actual filler item, a biography of Napoleon, whose fortunes set the plot of the Dumas novel in motion. During World War II, combat articles such as Michael Sullivan’s “Flight Over Tokyo” or patriotic poems such as Ralph Waldo Emerson “Concord Hymn” frequently appeared. After the Iger shop began packaging Classic Comics in 1945, regular filler features were added. Heroic dog stories were an early and longendurings taple. “Pioneers of Science” was inaugurated in 1946 with an outline of Joseph Priestley’s contributions; the feature continued until 1952, surveying the careers of 58 scientists, mathematicians, explorers, and inventors. Figures profiled ranged from Hippocrates to Marie Curie. The article on Pythagoras, in issue No. 75, contained the following passages that indicate the level on which some of the “Pioneers of Science” fillers were written: To Pythagoras goes the honor of first proving two fundamental propositions of geometry. One of these, known as the 47th proposition in Euclid, deals with right angled triangles. The theorum, or statement to be proven is: the square (the number times itself ) on the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. The other proposition proves that the sum of the three angles of a triangle equals two right angles. The solution is simple enough when all the necessary preliminaries are proved, but its demonstration, with that of its necessary preliminaries, proves that Pythagoras was a very brilliant reasoner.

In a 1989 article in the Journal of Chemical Education, Henry A. Carter praised the feature and other Gilberton publications for providing “a source of information on the lives of many famous chemists....”1 For example, issue No. 54 provided a biography of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, “The Father of Chemistry.” Young readers learned about the scientist’s formulation of the theory of elements and compounds as well as his death during the Reign of Terror, although the view adopted of the French Revolution was so oversimplified and reactionary (suggesting outright hostility to science) that it might have satisfied Prince Metternich himself. “Famous Operas” (often written by Kenneth W. Fitch or Eleanor Lidofsky) introduced young readers to Mozart’s Don

138

CLASSICS Illustrated

spreads. Sports legends Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, the Dean Brothers, and Knute Rockne were profiled, among others, in “Stories from the World of Sports.” A feature titled “Great Lives” offered in 1948 a biography of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to receive a medical degree. Other figures profiled in the series included Aesop, Nathan Hale, and Lawrence of Arabia. “American Presidents” offered “incidents” in the lives of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and others. Even “Bad Men of the West” found their place in the back pages, as reverse images of heroes such as Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok. A 12-part comics-style series titled “The Story of Great Britain” was introduced in issue No. 127 in July 1955 and concluded in issue No. 138 in May 1957. The back-of-the-book two-page spread offered compact illustrated overviews of historical eras or events such as Roman Britain, the Norman Conquest, the Elizabethan Age, the Puritan Revolution, and the Victorian Era. A young reader following the series from the beginning would have learned about Hadrian’s Wall, the Domesday Book, Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt, the Spanish Armada, the “Glorious Revolution,” the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, and the Anglo-American alliance during World War II. By the late 1950s, under Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht’s direction, filler pieces bore some relation to the work adapted and supplied a broader context for the reader. Thus, a child who had just finished the Classics edition of G.A. Henty’s In the Reign of Terror could read a biLou Cameron, “The Story of Great Britain,” Part 9, in Classics Illustrated No. 135 ography of Robespierre — or, on com(November 1956). The 12-part series surveyed British history from the Celtic invasion pleting Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, could to the postwar era. learn about the life of the Buddha. Jules Verne’s Off on a Comet included a backGiovanni, Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, Richard Wagner’s Das Rheinof-the-book article contrasting the planets Mercury and Jupiter gold, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. In “Stories from Early and another recounting the mythological origins of constellaAmerica,” the capture of Ticonderoga and the California Gold tions’ names. Rush were among the many historical events recounted. AmerIn the 1961 revised edition of Tom Brown’s School Days, ican Indians and American rivers were studied in two-page

XIII. CANONICAL MATTERS AND CLASSICAL CURIOSITIES

One of the most popular and enduring features in Classics Illustrated was the “Who Am I?” quiz that appeared inside the front covers of hundreds of original editions and reprints, beginning with issue No. 86, Under Two Flags (August 1951), and ending with issue No. 163, Master of the World ( July 1961). The literary trivia game not only tested the reader’s knowledge of characters in stories adapted for Classics Illustrated, but also promoted the series. For ten years, the format never changed— five clues gave information that amounted to plot summaries, with the title of the book and the author’s name in the fifth clue, and the name of the character was printed upside down at the end. Among the names included were such well-known characters as Uncas from The Last of the Mohicans and Ishmael from Moby Dick as well as more obscure ones such as Humphrey Van Weyden from The Sea Wolf and Jean Macquart from The Downfall. The following are early and late “Who Am I?” quizzes, as printed in issue No. 89, Crime and Punishment (November 1951), and in issue No. 156, The Conquest of Mexico (May 1960). The same rules prefaced both: I am a famous literary character. Can you guess my name from the clues below? Rate your familiarity with me as follows: If you can identify me from CLUE I, your score is superior; from CLUE II — excellent; from CLUE III — very good; from CLUE IV — good; from CLUE V — fair. If after CLUE V you still cannot identify me, I suggest you read the exciting story in which I appear.

From No. 89: CLUE I: On my engagement day, I was imprisoned in the Chateau d’If on forged evidence and false charges. CLUE II: In prison, I tried to escape with a fellow prisoner, the old Abbe Faria. From him, I learned about the plot against me. I swore that I would avenge myself. Before we could escape, he died. CLUE III: Upon the Abbe’s death, I became heir to his hidden treasure. I escaped from prison in his death shrouds, cut myself loose and was rescued by a passing smuggling ship. CLUE IV: I made my way to the island of Monte Cristo, where I discovered a vast treasure. Although it meant danger, I had but one goal in life — revenge.

From No. 156: CLUE I: I was a member of a group of amateur actors. I dwelled in a little town surrounded by a large, quiet forest. CLUE II: One day, the leader of our group told us we were to give a command performance before the duke and his bride on their wedding day. CLUE III: We decided to practice reading our parts in the forest. Although we didn’t know it at the time, the forest was inhabited by a group of fairies. CLUE IV: I had the misfortune of meeting with one of these impish fellows. For reasons of his own, he changed the appearance of my head to that of a donkey! When my fellow actors saw me, they were so frightened they fled the forest in terror. CLUE V: As if this wasn’t enough, that prankish fairy had also cast a spell over the queen of all the fairies which caused her to fall in love with me — donkey head and all. The exciting climax of my story can be found in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. [Nick Bottom]

“WHO AM I?”

CLUE V: I returned to France and, using the name “Sinbad the Sailor,” helped my loyal friends. With the use of disguise and the fortune at my disposal, I brought about the downfall of my four enemies. My adventures were recorded by Alexandre Dumas in his novel The Count of Monte Cristo. [Edmond Dantes]

the article “Children of the Slums” revealed the other side of Victorian England, while “A Mound of Ruins” juxtaposed the 1755 Lisbon earthquake with the devastation depicted in the 1961 revision of The Last Days of Pompeii. An essay on the ancient Egyptian cult of the dead appeared in the 1961 edition of Cleopatra, along with an account of the ill-fated union of Antony and the Greco-Egyptian queen. It was quite an education for pocket change.

139

THE MYSTIQUE

OF THE

REORDER LIST

A source of profound confusion to the uninitiated, the Classics Illustrated reorder list enabled readers to check off by issue number the titles they had already obtained or those they wished to order directly from the publisher. For collectors, the lists have long provided the most accurate method of dating an edition. More than 1,200 reprinted editions of 164 titles rolled off the presses between 1943 and 1971. Until September 1963, Gilberton did not date its reprints but instead reproduced the original publication indicia inside the front covers. A (usually) current title list, however, was placed on the back or inside covers of all but a few reprinted editions, along with a coupon addressed to the publisher. Raymond True provided a signal service for Classics collectors in the early 1970s, when he established a formal system of dating issues by means of the last title listed on reorder lists; this time-stamp came to be known among collectors by the term he used — the highest reorder number (HRN).2 Thus, if the title list on your copy of No. 128, Macbeth (September 1955), ended at HRN 128 and had a “Coming Next” ad for No. 129, Davy Crockett, on the inside front cover, you knew you had an original edition. If the HRN was 143,

140

CLASSICS Illustrated

If the example sounds confusing, in practice it wasn’t. One’s frame of reference was pictorial; the colorful lists spotlighted reproductions of different issue covers. When introduced at HRN 10 in 1943, each of the Classic Comics titles was depicted, but after the first 20 began crowding each other, representative issues were displayed. After 1953, only a single title, or at most two, were shown. Eight-year-olds could easily distinguish between reprints from the mid–1950s (showing Don Quixote against a red background), the late ’50s (Caesar’s Conquests on light blue), and the ’60s (Off on a Comet on blue or white). Ten-year-old experts could explain why you should be wary of HRN 149 in guessing a book’s age. (An HRN 149 surfaced in 1961, with the cover of No. 149 instead of No. 130 shown as the representative book, two years after No. 149 appeared.) For obsessive personalities in the making, the reorder lists provided ideal training. Why was No. 43, Great Expectations, a frequently assigned school text, deleted in 1952 after a second printing, never to return to the Classics catalogue? Why was No. 11, Don Quixote, discontinued in 1949, reissued in 1953 with a painted cover that was given pride of place as the representative issue on reorder lists for nearly three years, and dropped again in 1956? Why were Nos. 68 and 82 available on coupons between 1955 and 1960 but not included on the actual title lists? Pity the young collector whose faith in an ordered A 1951 Classics Illustrated reorder list. For an earlier example, see Chapter I; for later examuniverse might have been shaken ples, see Chapters XVI and XXII. by coming upon a British Classics Illustrated edition in which the renumbered list showed Huckthe book was a reprint, issued around March 1958, when No. leberry Finn rather than The Three Musketeers as issue No. 1. 143, Kim, was added to the series. A Macbeth with a list ending The real source of fascination was in the older lists, where at HRN 158 dated from the fall of 1960. And so on until the subsequently discontinued titles offered tantalizing bits of inspring of 1970, when the eighth printing appeared with the formation and raised assorted conundrums: Was Westward Ho! terminal HRN of 169.

XIII. CANONICAL MATTERS AND CLASSICAL CURIOSITIES

141

about cowboys? Who were The Corsican Brothers? What was The Black Tulip? And how about Mr. Midshipman Easy or those Forty-Five Guardsmen? But most intriguing of all, what would you find in Mysteries, 3 Famous Mysteries, and Mysteries of Paris?

“COMING NEXT” From the very first issue, Classic Comics—and then Classics Illustrated— previewed the next title with “Coming Next” ads. Back-cover, full-page color illustrations heralded subsequent editions through No. 14. In issue No. 15, the notice was moved to the inside back cover, where the short-lived “Klassic Komic Kid” (drawn by Lou Zansky), clutching a baseball bat and wearing a mortar board, an academic gown, and cleats, informed readers that “I’ve just seen the colored proofs of Gulliver’s Travels.... Gee ... it sure is exciting....” A few issues later, the Kid was exhorting readers not to miss “the mad story about The Hunchback of Notre Dame ... the homely little man who was brave enough to fight the whole population of Paris ... singlehanded! Golly!” Despite these endorsements, the issues sold well. A less goofy but no less restrained style soon took hold, and the “Coming Next” feature eventually moved to the inside front cover, displaying mockups of the forthcoming line-drawing covers. Breathless descriptions spoke of “action—suspense—excitement in the next great issue of Classic Comics.” Each successive issue was promoted in the language of testosterone. “Never has there been a greater story than Kid“Coming Next...” The May 1958 ad for Classics Illustrated No. 145. napped in the next great issue of Classics shifted to a bimonthly publication schedule in 1954. Brief, deIllustrated,” a January 1948 ad proclaimed. In April 1952, scriptive paragraphs, written with increasingly greater skill, Gilberton announced the upcoming All Quiet on the Western were appended. For instance, the September 1958 teaser for Front as “a story with the impact of an exploding bomb.” Ben-Hur emphasized the theme of revenge: “At the time of Two months later, in issue No. 96, the understated headJesus, young Judah Ben-Hur, son of a prince of Jerusalem, had ing, “Coming Next Month,” first appeared. It was replaced by wealth, money, and power. In a day he was stripped of this by “Coming” and finally “Coming Next” after Classics Illustrated

Two longtime in-house promotions for Classics Illustrated.

XIII. CANONICAL MATTERS AND CLASSICAL CURIOSITIES Messala, a Roman. Through years of toil as a galley slave, BenHur thought of nothing but vengeance. Then one day his wish was granted. He met Messala in a chariot race.” The style was adopted for Classics Illustrated Junior in 1953. Both series ran the ads in every new title until the final issues appeared — neither CI No. 168 nor No. 169 contained one, nor did Junior No. 577. While the “Coming Next” ads in the line-drawing cover era generally provided an accurate representation in reduction of the following month’s cover, painted covers were redrawn, usually by Alex Blum, with pen and ink. (Only Crime and Punishment was advertised using a photograph of the painted cover.) Generally, the line-draw ing sketches of painted covers were reasonably accurate in terms of scale and physical features, but on some occasions, such as the promotions for Davy Crockett and In the Reign of Terror, Blum wasn’t even close. Then, too, there was the nonexistent No. 145, The Buccaneer, scheduled for July 1958 but delayed because of a lastminute artist substitution. Blum created a cover that, as it turned out, had nothing to do with the rescheduled book and a figure who looked nothing like Yul Brynner, the star of the film on which the title was based. The Buccaneer was issued as No. 148 in January 1949 with a quite different painted-cover design by Norm Saunders, featuring a Brynner-like Jean Lafitte. Meanwhile, The Crisis had been substituted in the No. 145 slot, and the original edition of No. 144, with its erroneous “Coming Next” ad, became an instant collector’s item.

PROMOS

AND

PREMIUMS

Although the actual pages of Classic Comics and Classics Illustrated did not, with some early exceptions, contain advertising, the inside and back covers always displayed in-house promotional matter, from reorder lists for the various Gilberton series to inducements for subscribers. In the 1960s, Gilberton even promoted a series of Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks published by its 101 Fifth Avenue neighbor, Ballantine Books. The ads evolved as the years progressed, reflecting the changing identity of the publication. Featured on numerous back covers in the mid- to late1940s were colorful pitches for “Classic Comics Gift Boxes,” which contained five issues of sequentially numbered titles. Thus, the first box’s contents consisted of issues 1 through 5; the second, issues 6 through 10; and so on. Originally designed for mailing to World War II servicemen, the boxes were relentlessly promoted but never really caught on.

143

The problem was that the five issues were boxed together at a cost of fifty-nine cents, while the buyer, who had no choice concerning the box’s contents, could select five titles from the newsstand for only fifty cents, allowing change for a soft drink or a candy bar. Doing a little subtraction, most readers passed on the offer. Simple math also doomed the three Classics Illustrated “Giant” editions, advertised on back covers and inside covers from 1949 to 1951. Each of the issues consisted of four previously published titles, collected under a single cover. The cost was fifty cents, which, until the cover price of the series increased from ten to fifteen cents in March 1951, put the purchaser at a disadvantage. In 1949, Gilberton introduced a subscription premium: “FREE! FREE! FREE! 40 of the World’s Greatest Comic Strip Characters in TATTOOS (also known as Transfers or Decalcomanias) are yours FREE with a subscription for only 10 coming issues of Classics Illustrated.” The same ad was printed on countless inside covers until 1959, when a World Around Us subscription solicitation took its place. Presumably, the same stock of “tattoos” lasted for a full decade. Another long-running Gilberton promotion was for Classics Illustrated binders, which were introduced in 1951 and were advertised until the end in 1971. The supply more than exceeded the demand, and with good reason. According to the advertisement, “Each binder holds 12 books securely. Each is covered in beautiful, brown simulated leather and is richly imprinted with gold on both cover and backbone. Simple instructions make binding possible in a matter of minutes.” Unfortunately, “simulated” was the controlling descriptive term. Worse, binding was achieved with thick, remarkably unelastic rubber bands that tore the tops and bottoms of comic-book spines or that snapped when stretched too far to reach the opposing hook. Originally priced at $1.00, the cost had risen only to $1.50 when Classics Illustrated ceased publication, and the original inventory still served the purpose. Responding to interest in the space race, Gilberton borrowed a promotional product and ad from its British subsidiary in the 1960s. “Now you can ‘shoot the Moon’— land on Venus or Mars and perform many adventures in orbit with the sensational new Space Age Toy ORBITOP, ‘Satellite on a string.’” A boy in distinctly English attire, wearing a school sweater and tie, was shown spinning what appeared to be a yo-yo with encapsulated back-to-back astronauts, strange creatures unknown to the GIs who had received Classic Comics Gift Boxes twenty years earlier.

XIV

Lou Cameron: “If John Wayne Had Drawn Comic Books” I

f John Wayne had drawn comic books,” Hames Ware observed, “he would have been Lou Cameron.”1 There is, indeed, something larger than life about the artist turned writer, who won awards in both capacities. His drawings and painted covers for Classics Illustrated from 1953 to 1956 included some of the most vital artwork published in the series. In addition, the broad-smiling, hearty characters he drew reflected his own expansive personality. Born in San Francisco on 20 June 1924, the son of actor Louis Arnold and Ziegfeld girl Ruth Marvin (through whom he was distantly related to actor Lee Marvin), Cameron studied at the California School of Fine Arts. Dropping out to join the army after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he served as an artillery scout and combat instructor in the European theater during World War II. He became a technical sergeant and won the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and three battle stars.2 At various times, the professed “Deathbed Catholic” worked as a movie extra, a private detective, a ranch hand, and a trucker. Between 1950 and 1960, Cameron freelanced for magazines and comic books. For The Man Who Discovered America, a pictorial biography of Columbus that he drew for Gilberton’s Picture Progress educational series, he received the Thomas Alva Edison Award in 1956.3 Abruptly turning his back on commercial art in 1957, Cameron began a successful career as the author of such novels as The Block Busters, The Big Red Ball, The Dirty War of Sgt. Slade, The Amphorae Pirates, Cybernia, How the West Was Won, The Wilderness Seekers, and The Grass of Goodnight. As he put it, “I went home and threw out my drawing board, set up the first typewriter I had ever bought, and announced I was a writer, period. I have never regretted the move.”4 In 1976, he won the Spur Award for his western novel, The Spirit Horses. Cameron the author felt no warm nostalgia for his days as a comics artist. “What the Golden Age buffs fail to grasp,” he observed, “is that we were all starting out as wannabe illus-

“

trators, syndicated cartoonists, writers, et al.”5 Cameron wrote that “[N]one of us at the time thought we were doing all that much but paying the rent whilst we waited for Norman Rockwell to die and give us a crack at the real money. When a panel went well you smiled and inked it. When it came out a mess you considered what they were paying you and inked it.”6 Several years after the end of World War II, Cameron, who “wanted to be an illustrator,” had found himself “hand painting china lamps signed by the artist.”7 Deciding that comics “had to be an improvement,” he broke into the field with publisher Billy Friedman, who paid $23 a page, “which was low, but, Lord, he was easy to please and always wrote you a check the day after you delivered.”8 Later, he did some work for DC and Timely (Atlas) before “finding a fairly steady niche with Ace,” where the page rate was $32. Cameron became known in the early 1950s for his skull-strewn horror illustrations, which, however, were less overtly horrific than those of some of his contemporaries.9 In 1953, Ace and Gilberton both used the Bob MacLeod studio for Leroy-lettering penciled pages. Meyer A. Kaplan, managing editor of Classics Illustrated, recruited Cameron and Lin Streeter to freelance for the series. The rate was $5 less per page than Ace paid, but the 44 to 47 pages of artwork in a Classics issue more than compensated for the difference. As Cameron observed, “Classics hired you to do a whole book at once, rather than the usual seven pages. So their check looked good at rent time.”10 Kaplan evidently recognized and had confidence in Cameron’s abilities. Commenting on his editor, the artist wrote, “He was a reasonable guy who’d started out in the sales department, had no airs about his artistic or editorial skills and simply hired writers and artists who’d been hired earlier by other publishers. Most of whom paid better.”11 Cameron had less charitable memories of other Gilberton personnel, such as Alex A. Blum, whom he dismissed as a man “who’d failed as an artist and hence had to work as an ‘Art Director.’”12

144

Lou Cameron, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (October 1953). Dr. Jekyll fights a losing battle.

146

CLASSICS Illustrated

iconic painting for No. 13 by Mort Künstler graced the cover of the replacement. The revised Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains one of the most compelling Classics. Eschewing the horror style employed by Arnold Hicks in 1943 (except for the trademark skull here and there), Cameron brought to the surface the internal conflict in Robert Louis Stevenson’s parable of human duality, emphasizing the moral desperation in both the respected physician and his criminal alter ego through dramatic shading and imaginative angles. Technically, Cameron’s most interesting work for Gilberton was another Stevenson project — a pair of South Seas tales, “The Bottle Imp” and “The Beach of Falesa,” issued together under the title, The Bottle Imp, No. 116 (February 1954). Harry Miller’s adaptation of “Falesa,” Stevenson’s critique of colonial exploitation, softened the sexual and racial overtones and dispensed altogether with the distinctive first-person voice of the narrator, Wiltshire, and hence the author’s carefully crafted irony. Still, it is to the publisher’s credit that editor Meyer A. Kaplan recognized the neglected tale’s merit at a time when both high school and university English departments largely ignored Stevenson’s innovative later fiction. Following the example of science-fiction illustrator Ed Cartier, the artist experimented with a Wolff carbon pencil instead of inking, which resulted in more textured panels in both “The Beach of Falesa” and “The Bottle Imp.” The technique allowed Cameron, who excelled in rendering strenuous action, to experiment with shading and to achieve a dynamically Lou Cameron, “The Beach of Falesa” in The Bottle Imp (February 1954). The artist’s fluid effect in three full-page illustrations Wolff carbon pencil explosively in action. in the Stevenson issue. Another superbly drafted South Sea For his first assignment, the artist was given the task of adventure followed — Charles Nordhoff and James Norman completely redrawing a newly scripted edition of one of the Hall’s The Hurricane, No. 120 ( June 1954), for which he supmost popular titles, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and plied both the interior art and the painted cover. A 14-page Mr. Hyde, No. 13 (October 1953), which had been horribly sequence shows the storm building to its climax. The artist adapted and crudely drawn in its original Classic Comics infills panels with streaked and swirled linework representing carnation. This was the first of thirty earlier titles to be reissued the deadly tempest, while never losing the human focus and with new illustrations and, with one exception, texts; a now-

XIV. LOU CAMERON

147

the life-or-death decisions made by characters attempting to choose the course of action most likely to ensure survival. Of his illustrations in 1954, Cameron remarked, “I think some of my earlier work for Classics was better because I was simply allowed to draw it, hand it in, and cash the modest check.”13 If any Classics Illustrated title has assured the artist a place in comics history, it is his spectacular rendering of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, No. 124 (January 1955), for which he also painted the cover. Cameron’s gripping visual narrative featured the definitive depiction of the deadly Martian tripods. A two-page splash portrayed the lethal effect of the aliens’ attack in one of the most memorable drawings ever to appear in the series. Several decades later, when First Publishing attempted to revive Classics Illustrated, artist Ken Steacy was asked to provide artwork for a new edition of The War of the Worlds. He advised the editor simply to reprint Cameron’s version. “There is no way I could do it any better,” Steacy is reported as having said.14 Emile Zola’s ironic novel of the Franco-Prussian War, The Downfall (La Débâcle), No. 126 (May 1955), was, with “The Beach of Falesa,” one of the more mature literary adaptations that Cameron illustrated for Gilberton. It also featured Cameron’s most polished work for the series. His one-page minidrama of Henriette Weiss’s arrival at the scene of her husband’s imminent execution and his two-page treatment of Jean Macquart mortally wounding his friend, Maurice Levasseur, are concise triumphs of sequential art. Beginning in July 1955 with issue No. 127, Classics Illustrated ran a 12-part “Story of Great Britain” as a two-page, Lou Cameron, The Hurricane (June 1954). A minor work of popular fiction is given back-of-the-book spread. Cameron il- first-class treatment. lustrated all of the installments and obwas having significant differences with the Gilberton editorial viously relished working on the first nine (“The Celtic staff. Invasion” through “The Restoration”), lavishing attention upon Davy Crockett, No. 129 (November 1955), was issued Roman, Saxon, Norse, Norman, Tudor, and Stuart arms, by Gilberton in an effort to capitalize on the coonskin-cap armor, and costumes. The later chapters, which appear to have craze sparked by Walt Disney’s three-part Disneyland television been completed in haste, date from the period when the artist

148

CLASSICS Illustrated

gained increasing momentum with the airing of the second and third parts of the “Frontierland” trilogy, “Davy Crockett Goes to Congress” (26 January 1955) and “Davy Crockett at the Alamo” (23 February 1955). The entire series was repeated in April and May. Two additional episodes were filmed and broadcast later in the year: “Davy Crockett’s Keelboat Race” (16 November 1955) and “Davy Crockett and the River Pirates” (14 December 1955). By the time the fad ended, Crockettrelated toys, clothes, books, comics, games, guitars, lunch boxes, trading cards, accessories, and other items had generated $300 million in sales.15 Perhaps the most striking thing about Crockett mania was the Lou Cameron, The War of the Worlds (January 1955). Mars attacks! The artist’s conception of fact that it was absolutely sponthe original alien-invasion story is regarded by many as definitive. taneous in its inception. For the production (1954–1955) loosely based on the Tennessee confirst time, the baby-boom generation gave an indication of gressman and Texas martyr’s life. In 1954, Walt Disney had its demographic and economic power, and Madison Avenue selected folk hero Davy Crockett as the subject for the initial took notice. “Frontierland” episodes on the new ABC Disneyland television In response to the national Crockett frenzy, Classics Ilprogram. (Each week, the series would highlight a different lustrated released its own contribution to the voluminous pubsection —“Fantasyland,” “Tomorrowland”— of the California lications on the hero that appeared in 1955. Issue No. 129, theme park then under construction. To portray Crockett, Davy Crockett, was exceptionally well-researched; the script Disney hired Fess Parker (1925–2010), a relatively unknown was largely based on the congressman’s own Narrative of the actor whose performance in the 1954 science-fiction film Them! Life of David Crockett (1834), with some additional material had impressed him. added from Richard Penn Smith’s Col. Crockett’s Exploits and No one — not even Walt Disney himself— was prepared Adventures in Texas (1836), an unreliable work that had previfor what happened when the first of the episodes, “Davy ously been accepted by many as authentic. Crockett, Indian Fighter,” aired on Wednesday, 15 December Unfortunately, the bimonthly Classics production sched1954. On Thursday, 16 December, playgrounds across America ule didn’t accommodate fads very well, and the Crockett phewitnessed thousands of replays of the previous night’s program. nomenon had played itself out when Gilberton’s Davy Crockett In response to more than 200 calls that same day from licensees hit the newsstands in November 1955. As a result, sales of the for rights to Davy Crockett products, Disney hurriedly assemissue were disappointing, and the first printing was available bled a publicity kit, and marketing was underway. It was too until 1961, when it was withdrawn; a second, and final printing, late for the 1954 Christmas season, but the next year more than appeared in 1966 and was also subsequently discontinued. made up for the missed opportunity. Indeed, what followed was At about the time that Cameron was given the Davy simply staggering as word-of-mouth excitement spread from Crockett assignment, his disagreements with then untitled edneighborhood to neighborhood throughout the United States. itorial assistant Roberta Strauss about “alterations,” which had During the first two months of 1955, the Crockett craze been accelerating since The Hurricane, were coming to a head. Lou Cameron, The Downfall (May 1955). A tragic meeting between the novel’s two principal characters vividly displays the artist’s storytelling skills.

Left: Lou Cameron, Davy Crockett (November 1955). Davy Crockett, “Indian Fighter,” in a comic book published nearly a year after the Disneyland episode that sparked Crockett mania. Right: Lou Cameron, The Time Machine (June 1956). The Time Traveller declines the Morlocks’ invitation to dinner.

Lou Cameron, The Count of Monte Cristo (November 1956). The Count’s web of vengeance catches two flies (collection of the author).

152

CLASSICS Illustrated

“That’s what you call ego-trip changes for the sake of changes, ‘Alterations,’” Cameron commented.16 He described Strauss as something of a New York bohemian of the sort who are “taught ... to wear gray wrap-around skirts over leotards and ballet flats and never, never approve of any lesser artist’s work.”17 In a way, what occurred was an inevitable collision of two different, absolutely incompatible varieties of perfectionism. Strauss, who would later become editor-in-chief, had a passion for historical accuracy, textual fidelity, and pictorial continuity. Cameron, who had his own sense of historical accuracy, textual fidelity, and pictorial continuity, found her editorial directives meddlesome and an infringement upon the artist’s creative sphere. The result was a halfhearted effort in Davy Crockett. “I tried to cope,” Cameron wrote, “leaving a few things roughly drawn so I could ‘Alterate’ in a way that didn’t matter. You can see how steamed I was....”18 Some of the panels seem rushed, and the characteristic Cameron brio gleams only intermittently. Yet when it does, as in a hunting episode or at the Alamo, the legendary hero (who bears more than a passing resemblance to the artist) leaps to life. “I should have quit right there,” Cameron wrote. “I didn’t. Their checks were welcome and ... the whole field was shrinking in the mid-fifties.”19 For H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, No. 133 ( July 1956), Cameron “perked up ... because it was fun, or would have been.”20 The artist’s Morlocks remind the reader of Swift’s Yahoos, while his time machine is an elegant contraption that resembles, as Robert Franks has noted, electrons orbiting an atom, a potent symbol in the 1950s. But the text was flawed by scriptwriter Lorenz Graham’s sentimental unwillingness to follow the novel’s ending. Moreover, editorial demands that the artist alter the Time Traveller’s features to conform to the figure on George Wilson’s painted cover resulted in his most frustrating Classics Illustrated assignment. Cameron “made dumb changes to ‘Suit The Original Mss’ and get my damned money,” but his distaste for Gilberton had reached critical mass.21 Then, just when it appeared that things couldn’t get worse, they did. As Cameron tells the story, his Christopher Columbus book, The Man Who Discovered America, which

originally appeared in the Picture Progress series (September 1955) and was subsequently included in Classics Illustrated Special Issue No. 132A, The Story of America ( June 1956), “won a prize off the Thomas Edison Foundation, do gooders who cited it as an outstandingly educational comic book for kiddies blah blah. They threw a dinner at a swank New York hotel and handed out various citations to various swell guys like me. Only I never got the invitation reserving places for me and my then current lady. The first I heard I had won in the comix category was by phone, from friends who’d read it in the trades. This inspired me to call Gilberton. Without so much as a hangdog grin I was given my citation from the Edison guys and told they hadn’t forwarded my invitation because members of the staff had wanted to go to the dinner. I mean, they didn’t even know this was not nice!”22 Cameron’s final Classics project was a revision of Alexandre Dumas’s epic of revenge, The Count of Monte Cristo, No. 3 (November 1956). The artist’s illustrations included some interesting, if often spare, panel compositions, such as Edmond Dantes’s shrouded escape from Château d’If, the Count’s preparation for his duel with Albert, and Villefort’s judgment on his wife. These were as strong a series of images as any he had produced for Gilberton. Here and there the book showed signs of halfhearted, shortcut efforts, including about 30 panels with no background detail whatsoever. Regarding the legend that grew concerning his supposed revenge on Gilberton by creating his own salty dialogue in speech balloons on pages of original Monte Cristo art, Cameron declared, “I never saw them. I never would have done such a sophomoric thing. ... [N]obody in the process of producing anything has any call to vandalize production copy. I can only hazard a guess that some collector, of the species that carves notches on antique six guns, felt a need to improve their prize.”23 Better things beckoned, as the artist turned toward his true calling as a writer. “I would like to say I quit,” Cameron wrote. “But they never gave any of us the chance. ... I wasn’t there when Classics went down the tube but I wasn’t surprised. The hell of it was, ... it began as one of the best ideas in the field.”24

XV

Norman Nodel: “A Certain Integrity” D

uring the late 1950s and early 1960s, the prolific and accomplished Norman Nodel (Nochem Yeshaya) defined the increasingly polished Classics Illustrated house style. The soft-spoken artist dominated Gilberton’s stable of freelancers in much the same way that Henry C. Kiefer had a decade earlier. Indeed, in terms of output, if any artist deserves to be called, as Kiefer was, “Mr. Classics Illustrated,” it is Norman Nodel. In his quiet, unassuming way, he managed to outdraw and outlast them all. Nodel has been described by former editor and scriptwriter Al Sundel as “a gentleman [of ] the jacket-and-tie type, with a pleasing politeness”;1 his praises have been sung both as illustrator and man by artists as different in temperament as Lou Cameron and George Evans. A protégé of Alex A. Blum, the veteran art director, he was a favorite, along with Evans and Gray Morrow, of Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, the young, energetic editor who entrusted him with various major projects. Among Nodel’s strengths were a good compositional eye, a realistic approach to his subjects, an instinct for appropriate atmosphere, close attention to period detail, and an ability to create convincing caricatures and fantastic figures within a solidly representational context. These qualities enabled him to produce some of the finest and most memorable books in the series. Born in Phoebus, Virginia, near Hampton Roads, in 1922, Nodel spent his formative years in St. Louis, Missouri, where he developed an early interest in singing. At 15, he auditioned for the St. Louis Opera Chorus, impressing the conductor, Laslo Halasz, with his youthful bass voice. Nodel performed with the chorus through the season and was sponsored by the company and a contributor to study in New York. “One of the roles I studied,” he wrote, “was Mephistopheles in Faust. When I drew the artwork for the Classics edition of Faust, some of the mannerisms and the way that I depicted Mephisto were very much influenced by the way I had studied the role and the tutoring I had received from the dramatic coach.”2

While his musical career was taking shape, Nodel explored another creative passion, drawing and painting constantly. “At that time,” he recalled, “I was offered two scholarships; one to the National Academy of Design and one to Juilliard to study composition. I was forced to decline both by my sponsors, my voice coach, my voice teacher, and my dramatic instructor.”3 Nodel served in the European Theater in the Second World War, winning the Bronze Star as a combat artist. In 1945, he was asked to perform at the celebration of the meeting of the American and Russian armies, where “top American brass and top Russian brass joined me in singing the ‘Volga Boatmen.’”4 After the war, Nodel became the art director for an advertising agency. There he specialized in tight renderings using airbrush and scratchboard, techniques that would be put to use later in Classics Illustrated. After a year of producing ads for the Tourneau watch, William Wise, and others, the artist decided to “go free lance.”5 Among his accounts was Ace Comics, which also employed Classics artists Lou Cameron, Lin Streeter, and Louis Zansky. Norman Nodel’s association with the Gilberton Company began in 1954. “When I first went there,” the artist recalled, “I submitted a portfolio to [art director] Alex Blum, who told me that The Ox-Bow Incident was scheduled for publication and asked me to work up a page for it. I did and then was hired.”6 Nodel’s illustrations for issue No. 125 (March 1955) caught the stark, somber mood of Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s tragic study of mob justice in the waning days of the Wild West. From the disillusioned narrator Croft with his dangling cigarette to the implacable self-appointed executioner Tetly with his unforgiving profile, from the earnest defender of the rule of law, Davies, to the anguished innocent victim Martin, the artist tellingly conveyed the essence of the novel’s characters. During the same period, Nodel also worked on Gilber-

153

154

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: Norman Nodel, The Ox-Bow Incident (March 1955). Powerful character studies in the artist’s first assignment led to the longest freelance association in the history of the publication. Right: Norman Nodel, The King of the Mountains (July 1955). The artist’s sprightliest Gilberton performance.

ton’s Picture Progress educational series, earning the respect of the editorial staff for his reliability. His next Classics assignment was an adaptation of The King of the Mountains, No. 127 ( July 1955), a little-known French satirical work based on author Edmond About’s experiences among Greek bandits. The title allowed the artist scope for his gift for caricature, and he applied it gleefully to such types as the pedantic German narrator and the snobbish English hostages. Nodel returned to Western terrain for Emerson Hough’s combination of morality play and romantic triangle, The Covered Wagon, No. 131 (March 1956), but the drawings—and particularly the inking—lacked the subtlety of his previous efforts. In short order, the Gilberton editorial staff recognized the artist’s merits and assigned him the task of illustrating revamped editions of significant earlier titles, beginning with the two most popular books in the history of the series, Moby

Dick, No. 5 (revised edition, March 1956), and Ivanhoe, No. 2 (revised edition, January 1957). For the new adaptation of Moby Dick, issued in the same year as John Huston’s film, Nodel avoided turning Captain Ahab into Gregory Peck and Ishmael into Richard Basehart; instead, he chose to model his characters’ features on Louis Zansky’s familiar 1942 Classic Comics drawings. But where Zansky’s panels were clearly in the comics tradition, Nodel’s obviously belonged to the family of book illustration. (In addition, a more accurate script restored some of Herman Melville’s language, including the famous opening line, “Call me Ishmael.”) The artist devoted particular attention to giving visual expression to the inner torment of Ahab as he harangues or mesmerizes his crew. His whale-hunting scenes conveyed a sense of energy, movement, and danger. Nodel’s work on Ivanhoe also bore some resemblance to the Jacquet shop’s 1941 interpretation of Sir Walter Scott’s medieval

XV. NORMAN NODEL

155

romance. Here, however, the artist, who was light-years ahead in technique, invested the various characters with well-observed personality distinctions, animating even the rather passive nominal hero. A particular triumph was Rebecca, who loved Ivanhoe but was pursued by Bois-Guilbert. Nodel remarked that, as a Jewish illustrator, he particularly enjoyed his work on the self-sufficient Jewish heroine, one of Scott’s most appealing female characters.7 The confrontation scene between Rebecca and the Norman Templar is one of the strongest sequences in the 1957 revision. In Ivanhoe, Nodel perfected his closeup character studies and also displayed his flair for historical detail, from weaponry to falconry. The result was one of the most handsome issues in the Classics Illustrated catalogue. For The Ten Commandments, Special Issue No. 135A (December 1956), Nodel’s commitment to authenticity was further evidenced. In addition to studying the materials provided by Gilberton’s research staff, the artist spent an afternoon with Dr. William C. Hayes, the curator of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, who showed him various antiquities that found their way into the book’s illustrations.8 Nodel noted that “I used the scratchboard technique in The Ten Commandments and Faust. This is a method in which the illustrations are ‘scratched’ out of a completely black surface.”9 The experiment allowed the artist to enhance the effect of the interplay between darkness and light. His painted cover for The Ten Commandments, on the other hand, is awash in red and yellow as Moses receives the Norman Nodel, Moby Dick (March 1956). Ahab and his crew meet their doom. tablets of the law. scope. Nodel seized the opportunity, adding depth to his porAfter The Ten Commandments and Ivanhoe, which had trayal of the trio of subterranean adventurers and providing kept him occupied for a considerable length of time, Nodel exotic views of imagined landscapes and extinct creatures. turned his attention to Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of Among his most effective sequences in Journey was a depiction the Earth, No. 138 (May 1957). One of the most popular titles in elongated vertical panels of a storm on the underground in the Classics Illustrated series, the science-fiction tale offered sea. The claustrophobic narrowness of the panel spaces visually the artist a small number of characters and great imaginative

Left: Norman Nodel, Ivanhoe (January 1957). The artist enjoyed drawing the proud Jewish heroine Rebecca. Right: Norman Nodel, The Ten Commandments (December 1956). Using the scratchboard technique, the artist created created light from darkness.

XV. NORMAN NODEL

157

reinforced the three principal characters’ sense of isolation, helplessness, and fear. Nodel would continue playing with page-layout conventions in his subsequent work for Gilberton. Although the quality of Classics Illustrated artwork had dramatically improved during the years Nodel was associated with Gilberton, it had been at the cost of a certain homogenization in the format of the series. This was particularly evident in the almost universal prescription of square or rectangular panels with straightedged borders. These gave the pages a clean, crisp look but sacrificed much of the function of the panel as a narrative device as employed, for example, by Rudy Palais in David Balfour. Comics artist and theorist Will Eisner has noted that the very shape or absence of the panel can further the momentum of the story by conveying “something of the dimension of sound and emotional climate in which the action occurs, as well as contributing to the atmosphere of the page as a whole.”10 Breaks from the straight-lined box were rare in Classics Illustrated after 1957, but even within those constraints, Nodel showed his command of the medium. In Ernest Thompson Seton’s Lives of the Hunted, No. 157 (July 1960), the artist made the convention work in his favor in a sequence of four elongated panels on one page showing the stages of a hunted ram’s leap for safety down the sides of a steep gorge. Norman Nodel, A Journey to the Center of the Earth (May 1957). Vertical panels emphasize Nodel retained the full-length fear and suspense. frame on the next page but Hunted, Frank Buck’s On Jungle Trails, No. 140 (September widened it to depict the ram’s entire flock following his exam1957), and Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, No. 60 (revised edition, ple. Half-length panels then revealed the fate of the pursuing Fall 1960). He demonstrated his mastery of historical illusdogs and the bafflement of the hunters. tration in Abraham Lincoln, No. 142 ( January 1958), G.A. Versatility was one of the artist’s most esteemed qualities, Henty’s The Lion of the North, No. 155 (March 1960), H. Rider and he showed it in his animal illustrations for Lives of the

158

CLASSICS Illustrated

Norman Nodel, Lives of the Hunted (July 1960). The artist further explores the use of vertical panels to engage the reader in the breathtaking immediacy of a ram’s escape.

Haggard’s Cleopatra, No. 161 (March 1961), and in various Special Issues and World Around Us titles. For the Lincoln biography, Nodel relied on a variety of period photographs and portraits. The Henty adaptation contained well-researched drawings of the middle phase of the Thirty Years’ War, and contains some of the finest examples of the artist’s use of line patterns to underscore the atmosphere and emotional content of the tale. Indeed, The Lion of the North properly ranks with Nodel’s major Gilberton projects, such as his Hugo and Goethe titles, and probably would be more highly regarded if the literary stock of the boys’ book that he illustrated had not fallen so low in the second half of the 20th century. Cleopatra, another slight novel, included a wealth of Hellenized Egyptian details and showed the artist’s ability to elevate almost any source material. Nodel’s depiction of the execution of Louis XVI, in The French Revolution, No. W14 (September 1959), revealed an acquaintance with documentary accounts of the event.

Two books issued in the spring of 1959 showed the artist moving toward a new range of expression. Both Owen Wister’s The Virginian, No. 150 (May 1959), and Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, No. 12 (revised edition, May 1959), featured a greater emphasis on shading to set the tone of a particular sequence of panels. A poker game in the former title is invested with ominous foreboding, thanks to Nodel’s attention to linework. Rip Van Winkle included “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which contains one of the most delightful renderings of the pursuit of the hapless, lanky schoolmaster Ichabod Crane by Brom Bones, disguised as the Headless Horseman. (These illustrations served the artist so well that he used them as models for another edition of the story in 1970.11) The new adaptation, unlike the 1943 version, was faithful to Irving’s sketches, incorporating the author’s language and conveying his gently satirical tone of voice. Regarding his technique, Nodel commented that “At first

XV. NORMAN NODEL

159

I did mostly outline work as Mr. Blum directed, but in the later period I was able to add stronger blacks to attain richer texture.”12 The shift in style became particularly pronounced in The Invisible Man, No. 153 (November 1959), where a striking scratchboard title-page splash and detailed drybrush strokes and pointillist dots in the opening pages immediately create a suspenseful atmosphere for the H.G. Wells “horror” title. In that issue, Nodel also produced carefully observed character studies of Mrs. Hall, Marvel, Kemp, and Colonel Ayde. The finest examples of the artist’s mature style are found in two Victor Hugo titles, Les Miserables, No. 9 (revised edition, March 1961), and The Man Who Laughs, No. 71 (revised edition, spring 1962), and Goethe’s Faust (August 1962). Somber shadings underscore the social and political messages of the Hugo adaptations. Nodel’s three-page sequence in Les Miserables depicting Jean Valjean bearing Marius through the Paris sewers masterfully compresses the themes of degradation, aspiration, and renewal. The artist’s favorite illustrations in the book were the panels showing Jean Valjean emerging from the water and approaching the light shining through a grating.13 In The Man Who Laughs, the artist produced a more startling and more deeply human conception of the disfigured Gwynplaine than Alex Blum’s 1950 rendering. Alfred Sundel’s adaptation passed over the happy ending that had been tacked on to the earlier edition, and Nodel invested Hugo’s parable of oppression with tragic dignity and a sharply satirical Norman Nodel, The Lion of the North (March 1960). A dark vision of war and its human thrust. Just as there was a concern for cost. social justice that animated the The artist returned to Jules Verne for one of his last GilFrench author’s fiction, so there was, in the devoutly religious berton projects, Tigers and Traitors, No. 166 (May 1962). Based Jewish artist’s artistic vision, a moral imperative drawn from on the second part of the French author’s larger work, The the prophetic tradition that infused his best work. The Man Steam-House, the story was a rousing adventure tale set in India Who Laughs stands, with Les Miserables and Faust, foremost after the Sepoy Mutiny. Nodel produced striking illustrations among Nodel’s noblest efforts in the sequential-art form.

160

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: Norman Nodel, The Virginian (May 1959). Oppressive linework foreshadows the ultimate confrontation between the Virginian and Trampas. Right: Norman Nodel, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in Rip Van Winkle (May 1959). Ichabod Crane gets his comeuppance.

of the steam-powered mechanical elephant in motion, a tiger attack, and the dramatic reunion of the grieving Colonel Munro and his long-lost wife Laura. Editor Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht considered the artist’s treatment of Faust the pinnacle of Gilberton’s achievement. It ranked with the Hugo books and the Irving stories among Nodel’s favorites. Alfred Sundel, who wrote the script, recalled that the Goethe title was “done at my insistence to impress the [American Library Association] and booksellers’ and educational conventions. I wrote Faust in a blaze on a weekend and in a few evenings, quickly, while I was on staff. It may have been one of the toughest scripts ever for me. Roberta gave it to Norman Nodel, and it took off as our showroom Cadillac.”14

Indeed, the appearance of the book, which transcended the comics category, prompted William Kanter’s wry remark that “We make Cadillacs and market them as Chevrolets.” In addition to the intelligent adaptation, Faust provides a visual feast, with Nodel adroitly moving from baroque profuseness in Part I to classical spareness in Part II. Part of the artist’s inspiration came from the stage. When he was working on the book, a German theater company came to New York for a rare production of Goethe’s drama. Gilberton purchased two tickets for the artist and his wife so that he would have a more complete frame of reference for his illustrations. “That was the sort of care that they took,” Nodel said.15 The deadline for Faust was tight; a booksellers’ conven-

Opposite: Norman Nodel, The Invisible Man (November 1959). Pointillist dots, shadows, and Citizen Kane lighting effects contribute to an atmosphere of terror.

162

CLASSICS Illustrated

Nodel discovered that no sooner had he completed a penciled sketch for the cover than it was colored in by art director Sidney Miller and used in place of the painting he had intended to provide. “That was my only regret about the book,” the artist remarked. “It [the cover] looked so unfinished.”16 The next project was, in fact, left unfinished. In 1962, Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht assigned Nodel a revision of The Pathfinder, No. 22, which he had partially completed when the domestic Classics operation abruptly came to a halt. The boards remained with the artist but were eventually discarded after sustaining water damage.17 Nodel’s cover painting for the title, show ing how the characters would have appeared in the revised edition, had already been submitted by the artist and was issued by Gilberton on a reprint in November 1963. Turning elsewhere for employment, the artist produced a treatment of Doctor No, the first James Bond film, for DC’s Showcase series. The artwork was censored for what were deemed racially insensitive portrayals, but before the toned-down American edition appeared, an unexpurgated edition surfaced as British Classics Illustrated No. 158A. Near the end of the decade, Gilberton’s successor, Frawley, engaged Nodel to produce a variety of new painted covers, including A Tale of Two Cities, Les Miserables, Jane Eyre, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; to overhaul completely The Jungle Book; and to illustrate the final Classics title, Negro Americans —The Early Years, No. 169 (Spring 1969). Working in his Long Island backyard when weather permitted, Nodel Norman Nodel, Les Miserables (March 1961). Darkness and light provide thematic conenjoyed the frequent visits of neighbortrasts in the illustrations for Victor Hugo’s masterpiece. hood high school students who “knew tion was looming, and the book was to be the centerpiece of I was working on Classics and would come to see what I was dothe Gilberton display. The artist returned to the scratchboard ing to get ideas for book reports.”18 In the 1990s, he continued style that had worked so well for him in The Ten Commandments. producing artwork for educational and religious publications Opposite: Norman Nodel, The Man Who Laughs (Spring 1962). Compare with the Blum illustrations in the 1950 edition.

164

CLASSICS Illustrated raising it to a high level of quality so that we could attract children who would otherwise never be introduced to the great world of literature. I was also very proud to share this goal with George Evans, Lou Cameron, and other outstanding artists.”19 Illustrating 48-page books with an eye to authenticity was “tough work,” the artist said, “but I enjoyed it, and I tried to keep a certain integrity in what I did.”20 Decades later, it still showed. In 1997, Nodel discussed the possibility of illustrating a children’s retelling of “The Judgment of Paris,” the background story of the origin of the Trojan War. “I’d like to do a series of books based on Greek myths,” he said.21 But he also had plans for travel to Israel and other projects to complete. Continuing the work he loved in his calling as an artist, Norman Nodel died on 25 February 2000.

AN ARTIST ’S NOTES Norman Nodel on the creation of the artwork for a Classics Illustrated issue: After conferring with Roberta [Strauss Feuerlicht] about the next story to be illustrated, I would often make sketches of characters and backgrounds. We would exchange ideas. I then proceeded to lay out the entire story, breaking the artwork into panels and lettering in the script so the letterer could gauge his or her spacing. In illustrating a story, you, the artist, are like a movie director. You choose the cast, act as scenic designer, angle the dramatic shots, distant, close-up, down shots, up shots; whatever you feel adds interest and drama to the story. And let’s not forget about research! Here is where you must avoid being sidetracked by some fascinating bit of historical information and lose valuable time. Sometimes Classics would provide me with some important reference. Upon completion of pencils, Roberta and other Norman Nodel, Faust (August 1962). Mephistopheles works his wiles on Goethe’s intellectual hero. editorial staff would “fine-tooth comb” every panel, making comments in blue pencil on the margins of the work, sometimes to your irritation. You often had to stand your aimed at younger readers, such as historical and Biblical colground about your interpretation. oring books and card games and a 12-book series of full-color After this procedure, the inking began. I used a Number 3 paintings depicting favorite Biblical stories such as David and Windsor Newton Sable brush. In some stories, I used brush Goliath for Waldman-Creative Child Press and several comic throughout, often employing a technique called ‘feathering.’ books, including The Story of Money and The Story of Inflation, This required a very delicate touch to the tip of your brush for the Federal Reserve. where you made the brush spread gradually by increasing pressure. This was often repeated, one lien to another till you cre“It was my good fortune,” Nodel wrote, “to work with a ated an almost half-tone effect. It may also be done in reverse visionary publisher, Mr. Albert Kanter, and a dedicated editor, fashion. In other stories, I used pen first, then added brush.

Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht. We shared a common dream: to improve on an authentic American art form, the comic book,

— Letter to author, 25 July 1997

XVI

From the Crypt to the Classics: The EC Era B

y 1954, the term “witch hunt” had gained great currency, thanks to Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican whose continually inflating demagoguery would soon be punctured by a few quietly spoken words. That year, the comics industry endured the climax of its own witch hunt, spearheaded by a rather unlikely figure, Dr. Fredric Wertham (1895–1981), a German-born psychiatrist and theorist aligned, like his friend Theodor Adorno, with the neo–Marxist Frankfurt School, which viewed American mass culture with a critical eye.1 Few people have had a greater impact on the history of the comic book and its place in popular culture than Wertham. Like Thomas Bowdler, Anthony Comstock, or, for that matter, Joe McCarthy, his name has become — in comics circles, at least—a byword for prudery, bigotry, and persecution. It was an ironic twist for one whose critique of comic books was grounded in passionately liberal social concerns and was anything but a reactionary gesture. To the end, he protested (though perhaps too much) that his intentions had been misconstrued and, having rung the death knell for the Golden Age of comics in the mid-1950s, surprised many with a sympathetic study of comics fandom in The World of Fanzines (1973). Born Frederic J. Wertheimer in Nuremberg on 20 March 1895, the future cultural lightning rod received his medical degree in Germany and furthered his education in France and England. In 1921, he began his career in psychiatry at Emile Kraepelin’s clinic in Munich, where the importance of the patient’s environment was emphasized. Wertheimer emigrated to the United States in 1922, settled in Baltimore, and joined the staff and eventually became director of the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins University. Five years later, on becoming a United States citizen, he changed his last name to Wertham. (In 1948, “Frederic” became “Fredric,” to the everlasting confusion of bibliographers.)2 Wertham moved to New York City in 1932 to serve as senior psychiatrist in the New York City Department of Hospitals and to teach at New York University. Before his eternal

link to comics was forged, he earned professional distinction as the author, with his wife Florence Hesketh Wertham, of the influential textbook, The Brain as an Organ: Its Postmortem Study and Interpretation (1934). From 1933 to 1939, Wertham held various positions at New York’s Bellevue Hospital and in 1940 assumed the psychiatric-services directorship at Queens Hospital. Focusing on the link between mental health and violent crime, he established the first psychiatric facility to provide evaluations for convicted criminals. A proponent of racial equality, the psychiatrist helped found the Lafargue Clinic for low-income and black patients in Harlem in 1946.3 Wertham entered the realm of popular culture with his best-selling Dark Legend: A Study in Murder (1941), an account of a teenager who killed his mother. Another work, the sensationally titled The Show of Violence: A Psychiatrist Tells Why People Kill and How Murder Can Be Prevented (1949), based on his involvement with murder trials, further solidified his standing as a popularizer of psychiatric research and purveyor of psychological speculation. During the late 1940s, when the crime-comics wave was at its peak, Wertham, who had been working extensively with children, began focusing on comic books as a key to antisocial, abnormal behavior. In March 1948, while serving as president of the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, he chaired a symposium on “The Psychopathology of Comic Books.” Wertham claimed that comic books promoted sex and violence, asserting that in each of his case studies of juvenile delinquents and disturbed children, the reading of comic books was a significant factor.4 The psychiatrist’s critique of comic books touched a nerve at a time when what was termed “juvenile delinquency” aroused intense national concern. In 1948, Time magazine reported several “copycat” crimes — burglary, hanging, and poisoning — committed by youths who had been inspired by examples in comic books. In the same year, ABC radio presented a program titled “What’s Wrong With Comics?”5

165

166

CLASSICS Illustrated

horror comic books such as Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay and EC’s Haunt of Fear that continued to multiply with each new wave of aroused indignation.6 Classics Illustrated was not exempted from the attacks. Earlier titles, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Prince and the Pauper, and Twenty Years After, had been criticized for covers depicting extreme violence, and Henry C. Kiefer was kept busy in 1949 supplying tepid replacements. Yet even Kiefer had contributed “horror” covers of his own to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Mysteries, Great Expectations, and Mysteries of Paris. In 1952, when Great Expectations generated controversy because of the intensity of the cover depiction of two convicts struggling and the opening graveyard scene, the title was dropped from the U.S. series after a second printing, though it remained in circulation abroad (with different covers). Meanwhile, the tireless Dr. Wertham had weighed in with his own condemnation of Classics Illustrated —and, for that matter, comic books in general. With the publication in 1954 of Seduction of the Innocent, he earned a species of immortality. The overwrought jeremiad was abstracted in the Reader’s Digest, the popular conservative oracle, and was an alternate selection of the Book of the Month Club. It captured the reflexive public imagination and remains perhaps the single most important, and certainly the most influential, book ever written on comics. Seduction of the Innocent amplified the themes sounded by Wertham since 1948. The author indiscriminately lumped a wide range of comics together, indicting Classics Illustrated reorder list (May 1954). This catalogue listing, current in the year crime, horror, and romance series for their of the publication of Seduction of the Innocent, shows some “objectionable” titles (Dr. dangerous influence on susceptible young Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 3 Famous Mysteries, Two Years Before the Mast, Mysteries, The minds. To underscore his concerns, he reGold Bug, and Crime and Punishment) still available. Mysteries of Paris last appeared on the reorder list the month before. By November 1955, all of the other titles men- produced out of context sixteen pages of panels and covers from different publicationed would be withdrawn — in some cases, forever. tions. Although Wertham included examDespite dissenting opinions from the psychiatric comples of violence and horror, he seemed particularly obsessed munity concerning Wertham’s methodology, the anticomics with images of buxom, leggy, half-clad women, such as Matt crusade gathered increasing publicity and support in the late Baker’s bound and headlighted Phantom Lady. 1940s and early 1950s. The principal targets were crime and Evidently warming to the subject, the good doctor man-

XVI. FROM THE CRYPT TO THE CLASSICS aged to detect a hidden image of a woman’s pubic hair in an enlargement of triangular shading on a man’s shoulder: “In ordinary comic books,” he noted beneath the panel in question, “there are pictures within pictures for children who know how to look.”7 Or, one is tempted to add, for adults who try hard to find. Naturally, Classics Illustrated attracted Wertham’s attention and disapproval. The subjective, anecdotal character of Seduction of the Innocent is distilled in the following paragraph: Comic books adapted from classical literature are reportedly used in 25,000 schools in the United States. If this is true, then I have never heard a more serious indictment of American education, for they emasculate the classics, condense them (leaving out everything that makes the book great), are just as badly printed and inartistically drawn as other comic books and, as I have often found, do not reveal to children the world of good literature which has at all times been the mainstay of liberal and humanistic education. They conceal it. The folklorist, G. Legman, writes of comic books based on classics, “After being processed in this way, no classic, no matter who wrote it, is in any way distinguishable from the floppity-rabbit and crime comics it is supposed to replace.”8

The authoritarian tone and broad brushstroke, evident throughout Wertham’s book, foreclosed the possibility of serious debate. The judge had already pronounced the sentence: “here was a civilization poisoning its wellspring[.]”9 A generally sympathetic reader, Commentary associate editor Robert Warshow, noted Dr. Wertham’s “humorless dedication” and pointed to his tendency to take anything said by a child at face value: “I suspect it would be a dull child indeed who could go to Dr. Wertham’s clinic and not discover very quickly that most of his problematical behavior can be explained in terms of comic books.”10 Yet Warshow, the father of an 11-year-old EC fan, expressed a parent’s concern: “I find it hard to accept the idea that there should be one area of his experience, apparently of considerable importance to him, which will have no important consequences. One comic book a week or ten, they must have an effect. How can I be expected to believe that it will be a good one?”11 Meanwhile, the New York Legislature had found itself so exercised by the threat to decency posed by comic books that it created a Joint Legislative Committee to Study the Publication of Comics, which held hearings in New York City in December 1951. Among the authorities invited to appear was Dr. Wertham, who declared that comic books caused the “psychological mutilation of children.”12 Classics Illustrated managing editor Meyer A. Kaplan answered the psychiatrist with a rhetorical flourish that constituted a Lower East Side manifesto: “No one denies the existence of juvenile delinquency. But to say that juvenile crime or the stimulus for it comes out of books is a falsehood. Instead, it comes from social injustice and economic exploitation, from

167

crushing inequality and the dog-eat-dog existence which is the lot of most of us. It comes from the slums and stews, from oppression and poverty. It was engendered and nurtured through the war years when every kind of violence and brutality was man’s ultimate virtue.”13 Responding to Wertham’s attack on Classics Illustrated in particular, Kaplan delivered a defense of the series in his concluding remarks that ranged from measured to overwrought: [I]t was on this form of “comic” that Dr. Wertham, in his [Saturday Review] article, waxed the most indignant. It is his contention that these magazines should be taken from the children and that they should be fed the original classics instead. Forcibly, if necessary. I cannot, of course, like this meddlesome and apparently hysterical medicine man, speak from beneath the mystic mantle of psychiatric mumbo-jumbo. But in all humility, I suggest that the child who has no interest in good literature will never, of his own choice, read it. Forcible feeding of the classics will make no more impression on him than a visit to the Museum of Art will make on a child who has no interest in fine art. The taste for good literature and fine art must be cultivated in a child slowly. He must be made to understand it before he can like it. By forcing him to read the truly heavy and none too easily understood language of the classics while still too young to appreciate it, a dislike for good reading will be cultivated rather than an interest. But a pictorial rendering of the great stories of the world which can be easily understood and therefore more readily liked would tend to cultivate that interest. Then, when he grows older, if he has any appetite at all for these things, he will want to know more fully those bookish treasures merely suggested in this, his first acquaintance with them. He will more eagerly read them in the original form because he will already have a mind’s eye picture of what the author was trying to portray in words. He will be able to visualize the protagonists: he will know how they looked and dressed and amidst what backgrounds and surrounding they worked, fought, loved and died. The names of d’Artagnan, Ivanhoe, Jean Valjean and other famous characters in the world of literature will be no strangers to him. And even if he should not have the desire to go on to reading the great works of literature in their original form, at least his cultural bankruptcy will not be as complete as otherwise. And when, at last, according to Dr. Wertham’s reasoning, he goes to the electric chair because in his unguarded and misguided youth he read Dick Tracy and Superman, he will be able to walk the last mile with head erect and shoulders squared, his spirit upheld by the shades of Rhoderick Dhu and Sydney Carton and an endless host of legendary heroes.14

The committee issued a report in 1955, finding Gilberton’s 3 Famous Mysteries, The Pathfinder, and Two Years Before the Mast especially reprehensible and declaring that “a quick examination readily reveals that the use of the word ‘classics’ is no guarantee against the presentation of brutality and violence.”15 In the fall of that year, 3 Famous Mysteries and Two Years Before the Mast disappeared from the reorder list, along with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Only The Pathfinder remained in print. With anxiety mounting, it was perhaps inevitable that

168

CLASSICS Illustrated Although the Senate hearings resulted in no congressional action, the comic-book industry responded with its own policing agency, the Comics Code Authority, administered under the auspices of the Comics Magazine Association of America.17 Twenty-six publishers—including Archie, DC, Harvey, and Timely— joined 19 distributors and technical-support companies in the incorporation of the CMAA on 7 September 1954, and within a week a “code of ethics” was in force.18 Disrespectful treatment of police or public officials was prohibited, as well as scenes of horror or lust. Overendowed women were out; the “sanctity of marriage” was in.19 Blandness became the prescribed order of the day. In 1955, following the negative publicity generated by Seduction of the Innocent and the Kefauver hearings, William Gaines folded the EC comics lines, killing the popular Tales from the Crypt and other series and throwing some of the most talented comics artists out of work. DC and other publishers quickly embraced the newly devised content guidelines of the Comics Code Authority, and the former EC illustrators found themselves unemployed and, given the fearfulness permeating the industry, often unemployable. Gilberton, like Dell (the home of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Dell Movie Classics, and other mainstream comics), refused to adopt the Code, insisting that the quality of its selfregulated publications required no external review. Thus, where other comics publishers hesitated or simply refused to employ the “tainted” EC veterans, Albert Kanter declined to acknowledge such constraints. Instead, he opened the door for the refugees.

Classics Illustrated No. 21, 3 Famous Mysteries (December 1953). Gilberton’s toned-down painted cover prominently featured bloodstains and was a principal target of anti-comics critics.

the comics controversy should ascend to the exalted realm of the United States Senate. That august body, like the New York Legislature before it, dispatched its Subcommittee on the Judiciary to Manhattan, where, under the chairmanship of Senator Estes Kefauver, it held hearings on the connection between comic books and children behaving badly. EC publisher William M. Gaines bore the brunt of hostile questioning from Senator Kefauver concerning a Crime SuspenStories cover depicting a woman’s severed head. The exchange, framed in unwinnable aesthetic rather than constitutional terms, doomed EC’s horror and crime comics — and, as it happened, other companies’ publications as well.16

JOE ORLANDO

The first of the EC artists to find a temporary home at 101 Fifth Avenue was Joe Orlando, one of the most innovative figures in the history of comics. From 1966 onward, the artist was active as editor, vice president, and creative director for DC Comics, where, among other things, he rehabilitated the horror genre, collaborated on the creation of Swamp Thing, and supervised the publication of the company’s first graphic novel, Star Raiders, in 1983.20 Following the death of his longtime friend William M. Gaines in 1995, Orlando assumed the mantle of associate publisher of Mad Magazine. In the 1950s, though, he was celebrated as one of the stars of Gaines’s EC powerhouse roster. Born on 4 April 1927 in Bari, Italy, Orlando was brought to the United States by his family in 1929. The young resident

XVI. FROM THE CRYPT TO THE CLASSICS

169

Although Orlando easily made the transition from the EC realm to the Roman, producing a superb title-page splash and some splendid battle sequences, elsewhere the artwork is uneven and gives the impression that the artist was not fully engaged in the book. Comics art authority Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., spotted other hands that neither he nor fellow researcher Hames Ware could conclusively identify.24 Whoever may have been involved with Orlando in Caesar’s Conquests, they freely adapted artwork from other sources. At least one panel, at the top of page 30, was “swiped” (the refreshingly noneuphemistic comics term for a direct borrowing) from the 22 January 1939 installment of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. But “swipes” have been common in comics from the beginning and, of course, are not unique to that particular art form. Caesar’s Conquests enjoyed steady support from young

Joe Orlando, Caesar’s Conquests (January 1956). The first Gilberton title to benefit from the EC diaspora.

of East Harlem and aspiring artist received his initial training in art at New York’s School of Industrial Arts.21 After studying under John Groth at New York’s Art Students League, he began illustrating comics under the auspices of Lloyd Jacquet in 1949, providing illustrations for Treasure Chest.22 Sharing studio space with Wally Wood and Harry Harrison, Orlando contributed to Fox, Fawcett, Avon, and other comics publishers until Fox’s business reverses cost the trio $6,000 in unpaid work. For a brief period, the artist left the comics field, but Wood enlisted him in 1951 to assist on projects for EC, such as Weird Fantasy, Tales from the Crypt, and Mad. There he remained until 1956, establishing himself as a master of horror, science-fiction, and humor.23 With EC foundering, Orlando found a haven at Gilberton in late 1955. His first Classics Illustrated title, Caesar’s Conquests, No. 130 ( January 1956), was an adaptation of that bane of second-year Latin students, Caesar’s Gallic War. (Curiously, Annette T. Rubinstein’s script skipped over the notorious opening: “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres....”)

Joe Orlando, A Tale of Two Cities (May 1956). Sydney Carton makes a far, far better exit in the revised Classics version scripted by Annette T. Rubinstein. (Compare with page 36.)

170

CLASSICS Illustrated

readers (or Latin students), who kept the title in print until the series ended in 1971. Curiously enough, however, its publication in January 1956 may have been the cause of the deletion of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar from the Classics Illustrated reorder list in November 1955. It is likely that Meyer Kaplan found the two titles too similar and feared that con-

fusion would result if both were listed at the same time. Although Julius Caesar was not named on any reorder list from November 1955 to May 1960 (when the Shakespeare adaptation appeared again on newsstands with a new painted cover), its series number, 68, was always listed on the direct-order coupon. Meanwhile, Orlando received a second Classics assignment that became his most widely known title for the series. The artist received the nod to draw the revised edition of A Tale of Two Cities, No. 6 (May 1956). It proved to be one of the most fortunate editorial decisions made at Gilberton. This time, Classics Illustrated got it right, producing a faithful, literate adaptation of the Dickens novel of sacrificial friendship — and Orlando, assisted by his EC friend George Evans,25 didn’t try to get away with shortcuts or steals. He produced memorable character studies of Sydney Carton, Madame Defarge, Doctor Manette, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, and even breathed life into the heavily starched Charles Darnay and saintly Lucie Manette. Orlando’s illustrations for Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, No. 143 (March 1958), are superb examples of visual storytelling. The parallel plots of the Lama’s quest for the River of the Arrow and Kim’s search for his identity and participation in “The Great Game” are framed by beautifully realized backgrounds and costumes of late 19th-century British India. The characters of Kim, the Lama, the horse trader Mahbub Ali, and the English officer Colonel Creighton are delineated with subtle precision. In anticipation of the following year’s release of the wide-screen William Wyler blockbuster Ben-Hur, Gilberton commissioned the artist to illustrate a comics version of Lew Wallace’s historicalreligious novel, issued as No. 147 (November 1958) in the series. (Gustav Schrotter had produced an edition of the story for Famous Authors in 1951.) The most ornately wrought of Orlando’s Classics, the book features generally busier panels and Joe Orlando, Kim (March 1958). The “Little Friend of All the World” and his mentor the frequent use of parallel lines to indicate shading or to suggest texture. begin their adventures in “The Great Game.”

XVI. FROM THE CRYPT TO THE CLASSICS

171

Besides the four Classics Illustrated titles, Orlando also provided artwork for sections of a Special Issue, Crossing the Rockies, No. 147A (December 1958), and two World Around Us issues, The Army, No. W9 (May 1959), and The Marines, No. W11 ( July 1959). In none of these shorter projects, however, despite a vigorous section on the Pony Express for No. 147A (see page 257), did the artist attain the same level he had set for himself in his earlier Gilberton books. Whatever the case, Orlando was soon on his way to greater challenges, including a remarkable 1965 Blazing Combat (Warren) story titled “Landscape,” which captured the moral ambivalence of America’s engagement in Vietnam at a point before the war had fully taken hold of the American psyche.26 Classics Illustrated, in the meantime, had helped pay the bills and further advance an outstanding artist’s reputation. Universally respected, Joe Orlando died on 23 December 1998.

GRAHAM INGELS The most extreme representative of the EC diaspora, Graham Ingels (1915–1991), who signed his experiments in terror “Ghastly,” produced some surprisingly tame work for Gilberton. Whether the uncharacteristic restraint was the result of self-censorship or editorial direction is unknown, but, at least in the case of one Classics Illustrated title, he made the limitations work for him. Having begun his career as a freelancer in 1935, the artist moved Joe Orlando, Ben-Hur (November 1958). Detailed linework enhances the panels depicting to Fiction House in 1943 while serv- the climactic chariot race. ing in a Long Island navy desk asWith EC’s shift to horror comics in 1950, Ingels achieved signment. After the war, Ingels became art director for Ned comics immortality as the creator of the “Old Witch” and as Pines’s Better Publications. By the end of the decade, he had the lead artist for The Haunt of Fear. The bizarre, contorted found his spiritual home at William Gaines’s Entertaining features of his subjects and the detailed linework in his often Comics, where he supplied a story for the first issue of War shocking panels contributed to the outré image of the EC line Against Crime.27

XVI. FROM THE CRYPT TO THE CLASSICS and earned Ingels recognition as the leading horror-comics artist.28 Following the burial of the Old Witch and The Haunt of Fear, “Ghastly” Graham turned, in 1956, to the Code-defying Gilberton Company. Already plagued by the alcoholism that would eventually destroy his career and his family life, Ingels accepted a commission to illustrate an adaptation of ErckmannChatrain’s Waterloo, No. 135 (November 1956), a historical sermon-as-novel on the follies of war and ambitious men. Where William Gaines had promoted an atmosphere of friendly rivalry and unexampled creativity at EC, Classics Illustrated was a comparatively regimented operation in the days of Roberta Strauss’s ascendancy. Although Alex Blum was art director and Meyer Kaplan managing editor, the young editorial assistant, who had already crossed swords with Lou Cameron, was unlikely to have been overawed by the industry reputation of the inimitable “Ghastly.” Unwilling to compromise on period detail and internal consistency, Strauss insisted that Ingels keep track of the number of buttons on the Napoleonic-era uniforms from panel to panel.29 If the editorial demands wore on the artist, the strain didn’t show in the finished product, which has been dismissed by some who admire the EC Ingels as “forgettable.”30 Waterloo is a disciplined performance, containing arresting contrasts between closeup individualized character studies and midrange to panoramic configurations of massed soldiers. Ingels drew what Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrain wrote, conveying a different kind of terror — that of war and the annihilation of the individual — in images of inhumanly mechanical columns of uniformed troops who achieve separate identities only when killed or wounded. No EC overstatement was necessary. Ingels also illustrated sections in seven World Around Us issues and the “Pony Soldiers” chapter in Special Issue No. 150A, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Except for the “Bloody Blackbeard” section in Pirates, No. W7 (March 1959) and the “Frontier Forts” section in Army, No. W9 (May 1959), which showed some sparks of energy, he seemed to be doing the minimum required to collect his check. In an effort to help Ingels, who, between his reputation as “Ghastly” Graham and his fondness for drink was having trouble getting work, George Evans passed along some penciled pages in The French Revolution, No. W14 (October 1959), which his friend inked, lending the illustrations something of his own style.31 The Evans and Ingels families were close friends and enjoyed sharing backyard cookouts. Evans recalls one such occasion when his young daughter “crawled into Graham’s lap and started sipping beer from the can he was holding. I found

173

them a little later, both asleep in the chair — and I didn’t have a camera!”32 Although Ingels was “a devout Catholic who was deeply disturbed by the work he had done for EC,” Evans recalls a “playful man who could have fun with that image.” One Halloween, Ingels, who lived in a wooded area, “rigged up a pulley that stretched for 90 feet from a tree to his house. He hung sheets from the line, and when kids came to his door, he flashed the lights and shook the line. The kids ran away screaming, and he was rolling on the floor. I told him, ‘Graham, that probably did more harm than any of your comic books.’”33 Following his Gilberton years and a period spent as a Famous Artists School instructor, Ingels moved to Florida, where he led an increasingly reclusive life, estranged from his family and most of his former colleagues. Although he eventually reestablished a relationship with his daughter, he refused, with Salingeresque rectitude, to entertain inquiries from anyone interested in his “Ghastly” career.34

GEORGE WOODBRIDGE A product of the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and an artist whose work appeared in William Gaines’s Mad, George Woodbridge (1930–2004) was part of that circle of talented younger illustrators who toiled for Classics in the late 1950s. A fine draftsman who was fascinated by history and hailed as the “Dean of Uniform Illustration,” his light linework and rather sketchy figures foreshadowed Gilberton styles of the early sixties. Woodbridge’s drawings for the revised edition of The House of the Seven Gables, No. 52 ( January 1958), have almost too airy a tone for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s meditation on the workings of time and the expiation of Matthew Maule’s curse. Still, certain panels, such as the hanging of Maule or the procession of ghostly Pyncheons, are evocative compositions. An interesting addition to the American Classics Illustrated series, Betty Jacobson’s adaptation of With Fire and Sword, No. 146 (September 1958), the relatively unknown (to Englishspeaking readers, at least) first part of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Polish historical trilogy, occasioned Woodbridge’s finest work for Gilberton and one of the handsomest titles of the late 1950s. The artist’s heavier brush strokes accentuated the dark atmosphere of the tale of the 17th-century Cossack revolt, particularly in his renderings of battle scenes. His attention to period detail, from armor to weapons, is impressive, and his touch, however light, is always sure.

Opposite: Graham Ingels, Waterloo (November 1956). Often underrated, the illustrations by “Ghastly” for Erckmann-Chatrain’s historical novel convey an antiwar message in an atypical, understated way (photograph of original art by Will Jones; collection of the author). Note the editorial instructions to the colorist.

174

CLASSICS Illustrated

MOON MEN : AL WILLIAMSON, ANGELO TORRES, ROY G. KRENKEL A popular issue that went through seven printings, The First Men in the Moon was something of an EC homecoming event. Given the opportunity to explore the congenial terrain of science fiction, Woodbridge, who supplied most of the drawings of human characters, Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, and Roy G. Krenkel turned in imaginative drawings that stirred young baby boomers at the dawn of the space race. Born in New York in 1931 and reared in Bogotá, Colombia, Al Williamson became one of the most revered figures in the comics field. Returning to New York in the 1940s, he studied under illustrator Burne Hogarth, whom he subsequently assisted on the Tarzan comic strip.35 He also worked with John Prentice on the Rip Kirby strip originated by his childhood idol, Alex Raymond, whose style he emulated. Les Daniels has observed that “The subtle texture of his artwork was based on his ability to suggest shapes without a constant reliance on hard lines.”36 In the early 1950s, Williamson rapidly rose to prominence with the refined, realistic style that he brought to such EC series as Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. Following EC’s demise, he worked in the horror, western, and adventure genres for Atlas (later Marvel). Gilberton secured his services for The First Men in the Moon— where his talent for imagining alien worlds served the project well—and for two World Around Us titles, Prehistoric Animals, No. W15 (November 1959), and Great ScienGeorge Woodbridge, The House of the Seven Gables (January 1958). The Pyncheons tists, No. 18 (February 1960). Following his brief encounter with pay their respects to their new recruit. Classics Illustrated, Williamson, along with But the title for which Woodbridge is best remembered other former EC colleagues, contributed to the black-andby Classics collectors is H.G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon, white magazines Creepy and Eerie. At the beginning of 1967, No. 144 (May 1958), a collaborative effort with three EC he took over the Secret Agent Corrigan comic strip (originally alumni. an Alex Raymond vehicle titled Secret Agent X-9). Williamson Opposite: George Woodbridge, With Fire and Sword (September 1958). Original art showing a grim view of war from an EC veteran (collection of the author).

176

CLASSICS Illustrated

Ranking the Classics artists of the later years, scriptwriter and editor Alfred Sundel placed Angelo Torres (b. 1932) among the top four regular freelancers— surpassed only by George Evans, Norman Nodel, and Gray Morrow. The young EC veteran provided some striking panels for The First Men in the Moon, but his finest work for Gilberton was the 1962 revision of issue No. 56, Victor Hugo’s The Toilers of the Sea. Ably exploiting the medium’s narrative (as opposed to merely illustrative) properties, Torres created drama and suspense in Gilliatt’s single-handed salvage operation, discovery of Clubin’s skeleton, and battle with an octopus. The artist revealed character in his depictions of the hero Gilliatt and the villain Clubin through closely observed facial expressions. Assisted by Stephen L. Addeo, who also worked on revisions of The Last of the Mohicans and Black Beauty, Torres produced an updated edition of The Man Without a Country, No. 63 (1962), that improved on Henry C. Kiefer’s 1949 version in many respects. For one thing, the pair limned an Aaron Burr that more or less resembled the historical figure. The uniforms and hair styles belong to the correct period, and the colorist remembered not to put American soldiers of the early 19th century in red coats. But the lightly sketched drawings often appear unfinished, and the colorist filled in an average of one panel per page monochromatically. Most of Torres’s work for Gilberton appeared in short sections in various Special Issues—The Atomic Age, No. 156A ( June 1960); To the Stars!, No. 165A (December 1961); World War II, George Woodbridge, Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, and Roy Krenkel, The First Men No. 166A (Spring 1962); Prehistoric World, No. 167A ( July 1962); and The in the Moon (May 1958). Weird Fantasy meets Classics Illustrated. United Nations (no number or date)— relinquished the strip to George Evans in the early 1980s.37 At and World Around Us titles —Great Scientists, No. W18 (Febthe behest of George Lucas, he also drew a Star Wars comic ruary 1960); Through Time and Space: The Story of Communistrip. Al Williamson died in upstate New York on 12 June 2010. cations, No. W20 (April 1960); The Civil War, No. W26 Opposite: Angelo Torres, The Toilers of the Sea (Spring 1962). Original art showing Gilliatt’s encounter with the villain Clubin’s skeleton (collection of the author).

178

CLASSICS Illustrated

(October 1960); Whaling, No. W28 (December 1960); Vikings, No. W29 (January 1961); Undersea Adventures, No. W30 (February 1961); Famous Teens, No. W33 (May 1961); and Fishing, No. W34 ( June 1961). According to Al Sundel, “The artists liked these shorter pieces, which meant more change in their pockets.”38 Also assisting on the H.G. Wells title was Al Williamson’s longtime friend and fellow EC émigré Roy G. Krenkel (1918– 1983), a background specialist whose ability to create atmos-

pheric settings was respected by his fellow artists. Always somewhat overshadowed by his colleagues, Krenkel achieved greater renown in the 1960s illustrating science-fiction and fantasy paperback covers. George Evans recalled the artist as “a wild man with a wonderful sense of style and humor.”39 When Krenkel was dying of lung cancer (an irony that he, as a nonsmoker, was able to appreciate), he frequently found himself in the position of comforting his friends, telling them, “I’m anxious to see what’s over there, if anything.”40

JOHN P. SEVERIN

John P. Severin, The Last of the Mohicans (May 1959). The EC artist brought historical realism to the dozen or so pages he completed for the Cooper revision.

EC artist and Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame honoree John Powers Severin (b. 26 December 1921) had a brief and ultimately unpleasant relationship with the Gilberton editorial department. Celebrated for the sophisticated simplicity that he had exploited to great effect in William Gaines’s Two-Fisted Tales, Severin had developed by the late 1950s a technique at once ornately realistic and elegantly clean. His first work for Classics was a pair of chapters, “Texas and the Alamo” and “The Mexican War,” in Special Issue No. 144A, Blazing the Trails West ( June 1958). The battle scenes are among the finest contributions to one of the strongest titles in the series and reflect the painstaking research that was part of Severin’s legacy from Two-Fisted Tales editor (and Mad mentor) Harvey Kurtzman. In 1959, art director L.B. Cole assigned Severin the art revision of The Last of the Mohicans, one of the best-selling Classics Illustrated titles. Detailed drawings of British uniforms, Native American gear, and frontier attire contribute to an atmosphere of authenticity. Severin’s sketches of Hawkeye, Uncas, Chingachgook, Magua, Duncan, Cora, Alice, and David Gamut establish fundamental character traits. The animated composition draws the reader ever deeper into the forest drama. Unfortunately, Severin completed only a dozen or so pages of pencils and then made his exit.41 Like Lou Cameron before him, the artist didn’t appreciate what might have been construed as editorial over-involvement on the part of Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht. What Severin managed to do in the book, even without finishing

Stephen Addeo and John P. Severin, The Last of the Mohicans (May 1959). Gilberton staffer Stephen Addeo acquits himself as well as possible in attempting to fill the shoes of a comics legend.

180

CLASSICS Illustrated assessment seems long overdue. It appears, from a close study of original-art panels, that Severin probably penciled a number of foreground figures on other boards beyond page 12. Further, although it may be heretical in some quarters to suggest that Addeo did a workmanlike job on the remainder of the book, it is equally clear that his contributions to the overall effect have been unfairly undervalued. The Severin-Addeo Last of the Mohicans remains what might be judged an accidental landmark in Classics Illustrated history.

ANNETTE T. RUBINSTEIN, SCRIPTWRITER Also associated with Classics Illustrated in its EC era was the notable socialist writer, teacher, and activist Annette T. Rubinstein (1910–2007), who in 1955 and 1956 scripted adaptations of Caesar’s Conquests, The Covered Wagon, A Tale of Two Cities, and, possibly, Robin Hood.42 A scholar with a Ph.D. from Columbia University who authored Marxist interpretations of English and American literature, she was a passionate supporter of civil rights, women’s rights, and other social-justice causes from the 1930s to the end of her life. Rubinstein, a member of the American Communist Party until 1952, was the object of blacklisting during the McCarthy period and the subject of scrutiny by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. She taught philosophy at New York University, served as principal of the Robert Louis Stevenson School, and worked with the Brecht Forum’s New York Marxist School.43 Norman Nodel, The Covered Wagon (March 1956). Scriptwriter Annette T. Rubinstein At a time when the Gilberton Comunsuccessfully pleaded with editor Roberta Strauss to allow her to rewrite a story she pany was welcoming blackballed EC artdetested. Indeed, the novel is afflicted with purple prose and poor plotting. ists, Roberta Strauss made several scriptthe job, elevated it to the front ranks of Gilberton productions. ing assignments available for her controversial mentor-friend. The comic was completed by Stephen L. Addeo, a competent Rubinstein evidently found all of the work congenial, except illustrator who subsequently served as art assistant for the series for the adaptation of Emerson Hough’s The Covered Wagon. in 1961 and 1962. While Caesar, Dickens, and the cycle of Robin Hood ballads A loss of vitality is evident on page 13, and some critics and legends occupied a higher literary plane, the western novel, regard the revised Mohicans as fatally flawed. A more balanced a now largely forgotten 1922 best-seller, belonged to a distinctly

XVI. FROM THE CRYPT TO THE CLASSICS lower literary order. Rubinstein’s rather amused frustration with the story is evident in a letter she typed to Strauss on 3 February 1955. More than a year would pass before the comic book was issued in March 1956, and the lapse of time is indicative of the struggle the scriptwriter was having with the material. Rubinstein’s letter is quoted in full because of the light its sheds on her personality, her relationship with Strauss, and the process of defining strategies for adaptation: Dear Miss Strauss, At long last I inclose a very very rough working plot outline of The Covered Wagon. I hope the delay hasn’t inconvenienced you, but I suddenly had a flood of lectures on everything from “Whitman & Neruda” to “Science Fiction & Detective Stories Today & Yesterday”— with a detour to include Justice Douglas’ “Almanac of Liberty.” I still have two to finish up in Philadelphia this weekend but I should be able to spend most of next week getting the wagon on the road. I really must apologize for the abominable writing as well as the abominable typing of the inclosed, but it is a matter of sending you a first draft dictated faster than I can type or holding the whole thing up until next week. This way you can call me Monday or Tuesday if there are any radical changes indicated — if, of course, you need it in a hurry. Otherwise it doesn’t matter when. I couldn’t cut out any more of the dreadful love story — you will notice I omitted the even more dreadful Bridger one entirely — because it’s the only reason for the necessary separation of the two wagon trains. If you don’t care about maintaining any recognizable relation to the book here, however, I could invent a better one by building up Wingate’s part and making the conflict between the two good men sharper and more consistent. We can then — we could, in any case if there’s too much incident — cut Woodhull’s quicksand business. In fact, I’d be happy to let your conscience be my guide in this matter if you’d like to have Woodhull killed off by the Indians (see P. 2, paragraph 6, inc.) and serve him right. Then we’d either have to let Molly

181

send Bannion to California because she feels guilty about her fickleness and lack of mourning (see P. 4, paragraph 1, inc.) or we’d have to go the whole hog and let him side with Wingate on Oregon vs. California at Fort Hall (see P. 4, paragraph 7) which would win Wingate’s respect for him and let Molly accept him right away. Of course that would also cut out the wedding business (see P. 4, paragraph 2) and perhaps the Indian attack in the next paragraph. The wound could be admitted as well, or transferred to one of the other Indian attacks. It’s very likely that in the actual writing it’ll prove more effective to have only two of those anyway — aside from the offstage one on Woodhull’s group — but meanwhile I’ve included all the major ones from the book. I think there will be a scene in the Indian camp before one of them for variety and to let the Indians themselves say some of the things quoted from Bridger (see P. 3, paragraph 5). Hastily, Annette T. Rubinstein P.S. I very stupidly haven’t made a carbon of this note, so please keep it with the script if you like any of the possibilities I’ve suggested for doing away with more of the love story. ATR44

Although she kept the note, Strauss—stickler for accuracy that she ever was — declined to accept Rubinstein’s suggestions for “doing away with more of the love story.” The “quicksand business” remains, and Bill Jackson, rather than the Indians, kills Sam Woodhull, true to Hough’s novel. Truncated as much as the scriptwriter could make it, the love story also stands, down to the cloying reunion of the lovers Will Bannion and Molly Wingate: “Oh, Will! I love you! I don’t care about your past.” Not even the champion of Paul Robeson and the Rosenbergs could prevail against the firm editorial hand of a self-assured young editor who represented, perhaps, the true “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

XVII

George Evans, Reed Crandall, and the Tradition of EC Realism G

eorge R. Evans (1920–2001) and Reed Crandall (1917– 1982) helped to reshape the style of Classics Illustrated the late 1950s and early 1960s. Working singly, in the case of Evans, or as a team, they brought the tradition of EC realism to full maturity in their work for the Gilberton Company.

GEORGE R. EVANS No artist associated with Classics Illustrated was more highly respected than George R. Evans, whose exquisitely wrought panels were unsurpassed in the history of the publication. “As an illustrator,” wrote scriptwriter and editor Alfred Sundel, “he had no weaknesses. He seemed the most profes-

sional [of the artists] in discussions. He was ... a very determined sort of guy.”1 Evans was born in Harwood, Pennsylvania, on 5 February 1920. His lifelong passions for airplanes and art — to say nothing of his determination — were evident early. “I have been an aviation nut since age seven — the ‘Lindy’ thing,” he wrote.2 (Charles Lindbergh made his celebrated nonstop flight from New York to Paris in 1927.) By the time he was 16, Evans was drawing airplanes for pulps. Three years of service in the Air Force followed a period of study at the Scranton Art School.3 In 1946, in the twilight of the Golden Age, Evans entered the comic-book field, working first for Fiction House and later for Fawcett. He resumed his studies at the Art Students League in New York in 1949. Comics immortality arrived in 1952, when he was hired by EC and began contributing to such titles as Weird Science, The Haunt of Fear, and Frontline Combat.4 Then came the fall — the EC debacle after Senate hearings — and Evans’s rebirth as a Classics contributor. The artist recounted that My stint with CI came as a result of the killing of the EC line by Kefauver and his politicians. Till then I’d just kept busy with other publishers, who paid a better page rate — and helpful as the digested versions of the great stories were, the art in [Gilberton’s] earlier series led to the thought that they just weren’t interested in illustration quality. When Bill Gaines ended his books except MAD, it was time to find other accounts (though I’d always kept other markets going, knowing how cyclical things George R. Evans in his pre–Gilberton days, circa 1953 (courtesy George R. Evans).

182

XVII. GEORGE EVANS, REED CRANDALL, AND THE TRADITION OF EC REALISM

183

tended to be). Naturally the “big” outfits were the ones I tried — and was astonished to find bitter resentment there over EC’s success — then its failure. A couple of editors threw into my face the blunt charge, “You _____s brought on all the trouble with the ____ you did, now there’s no way you’ll get any work from here.” (It turned out that that was personal animosity, for those outfits did, later, hire virtually all of the EC people [including Evans]— and swung toward what EC had done so well.) Anyway, before pounding the streets for work in the fields of mag and book illustrating, which was my ambition, there came a call from Joe Orlando: could I help him finish up a long script [A Tale of Two Cities, 1956] he had taken from Classics Illustrated? I did that — evidently the Classics people liked what Joe turned in and offered him more work, and he suggested I go see Mr. Blum [then the Gilberton art director] on my own. Which I did — and found that man to be one of the nicest, gentlest, kindest people I have ever met. ... I was sorry when he retired, for on every visit we would have some talk together. L.B. Cole succeeded Mr. Blum, and we got on well from the first day. I hadn’t known him, but knew his work. There was always another script waiting as soon as I turned in a finished job, right on till they erred in launching their digest-sized “slick” magazine to compete with the already-successful ones which evidently had a lock on the market.5

As for the Gilberton management, Evans considered Bill Kanter “the friendliest of the upper-echelon,” but “Albert Lewis had his office which was ... one step higher than God’s[.] ... Whatever he had to say to the staff was said in Patton-like phrases, and if anyone had anything other than ‘Yes, sir!’ to say, it was apparently said through Bill. ... I am a generally democratic type, and when I first saw him I’d say ‘Hello.’ At first it was ignored; but refusing to take the hint I kept doing it and finally got a grudging response. I think at one point he George Evans, Romeo and Juliet (September 1956). One of several pages devoted even asked, ‘How are you today?’ but that may to the balcony scene. be a wishful flaw of memory.”6 much more, the other publishers were working with seven, Regarding the attraction of working for Gilberton, noeight, nine, or even ten-panel pages. And it was fun to bring to torious for its low pay scale, Evans noted in a 1978 letter to life things I’d labored through in earlier years myself, because Classics chronicler Michael Sawyer that 7 the story was good, despite the stilted writing.

Two factors kept some of us with them when the outer market picked up after a bad slump: those long scripts gave you freedom to disappear to wherever you longed to go and work and vacation together. And though their page-rate was lower, they stayed with four, and at most five-panel pages, where for not too

By any estimate, the books that Evans illustrated for Gilberton rank high among his achievements. His first Classics title, Romeo and Juliet, No. 134 (September 1956), displayed the artist’s commitment to historical fidelity. As he wrote, “For

Oppostite: George Evans, Lord Jim (January 1957). A page of original art from the Conrad classic, signed by the artist (collection of the author). Above: George Evans, The Little Savage (March 1957). Note, in this page of original art from the adaptation of Captain Marryat’s last novel, that a narrative prompt was removed above the speech balloon in the top middle panel (collection of the author).

186

CLASSICS Illustrated

a fact, I might be a richer man today if it weren’t my problem that I busted myself in research on every story I illustrated.”8 One of the great strengths of Evans’s output for Gilberton was his ability to draw women who were neither Good Girl Art specimens nor Kieferesque androgynes. Juliet may be the finest example of the artist’s skill in this regard. In her exchanges with Romeo, she is decidedly his equal, and she shows determination in her scenes with her nurse and Friar Laurence. For the Shakespeare adaptation, Evans included hand-

somely drawn Italian Renaissance costumes and architecture, carefully observed principal characters, and an imaginatively fluid rendering of the six-page balcony scene. The Classics Illustrated edition of Romeo and Juliet “won some sort of prize in Sweden, which they [the Gilberton staff ] told me about,” Evans recalled, “but if there were physical trophies, I never saw any.”9 The next project, Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, No. 136 ( January 1957), was in some ways the most challenging, in part because the novel plumbed greater thematic depths than standard comic-book storylines — and in part because, according to the artist, editor Strauss found Jim’s act of self-sacrifice incomprehensible. “Roberta didn’t think the ending was credible, and we debated it,” Evans said. “She dismissed it as a grown-up boys’ book. She just didn’t get it.”10 The title was one of the artist’s favorites “though [it] had a tight deadline and I wish I’d had more time for the drawing.”11 (He had just completed Romeo and Juliet and was scheduled to illustrate The Little Savage for the next issue.) Conveying the hero’s moral crises in comics form may have strained the resources of the medium, but Evans, working with a streamlined script that dispensed with Marlow’s role as mediator of the narrative, nevertheless produced a stirring visual account of Jim’s regeneration. Strong character portraits filled the work, from the troubled Jim to the loyal Dain Waris to the loathsome Cornelius. Adaptations of two boys’ books followed. The Little Savage, No. 137 (March 1957), was a variation on the Robinson Crusoe theme by Frederick Marryat and showed the artist at ease with a straightforward adventure yarn. Evans produced several stirring action sequences, such as the boy hero’s capture of a young seal, escape from attacking sharks, and struggle against a “violently agitated” sea. In the Reign of Terror, No. 139 ( July 1957), the first of several G.A. Henty wewere-there historical tales included in the Classics Illustrated series, was another of George Evans, In the Reign of Terror (July 1957). The young English hero rescues Citizen Robespierre.

XVII. GEORGE EVANS, REED CRANDALL, AND THE TRADITION OF EC REALISM

187

Evans’s favorites. The plot-driven novel was well suited to standard comic-book pacing, and the artist skillfully sustained the action and suspense from panel to panel as the resourceful young hero contrives to rescue Robespierre from footpads and the aristocratic heroine and her sister from one bloodthirsty revolutionary after another. Cooperating with the Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Commission in the production of The Rough Rider, No. 141A (December 1957), Gilberton further established its growing reputation for serious educational publications. Evans illustrated the Special Issue, which was described by Commission Director Hermann Hagedorn in an introduction as “the first full length biography of a great American in this new and compelling medium.” The book subsequently won the Thomas Alva Edison Award, but, according to the artist, “it was strictly on the subject matter.” Evans had inherited the assignment, which turned into his least satisfactory Classics effort: It had been given to another artist who sat on the script for an unconscionable time, then turned it back, so it was an “emergency.” I couldn’t pencil and ink it, so they turned it over to an inker they knew. He was not a good inker — had a heavy hand as if using a trowel, so all detail stuff suffered. In addition, he appointed himself editor, too, and inked only what he thought was required in the panels and erased everything else. It led to a funny situation: I was ashamed of it, yet here it won a prize, indicating it was some of my best work. Ugh.1

Over the years, Evans worked on all but one of the remaining eleven Special Issues, notably Blazing the Trails West, No. 144A ( June 1958), Crossing the Rockies, No. 147A (December 1958), Men, Guns and Cattle, No. 153A (December 1959), To the Stars, No. 165A (December 1961), World War II, No. 166A (1962), and Prehistoric World, No. 167A ( June 1962). George Evans, “The Lewis and Clark Expedition” in Blazing the Trails West (June His “Lewis and Clark Expedition” in Blazing 1958). Sacagawea saves the day. the Trails West is one of his liveliest efforts for W8 (April 1959), The French Revolution, No. W14 (October Gilberton, giving ample scope to the story of Sacagawea, while 1959) (inked in part by Graham Ingels, who favored darker his “Kit Carson” in the same issue is an improvement on the lines), Great Scientists, No. W18 (February 1960), Ghosts, No. 1953 Classics Illustrated issue devoted to the same subject. If W24 (August 1960), For Gold and Glory, No. W32 (April nothing else, Evans’s “Kit” more closely resembles the historical 1961), and Spies, No. W35 (August 1961). His chapter in Flight figure than the drawings by Rudy Palais. on the World War I German “Red Knight” flying ace Baron The artist also illustrated substantial sections of most of von Richthofen was one of his favorite assignments. the issues in The World Around Us series, including Flight, No.

188

CLASSICS Illustrated

In the Reign of Terror, another popular work of marginal literary merit, The Crisis translated well into the comics medium, where the original’s lack of complexity worked in favor of the imperatives of adaptation and sequential art. Central to the issue’s success were Evans’s realistic rendering of the steely Southern heroine, Virginia Carvel, who appears in 16 different period outfits, and his convincing character sketches of Lincoln, Sherman, and Grant. Fortunately for Gilberton, the artist had already turned in the boards for The Crisis when another sort of crisis, involving deadlines, presented itself. Albert Kanter’s son, Hal Kanter, who had written for Bing Crosby on radio and had directed Elvis Presley in Loving You (1957), had been his father’s eyes on Hollywood, giving Gilberton advance notice of forthcoming films based on classic literature to enable Classics to include the titles in the series production cycle. He had also been instrumental in arranging a movie tie-in with The Ten Commandments in 1956. Hal Kanter scored a major coup for Gilberton in 1958, when he facilitated an arrangement for exclusive comic-book rights to another Cecil B. DeMille production, The Buccaneer, a first for the Classics Illustrated line. The Paramount script by Jeanie Macpherson was given to veteran comics artist Robert Jenney (b. 1914). A May 1958 “Coming Next” ad in The First Men in the Moon advertised The Buccaneer, complete with a line-drawing mock-up cover by Alex Blum, as issue No. 145. (See page 141.) Then Jenney found himself unable to complete the artwork on time. Editor Roberta Strauss called on Evans, who had George Evans, The Crisis (July 1958). Virginia Carvel shows her style on the river. rescued The Rough Rider under similar During 1958, Evans produced artwork for two titles in circumstances, to rush The Buccaneer to completion. Jenney Gilberton’s flagship Classics Illustrated line. The first was an had penciled about half of the book, and the July printing date adaptation of The Crisis, No. 145 (July 1958), a Civil War story was looming. by the now largely forgotten American historical novelist WinUnfortunately for the artist, the assignment came just beston Churchill (not related to the British prime minister). Like fore the “family of four plus dog” was to embark on its annual Opposite: George Evans (and Robert Jenney), The Buccaneer (January 1959). The book that ate a vacation.

Left: George Evans, The Three Musketeers (May 1959). Right: George Evans, The Three Musketeers (May 1959). Athos in his element.

XVII. GEORGE EVANS, REED CRANDALL, AND THE TRADITION OF EC REALISM two-week vacation in Vermont, and the deadline fell during the first week of the Evanses’ paid-for time: I begged for extra time, but, consulting her calendar, Roberta refused: Had to be in. So I worked on it that week, got it mailed from Vermont, and had half a vacation, only to find when I went in for a new script that they had not even opened the package I’d sent. It was as hot an argument as we ever had — she explained about shifting things around, etc. And it got me a $5 a page raise in pay....2

The Crisis was substituted in the No. 145 slot, and The Buccaneer was held until January 1959. In what was perhaps the ultimate vote of confidence in Evans as illustrator, Strauss gave him the choicest assignment of his association with Gilberton: redrawing issue No. 1, The Three Musketeers. Published around May 1959, the revised Dumas swashbuckler had symbolic significance as the first issue of the line. It was also one of the most popular titles, running eventually to 23 printings. The original 62-page adaptation was rescripted and trimmed to 47 pages to fit the post-1948 Classics format. A painted cover based on Malcolm Kildale’s 1941 interior art had replaced the old line-drawing cover in 1956, and Evans evidently used it as a general reference. He transposed physical characteristics, however, in an odd, if interesting, exercise in casting against type, assigning Porthos’s portly physique to Aramis, Aramis’s sleek figure to Athos, and Athos’s mature frame to Porthos. In the case of Aramis, a few extra pounds provided greater potential for humor in the character development of the wavering candidate for holy orders; unfortunately, Porthos gained in gravitas as he lost weight, and the book lost its chief source of comic relief. Notwithstanding these eccentricities, the 1959 Three Musketeers is one of the handsomest editions published in the 30year history of Classics Illustrated. It is also one of the highlights of Evans’s considerable body of work and, in its own right, a masterpiece of sequential art that fully realizes the potential of the medium. No panel is wasted; each carries narrative weight or delineates character. For example, in one-page episodes, Evans presents d’Artagnan’s initial encounters with each of the Three Musketeers, concisely conveying Athos’s pride, Porthos’s vanity, and Aramis’s carnal inclinations. D’Artagnan’s highspirited naivete is captured in a single panel as the impulsive Gascon volunteers to join the three men who will become his inseparable companions in their duel with five of the Cardinal’s Guards. Evans also brought secondary characters to life: his Milady is an alluring temptress; his Felton an implacable fanatic. The Three Musketeers occasioned an editorial skirmish with Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, with whom the artist enjoyed a playful, bantering relationship: “We thrived on needling each other.”3 Evans recounted that

191

When I brought it in with Athos plastered after being locked in the cellar with only vin to sustain him, Roberta [Strauss Feuerlicht] was kind of upset: “We can’t print that! You’ll have to change it” she protested. She agreed that of course he would be boozed up, but (rightly, probably) in comic-book form, we shouldn’t show the hero drunk. I felt strongly enough about being true to the story to refuse making any changes.4

The artist had made his point and prevailed. Athos remained, as the dialogue balloon put it, “dead drunk.” Another, more significant, editorial battle was lost, however. Gilberton had published four of the South Seas novels by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall and had the rights to Falcons of France, a World War I novel about the Lafayette Escadrille, in which the authors had served. Evans was born to illustrate the book — recognizing his expertise in matters aeronautical, William Gaines had created Aces High for him at EC in 1955.5 Yet it was not to be: Roberta [Strauss Feuerlicht] evidently had the deciding vote on it and turned thumbs down because “It was a lot of hyped-up nonsense! People don’t really believe in all that flag-waving, people don’t do the crazy things [Nordhoff and Hall] wrote about.” ... When I assured her it was truer than any other fiction they’d ever covered, she gave me a long look, suspecting I was needling her. Seeing I meant it, she shrugged, “Oh well, we have others to do. Maybe further along....” But it was one I would have loved doing above all others — and it would have been totally authentic, for I had a library full of reference gathered through life.6

For the next few years with Gilberton, Evans kept busy on Special Issues, The World Around Us, and collaborations with fellow EC alumnus Reed Crandall on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Oliver Twist, Julius Caesar, and In Freedom’s Cause (discussed in the following section on Crandall). “[Reed] had returned to Kansas—fed up with N.Y.,” Evans recalled in a letter to Michael Sawyer. “Needed work — and I had some other accounts, too, by then. So between Reed and me we really made good time and had some fun.”7 The pair of accomplished artists made an exceptional package deal. Evans summed up his experience with Classics Illustrated as “enjoyable.” Although the rates were far from top, he found adequate compensation in “the treat of working on scripts of substance, and, yes, dealing with bright, nice people like Roberta and a couple of assistants in the editorial area.”8 One of those assistants, Helene Lecar, remembered the artist fondly: “George Evans in particular was a craftsman as well as an artist, who gave meticulous attention to the details in his work.” 9 Years later, Lecar drew a direct connection between Evans and “his hero,” Prince Valiant’s Hal Foster, “a creative story teller as well as a fine artist.”10 The end of Classics Illustrated merely marked the beginning of a new creative phase for the consummate professional and “very determined sort of guy.” His distinguished career

192

CLASSICS Illustrated cated strip Secret Agent Corrigan, succeeding his friend and former EC colleague, Al Williamson.12 He and his wife lived in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, where he worked on various projects, including a Sunday Flash Gordon series. George R. Evans died on 22 June 2001.

REED CRANDALL

George Evans and Reed Crandall, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Fall 1960). A sequence highlighting Crandall’s contributions; Evans saved the horses for his collaborator.

continued with titles for Western and DC and ghost work on George Wunder’s daily strips for the long-running Terry and the Pirates.11 In the 1980s, Evans began drawing the enduring syndi-

A legendary figure in comics history, Reed Crandall collaborated with his friend and fellow EC artist George Evans on several of the most beautiful books published by Gilberton. Born in 1917 in Indiana, Crandall grew up in Kansas and received his training in the 1930s at the Cleveland School of Art. Among his influences were illustrators Howard Pyle, Joseph Clement Coll, and Henry C. Pitz. After moving to New York in 1940, he joined the comic-book shop run by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger and then drew a number of characters for Quality, including Stormy Foster, Captain Triumph, and Doll Man.13 Crandall’s first specialty was military art, and in 1942 he found his métier in Quality’s “Blackhawk” series, created by Will Eisner for Military Comics. Shifting gears and specialties in the 1950s, he explored the realms of science fiction, horror, and adventure at EC. Some of his best work in this period was for the shortlived Piracy series. When William Gaines’s ship went down, Crandall, like the other outstanding EC illustrators, had difficulty finding work. Atlas (Marvel) provided some assignments, and, beginning in 1960, the Catholic Guild’s Treasure Chest gave him steady employment drawing anti–Communist comics. At about the same time, Al Williamson approached George Evans, who had established himself as one of the principal freelancers for Classics Illustrated. Evans recalled that

Al asked if I had enough work to share some with Reed. I had, and did. We would work in whatever way time schedules allowed. I did all the layouts — breakdowns, and did faces pretty detailed so that likenesses were consistent. These I’d send to Reed, and he’d finish the stuff. Often he had better

George Evans and Reed Crandall, Oliver Twist (Fall 1961). A page of original art featuring the famous request (collection of the author).

194

CLASSICS Illustrated

The first Crandall and Evans collaboration was on a desperately needed revision of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, No. 18, which had been ineptly adapted by Evelyn Goodman and crudely drawn by Allen Simon in the original 1944 edition. The second time around, in the fall of 1960, with a faithful adaptation by Alfred Sundel, was a charm for Gilberton. Evans’s superbly rendered features of Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Frollo were all but definitive and subsequently were shamelessly copied in a 1970s comics version. Crandall’s exquisitely detailed historical framework made the redesigned Hunchback a handsome improvement and one of the best books in the series. Lighter inking and a solidly realistic framework provided scope in Alfred Sundel’s revised Oliver Twist, No. 23 (Fall 1961), for a brisk, modern approach to the Dickens novel. The new treatment was published a year after the arrival of Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! on the London stage and the year before the highly anticipated U.S. pre–Broadway national tour. An occasional hint of caricature in the new Classics Illustrated adaptation, memorably in the case of the master serving gruel, suggests a distant debt to George Cruik shank, the novel’s first illustrator. In a decisive rejection of stereotyping, Fagin is drawn without any specific ethnic identity. Once again, Crandall’s fully realized historical context supplies a grace note. By 1969, a year after Carol Reed’s film version of Oliver! appeared, this popular edition had been printed six times. Rising to, or even surpassing, the level of The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the revision by Crandall and Evans of Julius Caesar, No. 68 (1962). The artists offered incisive character studies of Brutus (replacing Henry George Evans and Reed Crandall, Julius Caesar (Spring 1962). The artists shift C. Kiefer’s somewhat Aryan model with an perspective in an effort to give a static scene some life; note the Roman profiles. introspective Roman), Cassius (who looks lean, hungry, and sardonic), Antony (shown references than I’d found, and some delightful stuff would come as a consummate political actor), and others. Blending classical back. He also did better Percheron horses than I ever did.... gestures and backgrounds with Crandall’s affinity for action, On those long adaptations, memory says I would lay out what the pair brought Shakespeare’s relatively static tragedy dramatReed was to do — usually half the book — send them off and ically to life. 14 then go on to my half complete. Opposite: George Evans and Reed Crandall, In Freedom’s Cause (1962/1969). A page of original art from the last collaborative effort for Classics Illustrated by the two former EC artists (collection of the author).

196

CLASSICS Illustrated

A final project, G.A. Henty’s In Freedom’s Cause, No. 168, was intended for publication in 1962; although a British edition was issued in 1963, the title did not appear in the American Classics Illustrated series until 1969. The tale of young Archie Forbes and William Wallace elicited some striking battle scenes, with intricately detailed backgrounds, from Crandall and Evans. Unfortunately, as George Evans recalled, after sending half the script to Crandall, “his section came back with five or six pages just as I’d sent them — undone. A brief letter said he ‘couldn’t finish them,’ with no real reason given.”15 During their tenure with Gilberton, the two artists also provided illustrations for Dell’s movie edition of Hercules Unchained and Twilight Zone TV tie-ins (May 1961, April 1962). After the Kanter family shut down the American Classics line,

Crandall and Evans found themselves back in EC territory, working in James Warren’s noncode series Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. 16 One of Crandall’s finest achievements was an eight-page adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “The Squaw” for Creepy.17 The artist’s technical proficiency fell victim to his losing battle with alcoholism, and he eventually stopped illustrating altogether. He lived for a time in Pennsylvania with Al Williamson but returned to Kansas, where he worked at various odd jobs, including night watchman, fast-food cook, and chain-restaurant janitor. After suffering several strokes, Crandall entered a Wichita nursing home, where he died of a heart attack in 1982. He was sixty-five years old.18 In 2009, Crandall was named to the Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

XVIII

Roberta the Conqueror F

or the last nine years of its existence, the driving intellectual force behind Classics Illustrated was a scrappy, diminutive editor named Roberta Strauss. (After her 1958 marriage to sculptor Herb Feuerlicht, she added her husband’s name, a change not noted in the publication indicia until issue No. 154, in January 1960.) More than any other person, she was responsible for raising the artistic and textual standards of the series in the mid- to late-1950s. A perfectionist who demanded perfection in others, Feuerlicht caused controversy and earned respect. In the 1960s and 1970s, she established a solid literary reputation with such nonfiction works as The Desperate Act: The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo (1968), named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of the year; America’s Reign of Terror: World War I, the Red Scare, and the Palmer Raids (1971); Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism: The Hate that Haunts America (1972); and Justice Crucified: The Story of Sacco and Vanzetti (1977). Scrupulously researched, her work was often polemical in tone. Justice Crucified was hailed by critic John Leonard in the New York Times as “the most comprehensive and persuasive account of the case we have.”1 Feuerlicht’s 1983 book, The Fate of the Jews: A People Torn Between Israeli Power and Jewish Ethics, provoked both bitter attacks and impassioned defenses. “Judaism as an ideal is infinite,” she wrote, “Judaism as a state is finite. Judaism survived centuries of persecution without a state; it must now learn how to survive despite a state.”2 The book’s categorical insistence that Israel was not exempt from the standards that governed the conduct of other nations cost the author several friendships. As her husband described her, “She was a placid person who ran from confrontations but would stand for principle.”3 In fact, “principled” is the descriptive term most often used by those who worked with her at Gilberton. Born in New York on 23 November 1931, Roberta Strauss grew up in a Lower East Side cold-water tenement where, she later quipped, “We were so poor we had to take the garbage in at night.”4 A cleft palate, which was later surgically corrected, made her painfully shy as a child, a condition that she subsequently overcame with determination. “She was not emo-

tional,” Herb Feuerlicht recalled. “She physically couldn’t raise her voice.”5 In response to her childhood experience, Strauss cultivated a quiet manner that was something of a signature style, according to colleagues. It served as a reliable mood indicator;

197

Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, book in hand, in the Maine woods (1958) (courtesy Herb Feuerlicht).

198

CLASSICS Illustrated

when a conversation took a distasteful turn, she simply became quieter. On the other hand, she would be quite vocal in a situation of trust or when an ethical issue was at stake. After receiving a journalism degree from Hunter College in 1952, Strauss worked for a year as an associate editor for a Queens newspaper, the Glen Oaks News. In 1953, she came to the attention of Gilberton’s William Kanter, who hired her as an editorial assistant at $55 a week.6 Without a formal title or even so much as a masthead mention, Strauss quickly became indispensable, reviewing artwork and scripts for accuracy and continuity.7 She got along well with art director Alex A. Blum, who gave her a painting of a pastoral scene and a pair of earrings.8 The accounts of the young editor’s attention to detail have assumed almost legendary proportions among Classics collectors. Lou Cameron’s departure from the Gilberton circle of freelancers was occasioned by Strauss’s insistence that he redraw the head of the Time Traveller, after the interior art had already been completed, to conform to the representation on George Wilson’s painted cover.9 She counted buttons on soldiers’ uniforms from panel to panel in Graham Ingels’s Waterloo. Strauss insisted that Jack Sparling, working on Robin Hood, should maintain consistency in the number of laces on the jerkin, the number of scallops about the shoulder, and the number of arrows in the quiver.10 Skirt folds came under scrutiny in Jack Kirby’s “Coming Next” ad for Cleopatra. For The Dark Frigate, Strauss even sent an inquiry to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, regarding the procedure for 17th-century naval courts martial (see Appendix for full texts of Strauss’s queries and the Museum’s reply). George Evans recounted an instance of the editor’s obsession with accuracy: Roberta was, as she mentioned then, a “nut for folk dancing,” and in something I did there was a scene for a “ballo”— a Latin American bash of a sort [for Blazing the Trails West]. Dancing was alien to me, and even how to research it and get the motions right. So I showed couples in Latin garb from the waist up. Even so, I got the hand gestures wrong, and she asked for another picture. With her help, I did produce one that she accepted, though she’d have preferred if the scripter had given a bigger space for that scene. It really wasn’t key — just atmosphere. But, having interests of my own, I could understand her wish.11

Norman Nodel remarked that Feuerlicht was “a real stickler” on questions of historical authenticity. “She cared about the quality. She was a person of great integrity. She often had definite ideas about changes that she wanted made, but she had an open mind, and if you presented your case well, she would accept your point of view.”12 Beginning with issue No. 139, In the Reign of Terror ( July 1957), Strauss was listed on the masthead as editor. By the time

she married Herb Feuerlicht, a fellow folk dancing enthusiast, in 1958, she was earning $125 a week and putting in long hours, from 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.13 In 1961, as Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, she was elevated to Editor-in-Chief and the next year became Managing Editor for the brief period in which Gilberton continued to issue new titles. One of her most significant contributions to Classics Illustrated was in overseeing a massive facelift for the series through the upgrading of artwork in previously issued titles. The impetus for change came from Albert and Bill Kanter and Meyer Kaplan, but the implementation was often the responsibility of the young workhorse. During Feuerlicht’s tenure as uncredited assistant or titled editor, revamped adaptations and upgraded interior art appeared in 28 earlier editions.14 In the same period, new painted covers were commissioned to replace most of the line-drawing covers among the first 80 titles or unsatisfactory painted covers, such as No. 103, Men Against the Sea (a stiffly composed piece by Henry C. Kiefer showing Captain Bligh wearing an anachronistic naval officer’s hat) .15 Among Feuerlicht’s most important decisions was to return a substantial number of formerly discontinued titles to print. As a result of both inventory constraints and Gilberton’s commitment to replacing line-drawing covers with painted covers and interior art where required, a large number of the first 120 titles had been dropped from the catalogue by May 1959. When the last reduced reorder list, which extended to No. 150, was printed that month, 53 titles were unavailable. Feuerlicht, however, had already begun what might be called the Classics Illustrated Great Revival in early 1958, ordering a redrawn edition of The Man in the Iron Mask, a popular title that had been out of print since 1955. A reissue of Green Mansions appeared in January 1959, followed by Crime and Punishment in September and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in November. The floodgates opened in the first three months of 1960 with Men of Iron, The Moonstone, Typee, and Alice in Wonderland. Other rarities returned to circulation within the next two years, including Les Miserables, Don Quixote, Two Years Before the Mast, The Last Days of Pompeii, Twenty Years After, Wuthering Heights, Black Beauty, Julius Caesar, Pudd’nhead Wilson, The White Company, A Study in Scarlet, and The Talisman. More reissues would come in the wake of Gilberton’s decision in 1962 to stop publishing new titles, and some, such as Gulliver’s Travels, were among the best-sellers of the series. On 25 July 1960, Feuerlicht responded to an enthusiastic early Classics collector and later DC editor, E. Nelson Bridwell of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who had written to suggest additional titles for inclusion in the series as well as to request the return of No. 33, Sherlock Holmes, to print. The editor’s letter bears the stamp of her personality and style:

XVIII. ROBERTA THE CONQUEROR If ever I retire, or, more likely, am assassinated in office, I think I might recommend you as my successor. Certainly, there are times you almost seem to know more about our books than I do. I think you will find our Classics Illustrated titles for the next two years as good a group as we’ve had in a while. They include Faust, Taras Bulba, Tales from Sevastopol, The Aeneid and The Saga of Burnt Njal, as well as two of the titles you suggest: Food of the Gods and Cleopatra. I don’t believe #33 will ever come back. For many reasons, a number of our early titles will be dropped rather than redone. For many reasons also, we can never do some of the titles you put forth. Some are not available to us in Europe as well as America (copyright laws are different over there), some are not good stories, some are not good titles. There usually are reasons for what we do and don’t do — in all of our series. To explain them all would make for too long a letter, but if you’re ever in New York I would be happy to buy you lunch and tell you more about us.16

Equally revealing of Feuerlicht’s professional character was her insistence on a focused work ethic — and the means

The young editor, around the time of her marriage, August 1958 (courtesy Herb Feuerlicht).

199

she employed to enforce it. “Roberta was very wary about new employees,” Gilberton editorial staffer Helene Lecar recalled. “The first time she sent me to the 42nd Street Library [for research], she actually followed me and watched me working for a while (I only found out about this years later) until she decided I was reliable.”17 Noting that Feuerlicht took care never to pull rank, Lecar emphasized the collaborative working atmosphere that the editor fostered at 101 Fifth Avenue.18 Each of the thirty-six issues of The World Around Us bore Feuerlicht’s name as editor. Many of the titles were directed at preadolescent boys, who responded to such subjects as the Vikings and the Conquistadors. Feuerlicht and her staff were determined to show the human cost in those tales of conquest. Because the depiction of gore was forbidden as editorial policy, other ways of showing misery, visually and textually, were explored. Feuerlicht’s editorship of Classics Illustrated Special Issue No. 141A, The Rough Rider, brought her recognition in the Congressional Record as a “gifted editor with a passion for accuracy.”19 She also had a passion for her work. While resting in the hospital after the birth of her son Ira in March 1962, she called an editorial meeting in her room.20 (When Ira was born, associate editor Helene Lecar knitted him “a sweater that read Classics Junior in a reasonable approximation of the right typeface.”)21 As the sole woman at Gilberton with executive responsibilities, the essential distinction that Feuerlicht enjoyed was the trust of Bill Kanter. When Gilberton terminated its juvenile lines in 1962, Kanter assigned her the editorship of This Month, a short-lived digest intended to replace Curtis’s defunct Coronet. She had little regard, however, for the team that had been brought in to run the publication, finding what she saw as their contempt for their target middlebrow audience to be professionally reprehensible. The magazine shut down after six months, and its last issue was printed but was never put on the stands.22 Feuerlicht brought distinction to This Month, publishing fiction in English by her longtime friend Isaac Bashevis Singer. Of the future Nobel Prize winner, she wrote in a notebook: “I frequently have lunch with Isaac Bashevis Singer. I bring him news of this world, he brings me news of the next.”23 Feuerlicht’s departure from Gilberton coincided with the demise of This Month. When it became evident that the digest was foundering, she was instructed by the management to dismiss her staff. Rather than do so (and despite the fact that she had professional issues with the magazine personnel), she resigned as a matter of principle. The employees were subsequently terminated with two weeks’ notice.24 Feuerlicht, meanwhile, moved on to a new career as an author of acclaimed children’s books and adult nonfiction. Her research in Yugoslavia while writing The Desperate Act, for which she interviewed one of Franz Fer-

200

CLASSICS Illustrated passionate support for political underdogs. The moral fervor of an Old Testament prophet properly expressed the highest value of her Judaism. “Justice, justice shalt thou pursue!” [Deuteronomy 16:20] was the imperative that gave her work meaning.25

If there was anything that Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht felt almost as passionate about as social justice, it was folkdancing, particularly of the Balkan variety. She and her husband Herb had met in the early winter of 1958 in a folkdancing group, and they pursued their mutual interest over the decades, making 13 trips to Yugoslavia and other countries. Roberta collected folk costumes, and the couple made enduring friendships in the Balkan region.26 A mugging in Barcelona, Spain, in 1982 left the lively author with a triple fracture of the skull, 13 rib fractures, damage to the inner ear, and impaired health for the rest of her life. Two thugs on a motorcycle had grabbed for her purse as she and her husband crossed a bridge. In characteristic style, Feuerlicht fought back, but she was dragged some distance face down. Following her limited recovery, the author continued writing but was no longer able to pursue her first love, folk dancing. By 1990, she had great difficulty in walking but “kept her sense of humor and reThis photograph was taken shortly before Feuerlicht’s departure fused to be treated as crippled.”27 Feuerlicht was hospitalized from Gilberton in 1962 (courtesy Herb Feuerlicht). with pneumonia in September 1991 and died of congestive heart failure on 2 October 1991.28 dinand’s assassins, led Roberta and her husband Herb to a Her husband’s assessment of her work for Gilberton is deeper immersion in Balkan folk dancing. seconded by most of those who were associated with her: Helene Lecar eloquently summed up the central thrust “Roberta took a despised medium and elevated it. She insisted of Feuerlicht’s later work, from Justice Crucified to The Fate of on accuracy, decency, and the treatment of characters as human the Jews: beings rather than cartoon stereotypes. She succeeded in For Roberta, who was a non-believer strongly opposed to the gaining respect for Classics Illustrated from other publishers constraints of Orthodox Judaism and indifferent to its claims, her and the educational community.”29 Eastern European Jewish background was culturally significant Sadly, when the New York Times ran her obituary, no as a source of bedrock irony and a fatalistic pessimism —“Expect mention was made of her work at 101 Fifth Avenue.30 nothing, and you won’t be disappointed.” It also underlay her

C9

Top, left: Norman Saunders, Frankenstein (September 1958, Spring 1962 reprint). Painted cover. Top, right: Unidentified artist, With Fire and Sword (September 1958). Painted cover. Bottom, left: Leonard B. Cole, Wild Animals I Have Known (September 1959). Painted cover. Bottom, right: Unidentified artist, The Queen’s Necklace (January 1962). Painted cover.

Left: Gerald McCann, original cover painting (gouache) for The Conspirators, published September 1960 (collection of author). Right: Gerald McCann, original cover painting (gouache) for Tom Brown’s School Days, published March 1961 (collection of author).

C10

Left: Norman Nodel, original cover painting for The Man Who Laughs, painted 1960, published Spring 1962 (collection of author). Right: Leonard B. Cole, original cover painting (tempera) for The Octopus, published November 1960 (collection of author).

C11

C12

Top, left: Mort Künstler, original cover painting for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, published October 1953 (courtesy Lars Teglbjaerg). Top, right: George Wilson, original cover painting for Treasure Island, published March 1956 (courtesy Øystein Sørensen). Bottom, left: Geoffrey Biggs, original cover painting for The Invisible Man, published November 1959 (courtesy Dr. Lawrence Chalif ). Bottom, right: Norman Nodel, original cover painting for Faust, published August 1962 (courtesy Lars Teglbjaerg).

C13

Top, left: Henry C. Kiefer, Shelter Through the Ages (Ruberoid Co. giveaway, 1951). Painted cover. Top, right: Peter Costanza, Andy’s Atomic Adventures (September 1953). Line-drawing cover. Bottom, left: George Wilson, The Story of America (June 1956). Painted cover. Bottom, right: Gray Morrow, The Illustrated Story of Magic (September 1960). Painted cover.

C14

Top, left: Unidentified artist, Crime e Castigo [Crime and Punishment] (Brazil, April 1953). Painted cover. Top, right: Unidentified artist, The Deerslayer (Great Britain, 1959; Australian reprint). Painted cover. Bottom, left: Unidentified artist, De Gebroeders Durie [The Master of Ballantrae] (Netherlands, n.d.). Painted cover. Bottom, right: Unidentified artist, The Aeneid (Greece, n.d.). Painted cover.

Left: Bill Sienkiewicz, Moby Dick (February 1990). Interior page 39. Right: Peter Kuper, The Jungle (June 1991). Interior page 34.

C15

C16

Top, left: Colin Mayne, The Princess Who Saw Everything (Canada, August 2009). Painted cover (gouache). Top, right: Colin Mayne, Nicholas Nickleby (Canada, October 2010). Painted cover (gouache). Bottom, left: Michel Plessix, The Wind in the Willows (January 2008). Painted cover (aquarelle). Bottom, right: Rebecca Guay, Wuthering Heights (November 1997). Painted cover.

XIX

High Tide and Greenbacks: The Late Fifties B

y 1956, Roberta Strauss’s influence in the Gilberton editorial office was unquestioned. With the encouragement of both Albert and William Kanter, the hard-working assistant was on her way to an editorship. Her championing of better adaptations, better artwork, and revisions of early numbers coincided with and were partly responsible for the boom years that Classics Illustrated enjoyed in the late 1950s. This was the period in which former EC artists such as Joe Orlando and George Evans made their contributions to Classics Illustrated. Their brand of realism, in its Gilberton house-style standardization, telegraphed the message that the work adapted possessed something of intrinsic merit. These artists were joined by other first-rate illustrators who found refuge at 101 Fifth Avenue at a time when it wasn’t always profitable to draw comic books. Gilberton didn’t exactly pay well by industry standards, but working for Classics meant canonical-quality subject matter and substantial projects at a time when many other comics publishers were in the post–Golden Age, pre–Spider-Man decline.

MIKE SEKOWSKY

AND

FRANK GIACOIA

In the spring of 1956, the first redrawn and newly adapted Classics editions since 1953’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde appeared. Roberta Strauss, whose influence vastly exceeded her still unacknowledged editorial status, selected the first two titles with an eye toward symbolism: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, mid-century rivals for designation as the Great American Novel. While the reliable Norman Nodel landed the tragic Moby Dick, the supposedly lighter Huckleberry Finn, No. 19 (revised edition March 1956), went to the fast-working penciler Mike Sekowsky (d. 1989), who had supplied art

Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia, Huckleberry Finn (March 1956). Roberta Strauss insisted on investing Jim with humanity, and the artists complied.

201

202

CLASSICS Illustrated

for Fiction House, Lev Gleason, and other publishers and who later was celebrated for his contributions to the Justice League of America issues in the DC series The Brave and the Bold.1 Sekowsky also later illustrated The Rebel (1960–1961) for Dell. Assisting on the Twain title was the respected inker Frank Giacoia (1925–1989), an Italian-born artist best known for his DC collaborations (Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space) with Carmine Infantino and his work on Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern.2 At the time, Sekowsky and Giacoia were penciling and inking a Sherlock Holmes comic-strip serial (1954–1956), and

the pair seemed an ideal team for a Classics Illustrated project. They had recently displayed a decidedly comic bent in the Classics Illustrated Junior treatments of The Golden Goose, No. 518 (September 1955), Paul Bunyan, No. 519 (October 1955), John Ruskin’s King of the Golden River, No. 521 (December 1955), and The Gallant Tailor, No. 523 (February 1956). Sekowsky had produced painted covers for The King of the Golden River and The Gallant Tailor; he would later supply another one, for The Magic Fountain, No. 533 (December 1956), on which he again collaborated with Giacoia on the interior art. Subsequently, Sekowsky joined forces with inker Mike Peppe for The Wizard of Oz, No. 535 (February 1957), and Silly Willy, No. 557 (December 1958).3 The Twain adaptation restored the first person to Huck’s narrative, and Sekowsky’s brisk, humorous style served the story especially well in the portions concerning the doings of the rascally Duke and King. But Roberta Strauss’s primary concern was to see that the humanity of Jim, Huck’s AfricanAmerican companion and mentor, was fully acknowledged in the character’s portrayal.4 Sekowsky and Giacoia complied with the editor’s instructions; they accorded the runaway slave a measure of dignity and some complexity, treating him not as a comic foil but as a mature mentor. On a single page, Jim gives Huck, who has played an irresponsible practical joke on his friend, a moral education in brief; Sekowsky and Giacoia reveal a range of emotions in Jim’s features, from outraged disbelief through profound disappointment to loving forgiveness.

JACK SPARLING

Jack Sparling, Robin Hood ( January 1957). Robin takes a wide- angle plunge.

Long associated with the Jacquet shop, Jack Sparling (1916–1997) provided new illustrations for two popular early Classics titles, Robin Hood, No. 7 (revised edition January 1957), and Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, No. 24 (revised edition September 1957). A native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, the artist grew up in New Orleans, where he received training at the Arts and Crafts Club and began his career there as a newspaper editorial and sports cartoonist for the New OrleansI tem-Tribune. After moving to Washington, D.C., in 1940, Sparling studied at the Corcoran School of Art (now the Corcoran College of Art and Design). He drew syndicated comic strips, including Hap Hopper, Washington Correspondent (1941–1943) and Claire

XIX. HIGH TIDE AND GREENBACKS

203

Voyant (1943–1948). Sparling also produced illustrations for the educational True Comics and the rather less educational Nyoka, The Jungle Girl. Later, he worked for DC (Green Lantern), Marvel (X-Men), and Dell (Mission Impossible). In 1982, he returned to newspaper strips with Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.5 Ron Goulart has noted of Sparling that his best work was characterized by a “realistic brush style” and “odd and unusual angle shots.”6 These qualities are in evidence in Sparling’s two Gilberton titles, where, in Robin Hood, the quarterstaff contest between Robin Hood and Little John culminates in Robin’s wide-panel dunking at the hands of his stronger rival and where, in A Connecticut Yankee, the artist takes the viewer inside Hank’s helmet for a close-up encounter with a fly. A hearty joyfulness permeates both of Sparling’s medieval romps for Classics Illustrated.

SAM CITRON (OR CHARLES SULTAN) One of the major early titles to be revamped in 1957 was Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, No. 10. The much improved adaptation appeared around September of that year. Only a tentative identification of the artist has been made. Comics authority Hames Ware suggests the possibility that look-alike artists Sam Citron and Charles Sultan, brother-in-law of the legendary Lou Fine, may have drawn the book in tandem or, perhaps, singly. Both men illustrated romance comics as a team or individually in the 1950s, and both favored Jack Sparling, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (September 1957). The Boss a detailed, realistic style.7 encounters the “medieval grace of iron clothing” (apologies to Edwin Arlington Robinson). Whether Citron or Sultan or ized, almost anthropological manner. Crusoe himself evolves both were responsible for the book, the result was a considfrom callow youth to experienced middle age in a most credible erable improvement over Stanley Maxwell Zuckerberg’s 1943 manner. Attention is given not only to action sequences but also version. In the 1957 edition, Defoe’s narrative was closely folto the title character’s transformation of his domain through lowed, and the “savages” were presented in a less sensational-

204

CLASSICS Illustrated the introduction of agriculture. The redrawn Crusoe went through nine printings before the series ceased publication in 1971.

STAN CAMPBELL

Sam Citron and/or Charles Sultan, Robinson Crusoe (September 1957). The shipwrecked hero begins to take charge of his situation on this page of original art (collection of the author).

Castle Dangerous, No. 141 (November 1957), an account of an early 14th-century siege of an English-held Scottish stronghold, was the last of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels and the last adapted for Classics Illustrated. An inferior example of the author’s fiction, in which his imaginative powers frequently appeared to fail him, the book nevertheless translated exceptionally well into the stripped-down comics medium, demonstrating once again the principle that lesser works had less to lose in 45-page adaptations. Stan Campbell, a Charlton artist, drew and inked Castle Dangerous. His superbly rendered character studies of the disguised heroine, her minstrel protector, and the “Black Douglas,” as well as his carefully wrought depictions of armor, mail, and arms, made this one of the handsomest of the later Classics titles. The detailed drawings bear witness both to the artist’s skills at recreating a historical era and to Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht’s emphasis on period research. Campbell also illustrated two Juniors—The Donkey’s Tale, No. 542 (September 1957), and The Singing Donkey, No. 550 (May 1958)—which featured delightfully cartoonish character sketches of the “Bremen Town Musicians” and the terrified robbers, along with sections of two Classics Illustrated Special Issues, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, No. 150A ( June 1959), and The War Between the States, No. 162A ( June 1961), and several World Around Us issues, including the cover and the interior art for Flight, No. W8 (April 1959), and interior art

XIX. HIGH TIDE AND GREENBACKS

205

Left: Stan Campbell, Castle Dangerous (November 1957). A handsomely drawn exercise in medievalism, with traces of Batman in the “Black Douglas.” Right: Ken Battefield, The Man in the Iron Mask (January 1958). Aramis ensnares Phillipe, the man who would be king. Note the ominous shadow in the first panel and the imposing angle in the second.

for Marines, No. W11 (July 1959), and Famous Teens, No. W33 (May 1961).

KEN BATTEFIELD The third part of the d’Artagnan trilogy by Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask, No. 54, had been missing from the Classics reorder list since 1955. Baby boomers who expected solid linework and postwar realism in their comics apparently found it difficult to respond to August M. Froehlich’s old-fashioned impressionism. Curiously enough, the revision of Dumas’s tale of royal intrigue, issued in January 1958, is believed to have been assigned to an artist whose arrival at Gilberton had predated that of Froehlich’s by six years. Ken Battefield (d. 1967) had assisted Malcolm Kildale in 1941 with

the first Classic Comic, Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, supplying panels here and there. He was best-known for his work in Black Terror and other comic-book series published by Ned Pines. Although generally considered an illustrator of modest abilities who churned out pages to be completed by the likes of Graham Ingels and Rafael Astarita, Battefield surpassed himself in The Man in the Iron Mask, spurred, perhaps in part, by Roberta Strauss’s exacting eye. A few characters, including the central schemer Aramis and his accomplice Porthos, are awkwardly drawn. But the mid-17th-century costuming and settings are faithfully reproduced, the young Louis XIV and his fictional twin actually resemble the historical Louis XIV, and the story’s claustrophobic atmosphere of intrigue is effectively conveyed in crowded panels, contorted forms, and striking perspectives.

206

CLASSICS Illustrated

JOHN TARTAGLIONE A romance-comics artist for Atlas (Marvel), John Tartaglione (1921– 2003) might not have seemed a logical choice as illustrator of two redblooded boys’ books. Still, his interiors for G.A. Henty’s Won By the Sword, No. 151 ( July 1959), and the revision of Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days, No. 45 (March 1961), were lively exercises, and the latter title in particular was an unqualified success. With their open-featured, plucky young heroes and delicate linework, Tartaglione’s Classics exhibited an appealing playfulness. Won By the Sword follows the fortunes of young Hector Campbell in the Thirty Years War and is rendered as an extended adolescent daydream, the operative mode of most Henty novels. The artist depicts violence in so stylized a manner that even being pinned beneath a horse on a battlefield seems of little consequence to the indomitable principal character. (In contrast, Norman Nodel’s illustrations for Henty’s Lion of the North, No. 155, another story about a Scottish boy’s adventures in the same conflict, present a darker, less romantic view of the 17th-centuryb loodbath.) Tom Brown’s School Days is Tartaglione’s Gilberton masterpiece — a handsomely drawn, beautifully inked depiction of life at Dr. Arnold’s Rugby and the ongoing battle of wills between Brown, his friend East, and the archetypal bully Flashman. (The revised Classics Illustrated edition earned a footnote in the history of popular culture for its role in preparing baby boomers for the arrival of George Macdonald Fraser’s “Flashman” series of witty historical novels less than a decade later.) Top: John Tartaglione, Won By the Sword (July 1959). Compare with Norman Nodel’s much darker middle panel on the page from The Lion of the North, another G.A. Henty story set during the Thirty Years’ War. Bottom: John Tartaglione, Tom Brown’s School Days (March 1961). Brown and East (prototypes of Potter and Weasley) confront the bully Flashman (ancestor of Malfoy). Note the heavily scored linework in the top and bottom panels.

XIX. HIGH TIDE AND GREENBACKS Tartaglione’s distinctive hatch marks lend an air of antiquity to Al Sundel’s adaptation, creating a visual and even physical texture8 for this Victorian precursor of the Harry Potter novels. All of the characters are presented in such lifelike, natural poses that the panels seem invested with a nearly cinematic verisimilitude. The book ranks among the most perfectly achieved issues in the Classics Illustrated catalogue. Most of Tartaglione’s output for Gilberton appeared in three Special Issues and 19 World Around Us editions. An eightpage chapter on John Hunt Morgan’s Kentucky raid in The War Between the States, a 1961 Special Issue, was among his more memorable contributions. Tartaglione later illustrated Marvel biographies of Pope John Paul II (1982) and Mother Teresa (1984) and inked Marie Severin’s Dragonslayer series.

207

racehorse legend Man o’ War, and he drew them obsessively for a couple of years. He also had a passion for dogs.14 Although Cole was an extraordinarily versatile artist, animals remained his specialty, and his best work featured them prominently: the painted cover and interior art for Ernest Thompson Seton’s Wild Animals I Have Known, No. 152 (September 1959); the painted cover for Ernest Thompson Seton’s Lives of the Hunted, No. 157 ( July 1960); the painted cover for Frank Norris’s The Octopus, No. 159 (November 1960) (see

LEONARD B. COLE Leonard Brandt Cole (1918–1995) arrived at Gilberton after a stint at St. John Publishing and served as art director from November 1958 to January 1961, succeeding the retired Alex A. Blum. Cole’s friend Norman Nodel told him about the opening, and the already wellrespected artist phoned executive editor Meyer A. Kaplan, who immediately hired him.9 Described by scriptwriter Al Sundel as a man “of Falstaffian girth,”10 the ebullient, amiable Cole had illustrated Bible stories and had been the editor of Star Comics, where he inaugurated School-Day Romances (subsequently renamed Popular Teenagers).11 At Gilberton, he presided over the assembly of a stable of talented artists driven to Kanter’s lower-paying lines by the implosion of Atlas and other comics publishers. McCann, Tartaglione, Norman Saunders, Jack Kirby, and other Cole-era freelancers filled the quotas for the four series in production. In an interview toward the end of his life, Cole confessed that he had found it difficult to keep track of the multitude of editions in print and subject to revision.12 The art director’s first Gilberton assignment had been a painted cover and a four-page section in an early World Around Us issue, Horses, No. 3 (November 1958), the only Classics-related piece he signed, and the only work he kept for himself.13 As a teenager, Cole became infatuated with horses after seeing the

Leonard B. Cole, “The Pacing Mustang” in Wild Animals I Have Known (September 1959). The artist’s love of horses is revealed in this tribute to a free spirit.

208

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: Leonard B. Cole, Lives of the Hunted (July 1960). The artist’s second Ernest Thompson Seton cover. Right: Leonard B. Cole, Black Beauty (U.S. edition, Fall 1960; Australian edition with different sky and lettering, 1961). The artist’s last work for Gilberton; the subject, appropriately, was a horse.

color section); and the painted cover and partial interior art for the late 1960 reissue of Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, No. 60. The cover, showing the horse galloping through a field, is a magnificent expression of the artist’s love for the subject and an indelible icon. Part of Cole’s editorial duties involved supplying painted covers for the Classics Illustrated Junior series, and he did so for every issue from The Magic Dish, No. 558 (February 1959), to The Happy Hedgehog, No. 568 (October 1960). The artist also produced new covers for various Classics Illustrated reissues, including Green Mansions, No. 90 (second painted cover, January 1959), The Moonstone, No. 30 (painted cover, March 1960), and Julius Caesar, No. 68 (painted cover, May 1960). These were among his best efforts. Unfortunately, questions concerning Cole’s handling of freelancer accounts, including alleged self-dealing contrary to the work-for-hire doctrine, reputedly led to his abrupt departure from Gilberton.15 The axe fell when Black Beauty was in

progress, and Norman Nodel and Stephen L. Addeo (who had played a similar role in The Last of the Mohicans) stepped in to complete the revision. Years later, Cole insisted that he had walked away from Gilberton strictly as a matter of money and the changing state of the comics business.16 The year 1961 was, in fact, unkind to Albert Kanter’s enterprise, with external pressures applied by the postal authorities and the distribution network. Internally, a war of wills had been intensifying between two factions: the Old Guard, represented by longtime editor Meyer Kaplan and his chosen art director L.B. Cole, and the Young Turks, comprising Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, scriptwriter Alfred Sundel, and researcher Helene Lecar. Feuerlicht, Sundel, and Lecar shared a vision of the future direction of the publications that gave greater emphasis to the educational content and, in view of Gilberton’s expanding world market, greater prominence to Central and Eastern European, Latin American, and Asian history and literature. Once Feuerlicht gained Albert and

XIX. HIGH TIDE AND GREENBACKS

209

in the late Fifties. He deserves to be remembered for his positive contributions — and all those wonderful animal covers.”17

NORMAN B. SAUNDERS He never drew a book for Classics Illustrated, but Norman B. Saunders (1907–1989) painted four of the most memorable covers of the 1950s —A Journey to the Center of the Earth, No. 138 (May 1957), The Crisis, No. 145 ( July 1958), Frankenstein, No. 26 (September 1958), and The Buccaneer, No. 148 ( January 1959). Two of these, Journey and Frankenstein, have become among the most iconic of Classics covers. For the Jules Verne title, Saunders created what is certainly one of the most striking and instantly identifiable covers in the history of the publication. His painting, with its

Leonard B. Cole, The Moonstone (March 1960). One of the more exotic Classics Illustrated covers.

William Kanter’s confidence, the days of Kaplan and Cole were undoubtedly numbered, and whatever the precipitating incident might have been, the exit of the two friends and allies was probably inevitable. Cole went on to work as art director for Dell Comics, which would soon face major internal changes of its own. And at 101 Fifth Avenue, under the less-is-more influence of the new Gilberton art director, Sidney Miller, Classics Illustrated never quite regained its artistic bearings, while the quality of the Junior line, which Cole had elevated, took a nosedive. Veterans such as Norman Nodel, George Evans, and Gray Morrow continued to produce outstanding work for Al Sundel’s expertly crafted scripts, but the fallen art director’s successor was unable to enlist new recruits of comparable talent. Classics collector and researcher John Haufe, who befriended Cole, regards him as “in some ways a tragic figure.” Yet, he maintains, the artist “brought so much to [Gilberton]

Norman B. Saunders, The Crisis (July 1958). The artist offers a preview of his later Civil War trading-card art.

210

CLASSICS Illustrated

vivid orange background, depicts the mortal struggle between an Ichthyosaurus and a Plesiosaurus in the underground sea. The Frankenstein cover, a study in shades of icy gray and blue, shows the monster pursued by his creator in a frozen wasteland. Foreshadowing the artist’s venture a couple of years later into the realm of Civil War illustrations, the cover painting for The Crisis was notable for the intensity of the image, which portrays the moment of death in battle for a Union soldier. The painted cover for The Buccaneer shows Jean Lafitte (or, more precisely, a costumed Yul Brynner), against a vivid red backdrop, primed for swashbuckling. A veteran pulp cover artist, Saunders also produced work for paperbacks and other comics. In 1961, Topps hired him to paint a series of Civil War trading cards notable for their gory details of soldiers being impaled on bayonets or blown apart by cannon. Saunders stayed with Topps until his retirement in 1981, producing a Batman set in 1966 after achieving pop-culture apotheosis in 1962 with the card series Mars Attacks.18

(September 1957). Later, Wilson worked on Gold Key comics covers for such series as Space Family Robinson, Dark Shadows, Korak, Twilight Zone, and Outer Limits. One of Roea’s first two contributions to a Gilberton publication was the dynamic yellow-background cover for a May 1959 World Around Us issue devoted to the army. After providing the simultaneously published cover for The Virginian, which was given a dark-green cast, the artist painted striking studies dominated by darker colors for reissued editions of Twenty Years After, No. 41 (May 1960), and The Woman in White, No. 61 (May 1960). The artist employed sharp contrasts to good effect on the Wilkie Collins title. Like Roea, the English-born Biggs started with a World

GEORGE WILSON, DOUG ROEA , AND GEOFFREY BIGGS Three outstanding artists who provided painted covers for Classics Illustrated in an era otherwise dominated by Gerald McCann and L.B. Cole were George Wilson, Doug Roea, and Geoffrey Biggs (1908–1971). Wilson’s banner year was 1956, in which he painted one of the most iconic of Classics covers for issue No. 133, The Time Machine. Both Roea and Biggs produced their most evocative works for the series in 1959 — Roea’s cover for The Virginian, No. 150, showing a pair of gunmen facing each other on a darkened Western street, and Biggs’s cover for The Invisible Man, No. 153, depicting the title character racing down a London street with eyeglasses resting on his unseen face. George Wilson’s involvement in the comics world was strictly as a cover artist. His first Gilberton project was the striking cover painting for The Prince and the Pauper, No. 29 (September 1955). In March 1956 he produced one of the best-known covers in the history of the series for the refurbished Treasure Island, No. 64, showing Long John leading Jim Hawkins on the illfated hunt for Flint’s gold. (See color section.) A few months later Wilson joined the ranks of pop-culture immortals with his atomic-era cover painting for The Time Machine, No. 133 ( July 1956). (See color section.) A whimsical depiction of Frank Buck feeding an elephant added to the appeal of On Jungle Trails, No. 140

George Wilson, The Prince and the Pauper (September 1955). A cover that amounted to a plot “spoiler.”

XIX. HIGH TIDE AND GREENBACKS

211

Left: Doug Roea, The Woman in White (1960). The evocative original cover painting, which alluded to and surpassed the linedrawing cover it replaced (collection of Øystein Sørensen). Right: Geoffrey Biggs, Wuthering Heights (May 1960). A cover that quickly became iconic.

Around Us cover, Prehistoric Animals, No. W15 (November 1959). Following his success with The Invisible Man during the same month, the artist depicted Cathy and Heathcliff on the moors under a stunning black sky for the reissued Wuthering Heights (May 1960). The artist’s dramatic brush strokes on the clouds give emphasis to the emotional turmoil of the ill-fated lovers. A pair of determined Union infantrymen were the focal point for Biggs’s last Gilberton cover, The War Between the States, No. 162A ( June 1961). Biggs stood at an imposing six feet, three or four inches, with, as his daughter Stephanie Biggs wrote, “a swimmers build, broad shoulders, slim hips, long legs, high cheekbones, white hair, black moustache, and brown eyes.”19 Born near London, England, on 6 April 1908, he emigrated with his family to the United States when he was about ten. (A brother, Stephen Biggs, became the art editor of Holiday magazine.)20 An admirer of N.C. Wyeth, Biggs studied at the Grand

Central School of Art, where he met his wife, model Anna Wagner. His realistic action scenes were well-suited to Classics Illustrated and such publications as Sports Afield, Boys’ Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. On occasion, he used his wife and daughter Stephanie as models. The artist maintained studios at his home in Palatine Bridge, upstate New York, and in New York City, as well, at 47th Street and Lexington Avenue. Biggs died in January 1971, at the age of sixty-two.21

CLASSICS RECORDED In the fall of 1958, just in time to take advantage of the Christmas market, Gilberton partnered with M-G-M Records’ budget Lion label to release a 12-inch long-playing record containing 12 adapted Classics Illustrated Junior titles read by veteran radio and television game-show and variety-show host

212

CLASSICS Illustrated Robert Q. Lewis. Titled The Wonderful World of Fairy Tales, the album featured Pinocchio, The Pied Piper, and The Wizard of Oz, among other Junior issues. (See illustration in Chapter XXIV.) Lewis, who had scored a minor novelty hit in 1951 with “Where’s-A Your House”22 (a comeback to Rosemary Clooney’s chart-topping “Come On-A My House”), also sang songs written by Hank Sylvern for the record. (The disc was reissued with a different cover in the early 1970s.) For Christmas 1959, Gilberton and M-G-M joined forces again for another Lion LP, Space Stories and Sounds, a compilation containing The First Men in the Moon, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, The War of the Worlds, and The Time Machine. The collection was narrated by sportscaster and occasional film actor Bill Stern. A third album, Western Playhouse: Songs and Stories of the Great Wild West, was released for the holiday season in 1960. It featured adaptations by Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht from Wild Bill Hickok, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and The Adventures of Kit Carson, as well as sections on Jim Bowie, Wyatt Earp, and Bat Masterson from Blazing the Trails West and Men, Guns and Cattle. Narrated by Bob Wilson with Western music arranged by composer and music critic Bill Simon, the record included such songs as “Old Chisholm Trail,” “Goodbye, Old Paint,” and “Red River Valley.” Six years later, in 1966, Gilberton and Golden Records issued four LPs in a Classics Story Teller series: Black Beauty, The Call of the Wild, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Time Machine. In each case, the record was devoted to a dramatization of a single Classics Illustrated title; a copy of the comic book in question (absent number or price in the open-book logo) was included in the sleeve. On the album cover, the prospective purchaser was invited to “Hear the Record, Read the Book.” The four 1966 Classics Story Teller packages, as well as the 1958–1960 records, had high production values. They demonstrated once again the Kanter family’s commitment to their product and their determination to enhance its profile through a variety of means. Top: Western Playhouse (Lion, 1960). The rarest of the Classics Illustrated recordings that were released from 1958 to 1966. Bottom: Classics Story Teller: The Time Machine (Golden Records, 1966). Recorded versions of certain Classics Illustrated titles were available in the Classics Story Teller series.

XX

Gerald McCann: The Colors of the Sky C

onsidered one of the top five “regulars” among the Classics freelancers of the later years,1 Gerald McCann (b. 1916) produced some of the handsomest painted covers in the entire run of the series. His only rival in terms of quality was L.B. Cole. As for quantity, McCann outpaced everyone: he supplied painted covers or interior artwork for more than forty Classics Illustrated, Special Issues, and World Around Us titles. Best known as an illustrator of juvenile books, the artist’s distinctive style, with its elongated, drybrushed figures, graced many works of the period, such as Edesse Peery Smith’s award-winning Pokes of Gold (1958), Enid Lamonte Meadowcroft’s We Were There at the Opening of the Erie Canal (1958), and Anne Colver’s Florence Nightingale: War Nurse (1961). McCann also illustrated other comic books, such as the Dell Movie Classic editions of Morgan the Pirate (No. 1227, September 1961) and El Cid (No. 1259, December 1961). Soon after Gilberton shut down its American operations in 1962, he turned his attention to Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and Tom Sawyer Detective for Grosset and Dunlap’s Companion Library series. In later years, he became celebrated in the art world for his paintings on Western themes. McCann was remembered by George Evans as a “witty man” who worked well with the editorial staff and never missed a deadline. Unlike Evans, he had more contacts with the business end of 101 Fifth Avenue, about which he remarked: “If you ever have to deal with those people in management, you’ll need embalming fluid.”2 Gerald McCann, Off on a Comet (March 1959). The artist’s dry-brush style made his illustrations the most readily recognizable in the Gilberton publications of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

213

214

CLASSICS Illustrated

characters, such as Hector Servadac in Off on a Comet and the Captain in The Conspirators, appear to inhabit a vigorous middle age. McCann provided cover paintings for three Classics in 1958: Abraham Lincoln (attributed but unsigned, January 1958), The First Men in the Moon (attributed but unsigned, May 1958) and Ben-Hur (November 1958). At year’s end the artist produced a Special Issue cover painting for Crossing the Rockies (December 1958). In late 1958 and early 1959, he was also occupied with interior sections of Horses, Space, and The FBI for the newly inaugurated World Around Us series. The artist’s first complete book for Gilberton was Jules Verne’s Off on a Comet, No. 149 (March 1959). Originally titled Hector Servadac, the novel was one of the French author’s lesserknown “Extraordinary Voyages.” The comic-book version, however, was destined to become a Classics Illustrated icon through reproduction of the cover (actually, a line-drawing mock-up) on reorder lists from 1959 to 1970. Verne’s whimsical scientific fantasy of two rivals whose duel is postponed when they and other inhabitants of the Mediterranean rim are swept into space is rendered by the artist with visual economy and wit. During the rest of 1959, McCann was occupied with cover paintings for two more “Western” Special Issues, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (June 1959) and Men, Guns and Cattle (December 1959), and with illustrating portions of every World Around Us edition that appeared on a monthly basis during the year. The artist’s historical eye served him well in such issues as Pirates, No. W7 (March 1959), The French Revolution, No. W14 (October 1959), and The Crusades, No. W16 (December 1959), for which he painted one of the series’ most striking covers. McCann’s ability to capture fluid movement — whether of horses or humans — served him well during his time with Gilberton and during his later career devoted to the exploration of Western subject matter. The following year brought two beautifully rendered Classics Illustrated titles, for which the artist provided both cover paintings and interior art: Francis Parkman’s The Conspiracy of Pontiac, No. 154 ( January 1960), and Alexandre Dumas’s The Conspirators, No. 158 (September 1960), both seamlessly adapted by Al Sundel. McCann’s illustrations bring the two relatively obscure works vibrantly to life. In particular, the artist’s Gerald McCann, The Conspirators (September 1960). A Dumas title for which scenes of duels, chases, and dynastic intrigue in The Conspirators— supported by Helene Lecar’s the artist produced both the cover painting and the interior art. The artist’s background was in pulp-fiction illustration, and he brought to the Gilberton publications the dry-brush and split-brush techniques associated with the genre. McCann’s panels are painterly, marked by a broad-stroked linework that suggests rather than details; his backgrounds and costumes are generally sketchy, while the primary figurative emphasis is upon plasticity of expression and gesture. Perhaps because the artist was already in his forties when he began his association with Gilberton, some of his most vividly realized

XX. GERALD MCCANN

215

Left: Gerald McCann, The Conspiracy of Pontiac (January 1960). Note the background map that serves as the sky. Right: Gerald McCann, The Lion of the North, original cover painting (March 1960). The sky in this original painting is pitch-black; it was changed in the published version to dark blue (collection of Øystein Sørensen).

early-18th-century costume research — are filled with period flourishes and flavor. The painted covers McCann produced are among the most compelling of Gilberton’s later years. Pontiac is a strikingly textured composition, with its finely observed French and Indian foreground figures and a background map filling the sky. The original gouache cover for The Conspirators (completed 16 March 1960, see color section), contrasts frenzied movement — horses, carriage wheels, pistol fire, billowing cloak — with minutely observed costume details and a dominating night sky of varying shades of deep blue. For another cover from that year, The Lion of the North, No. 155 (March 1960), the artist produced a dark scene of Gustavus Adolphus directing cannon fire. Despite the heroic posture of the king on horseback, the painting, with its midnight-blue sky (changed from stark black in the original cover painting) and fallen soldier, seems a commentary on

false glory and a dramatic foreshadowing of the Swedish monarch’s fate. Perhaps the most consistently striking aspect of McCann’s cover paintings is his dramatic use of color in his skies. Tom Brown’s School Days (painting completed 14 December 1960, see color section) shows rugby players competing against a bright red backdrop. The frenetic action is paused just as the stalwart young hero is reaching for the ball. Where the red in the Tom Brown painting heightens the viewer’s sense of the spirited contest on the playing field, an altogether different mood is established with another red-dominated background on the cover of Typee. There, the blood-red sky and blue-gray clouds intensify a life-or-death struggle with cannibals. A Revolutionary War naval battle is the subject of McCann’s cover painting for The Pilot; the artist conveys the chaos of the close-range combat through the shipboard fires, reflected in the water, and the teal smoke that rises toward a violet-red

216

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: Gerald McCann, Typee (March 1960). The clash of cultures beneath a blood-red sky. Right: Gerald McCann, The Food of the Gods (January 1961). An instantly iconic cover.

sky. The colors always serve the emotional content of the paintings, and the amount of space devoted to the sky in each one reminds the viewer of a universal context within which the finite human action occurs. The cover for The Food of the Gods ( January 1961), H.G. Wells’s satirical scientific parable, was perhaps the most delightful of the paintings that McCann produced for Gilberton. In the foreground is an overgrown chicken holding a boy in its beak. This time the sky is an ordinary blue; the artist’s decision to keep the background “normal” serves to emphasize further the strangeness of the scene presented. Adding clouds and darkening the sky, the editors of a later German Illustrierte Klassiker edition (Die Riesen Kommen) made the child-dangling chicken appear less absurd and more ominous. Like Louis Zansky before him, McCann was obviously a

painter barely at home in the comics medium. Unlike his predecessor, however, he was often able to leave pencil and ink behind on assignments. Between 1960 and 1962, McCann made his greatest contribution to Classics Illustrated with the covers he painted for The Conspiracy of Pontiac, The Conspirators, The Lion of the North, Typee, The Man Without a Country, The Pilot, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Food of the Gods, Les Miserables, Tom Brown’s School Days, and Pudd’nhead Wilson, as well as those he produced for Special Issues and The World Around Us. If covers establish a newsstand identity, then Gerald McCann was as much the embodiment of Gilberton publications in the early 1960s as Norman Nodel or, earlier, Henry C. Kiefer and Alex A. Blum. With the delicate sureness of his brush, he elevated the Classics Illustrated cover painting to another realm altogether.

XXI

Gray Morrow: “Real People and Real Events” O

ne of the Gilberton Company’s greatest finds, Gray Morrow (1934–2001) signed on through the good offices of a friend, Classics Illustrated contributor Angelo Torres: I was recently discharged from the army after serving in Korea ’56–’58. The comics publishing industry was in a kind of doldrums. My friend Angelo Torres took me around to a couple of his clients, one being “Classics,” and I was given a script. One thing led to another and I was soon working on a regular basis.1

Scriptwriter Sundel recalled the artist as one who “typically wore a tan belted raincoat” and was “on the quiet side, slim. He may have been married but he always looked dashingly single. He was younger than Nodel and Evans, his only peers among the best of our comic-strip artists. He simply had great natural talent.”2 Of his Gilberton days, Morrow recalled that the page rate wasn’t much for the accuracy and authenticity they expected, but it was a challenge to “do it right.” Roberta and Len Cole were demanding but genial editors. One job I do remember ... something about whaling [for World Around Us issue No. W28, Whaling (December 1960)] got me in dutch with Roberta. My research indicated that many of the whalers were black — so that’s what I drew. She had a fit and insisted they all be redrawn to “avoid controversy.” Also, I must’ve been one of the first to draw in comics men with hairy chests and nipples. In those days characters in comics didn’t sport such indications of their genders. Women may’ve had torpedo-shaped breasts but lacked nipples and never wore a navel.3

“The Long Voyage,” the chapter for Whaling that caused such a problem for the artist with editor Feuerlicht, retained a respectable number of African-American whalemen and proved Gray Morrow, “The Long Voyage” in The Illustrated Story of Whaling (December 1960). Aiming for historical authenticity, the artist included African-American whalers in his World Around Us chapter.

217

XXI. GRAY MORROW

219

to be one of the most outstanding works of the artist’s tenure with Gilberton. Morrow’s first pages for the publisher had appeared in another World Around Us issue, No. W15, Prehistoric Animals (November 1959), for which he drew such creatures as the dimetrodon and pterodactyl and recreated the drama of early 19th-century fossil discoveries. He soon became a regular contributor to the monthly educational series, providing illustrations for 13 issues, including the painted cover and interior art for Magic, No. W25 (September 1960), and sections in Great Scientists, No. W18 (February 1960). Others he worked on were The Jungle, No. W19 (March 1960); American Presidents, No. W21 (May 1960); Boating, No. W22 ( June 1960); Great Explorers, No. W23 (July 1960); Ghosts, No. W24 (August 1960); The Civil War, No. W26 (October 1960); High Adventure, No. W27 (November 1960); For Gold and Glory, No. W32 (April 1961); and Famous Teens, No. W33 (May 1961). The artist was also responsible for the “Seven for Space” chapter devoted to the Project Mercury astronauts in the timely Rockets, Jets and Missiles, Special Issue No. 159A (December 1960). His drawings provided a cross-section view of the space capsule, offered individual portraits of the first astronauts, and followed “their difficult training program” from the centrifuge to zero-gravity flights. “One will be chosen to orbit the earth,” announced the text of the final panel, which displayed the artist’s spectral rendering of the mystery astronaut. The suborbital flight of Alan Shepard in Freedom 7 was five months away; John Glenn’s triple orbit in Friendship 7 was 14 months in the future. Public anticipation was building, and Gilberton was playing its role, simultaneously educating and capitalizing on the historical moment. It was Morrow’s sustained efforts in three Clas- Gray Morrow, Master of the World (July 1961). A heavily inked page with sics Illustrated editions that reveal the qualities that a turn-of-the-century ambience. earned the admiration of the editorial staff at 101 the tragic struggle between wheat farmers and the railroad in Fifth Avenue. The first of these, The Octopus, No. 159 (NoCalifornia’s San Joaquin Valley. vember 1960), is, along with The Conquest of Mexico and Faust, Either Sundel supplied Morrow with Norris’s extensive one of the showpieces of the Feuerlicht era. Like its compancharacter descriptions or Morrow scrutinized the novel with ions, The Octopus features an intelligent adaptation by Al Sunparticular intensity. “I did like the book,” the artist succinctly del, who deftly encapsulated the propagandistic fervor and commented.4 Ultimately, the artist was responsible, and The strident symbolism of Frank Norris’s naturalistic novel about Opposite: Gray Morrow, The Octopus (November 1960). The fallen Annixter (second from right, bottom panel) was cut out and redrawn by the artist on a piece of bristol board pasted to the back of this page of original art in response to the following partially erased marginal note from Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht: “Perspective off on Annixter’s figure. Please turn him around facing other way, where feet are now. Dead bodies normally fall forward. Put his hat in pic, too” (collection of the author).

XXI. GRAY MORROW Octopus boasts the most accurate rendering of characters of any issue in the Classics Illustrated line, capturing everything from the heroic Annixter’s “lower lip thrust out, the chin large and deeply cleft” to the oily S. Behrman’s “great tremulous jowl” and “protuberant stomach.”5 Yet Morrow’s treatment of the work goes beyond mere descriptive fidelity. Character is illuminated through facial expression and physical stance, as when Annixter coolly faces a drunken gun-wielding cowboy or S. Behrman realizes that he is about to be drowned in wheat. Each panel is composed cinematically. The climactic confrontation between the ranchers and the United States marshal and his deputies is first shown, subjectively, at close range and then, objectively, with Olympian detachment, from above. The next Classics Illustrated title assigned to Morrow was Jules Verne’s Master of the World, No. 163 ( July 1961), the better-known sequel to the preceding issue, Robur the Conqueror, and a then current Vincent Price motion-picture vehicle. Tackling an adventure tale with comparatively little dialogue (37 panels employ thought bubbles rather than speech balloons and another 35 rely only on narrative boxes), the artist exploited the drama of the machinery and succeeded in making the Ter ror—a combination “automobile, boat, submarine, and airship”— a character in its own right. He also exhibited outstanding storytelling skills through his heavily inked, dark panels that not only established a time reference but also contributed to a sense of impending doom. Morrow’s Robur, the “master of the world” himself, though based for the sake of continuity on Don Perlin’s conception in issue No. 162, surpasses its model in monomaniacal grandeur. On the other hand, the dapper protagonist, John Strock, may have been one of the figures Al Sundel had in mind when he wrote that “Gray’s flaw, if he had one, was to tend to draw men who looked a bit too English and a bit too alike from book to book, a little taller than Gray himself but built along the same slim lines.”6 For Alexandre Dumas’s The Queen’s Necklace, No. 165

221

( January 1962), Morrow worked at top speed: “[I]t was done when I’d moved to California and I needed those checks badly so I was penciling and inking eight pages a day. That’s as fast as I’ve ever been able to go.”7 Given the pace at which the book was executed, it is a remarkable performance. The ancien régime period details, encompassing clothing, hair, posture, and backgrounds, are presented with delicate precision. Although the sketches of Marie Antoinette appear rather rushed and onedimensional, other figures involved in the intrigue that undermined the French throne are rendered with the complexity of the characters in The Octopus, particularly the scheming Count Cagliostro and the hack journalist Reteau. “In retrospect,” Morrow wrote, looking back on his association with Gilberton from the vantage point of three decades later, “it was a pleasant account to handle, but not easy. It would have been less fun but simpler to do some superhero with no research required, but it was always interesting to study and draw real people and real events and/or ‘classic’ literature.”8 During his freelance involvement with Classics Illustrated, Morrow was busy illustrating volumes in the Bobbs-Merrill “Childhood of Famous Americans” series, to which other Gilberton artists had contributed. He continued working on the juvenile biographies after Classics new-title production ceased, providing artwork for Helen Albee Monsell’s Henry Clay: Young Kentucky Orator (1963) and Laura M. Long’s Douglas MacArthur: Young Protector (1965). Morrow became better known in the 1960s for his covers for such science-fiction works as Andre Norton’s Night of Masks (1965) and his black-and-white comics for Warren Publishing’s Creepy. He remained active through the 1990s and was approached by First Classics, Inc., with a proposal to illustrate an issue on wolves in a new World Around Us line. Morrow stated that he completed the book,9 but the projected series folded when the revived Classics Illustrated line failed, and the title was never published. Parkinson’s disease ended his career, and he died on 6 November 2001.

Opposite: Gray Morrow, The Queen’s Necklace (January 1962). Character studies and period style shine in this page of original art from a hastily illustrated Dumas adaptation (collection of the author).

XXII

“Roberta’s Reforms”: The Early Sixties B

y the early 1960s, Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht and Bill Kanter had recharted the direction of Classics Illustrated. On board were Alfred Sundel, the gifted scriptwriter who suggested many of the later titles, and editorial assistant Helene Lecar, who spent hours at the New York Public Library researching period costumes and artifacts. It was the heyday of Norman Nodel, George Evans, Angelo Torres, Gerald McCann, and Gray Morrow — and was dubbed by Sundel the era of “Roberta’s Reforms.”1 Perhaps the golden year was 1960, when three outstanding new titles —The Conspiracy of Pontiac, The Conquest of Mexico, and The Octopus—were published. Meanwhile, 13 books long out of print—Don Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels, Two Years Before the Mast, The Moonstone, Typee, Twenty Years After, Alice in Wonderland, Wuthering Heights, Black Beauty, The Woman in White, The Man Without a Country, Julius Caesar, and Men of Iron —were restored to the line. The “Great Revival” continued in 1961: Arabian Nights, Les Miserables, The Last Days of Pompeii, Adventures of Cellini, Tom Brown’s School Days, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, all formerly discontinued titles, surfaced again, the first five in completely new editions. Four different publications—Classics Illustrated, Classics Illustrated Special Issues, The World Around Us, and Classics Illustrated Junior— appeared on a regular schedule and were earning the respect of teachers and parents, many of whom had grown up on Classic Comics and Classics Illustrated. Better art and more reissues had become de rigueur.

Bruno Premiani, The Conquest of Mexico (May 1960). One of the most arresting Classics covers, painted by the artist who also supplied the interior art.

222

XXII. “ROBERTA’S REFORMS”

MILLER’S MINIMALISM At about the same time that John F. Kennedy became the thirty-fifth president of the United States, introducing a “New Frontier” and a new generation of national leadership, Gilberton experienced its own changing of the guard. Art director Leonard B. Cole departed under a cloud, although Helene Lecar suggests that “part of the reason [he] disappeared” was because “his aesthetic was precisely for the noir genre.”2 Indeed, of the old EC crew nurtured by Cole, only George Evans and Angelo Torres remained. Even before the arrival of new art director Sidney Miller in early 1961, a change in the appearance of Classics Illustrated was underway. The process accelerated under his supervision. “Typefaces got bigger and went into upper and lower case, pictures were much less fussy, with clearer focus on the main characters,” Lecar recalled.3 The stylistic makeover at 101 Fifth Avenue was in keeping with the contemporary direction toward minimalism in both commercial and cartoon design. It was the era of the Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency’s “think small” white-space ads for Volkswagen and Walt Disney’s simplified animation techniques in 101 Dalmatians. Miller brought Classics Illustrated up to date.

IN RE: GILBERTON WORLD-WIDE PUBLICATIONS, INC. Meanwhile, Gilberton, which had been fighting with the Post Office since 1959 to retain its second-class mailing permit, lost the legal battle. In an amended decision issued on 19 April 1960, the Post Office Department denied Gilberton WorldWide Publications’ petition for second-class mailing status for The World Around Us.4 The administrative-law ruling killed the potential for the series to survive as a subscription-based publication; distribution in stores was the only possibility for the line to continue. When The World Around Us was launched in 1958, no filler items such as the Classics Illustrated “Pioneers of Science” articles or the Classics Illustrated Junior “Animal World” feature had been included. An unfavorable 2 November 1959 Post Office ruling by a hearing examiner on the first ten titles5 prompted Bill Kanter and Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht to add unrelated pieces such as “The Piltdown Hoax” and “The Mystery of Stonehenge” to the next three issues, which were then submitted as exhibits in Gilberton’s case. A 26 February 1960 Post Office departmental ruling by a judicial officer favored the new format.6 But in an amended decision delivered on 19 April 1960, Raymond J. Kelly, writing for the Department, vacated the earlier determination. Kelly quoted the pronouncements of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Smith v. Hitchcock, 226

223

U.S. 53 (1912), that “books are not turned into periodicals by number and sequence” and that “generally a printed publication is a book when its contents are complete in themselves, deal with a single subject, betray no need of continuation, and, perhaps, have an appreciable size.”7 Concluding that the issues of The World Around Us that had been submitted “clearly are not ‘periodical publications’ within the meaning of Sections 224 and 226 of Title 39 United States Code,” Kelly gave no quarter. He noted that “[t]he record here discloses that the four one-page articles in the eighty-page publication does not change the character of the publication in any substantial way from the first ten issues [which had already been deemed books] and these also must be held to be books and not periodicals.”8 Kelly’s conclusion was unambiguous: “I therefore find that the last three issues of the publications are books and not periodicals and are not entitled to second-class entry. To that extent the Departmental Decision of February 26, 1960, is vacated and second-class entry for those three issues is hereby denied.”9 The administrative ruling was later affirmed. The result was the cancellation of The World Around Us series and the termination of the Classics Illustrated bimonthly cycle. Issue No. 163 appeared in July 1961 on schedule, but No. 164, scheduled for September, was delayed until October; No. 165, which would have been the November title, was issued in January 1962. With issue No. 162, Robur the Conqueror, Gilberton shortened the main-story length to 40 pages, added a five-page series called “Men of Action,” and began serializing short stories by Guy de Maupassant and Stephen Crane. These changes in series content and format were intended to persuade the Post Office that individual titles were periodicals rather than books, with continuing features linking separate issues. But the efforts were to no avail, and it was no longer economically feasible to offer subscriptions or new titles. More restored titles appeared in 1962: The Man Who Laughs, The Courtship of Miles Standish, Pudd’nhead Wilson, The White Company, Knights of the Round Table, Pitcairn’s Island, A Study in Scarlet, and The Talisman. Despite its now irregular schedule, Classics Illustrated also produced in 1962 what the editorial staff considered their crowning achievement and the finest single issue—Goethe’s Faust, masterfully adapted by Al Sundel and beautifully rendered by Norman Nodel. But the end was already at hand.

BRUNO PREMIANI One of the finest Gilberton freelancers of the early 1960s, Giordano Bruno Premiani loved history and experienced its weight firsthand. The son of a Slovenian Imperial Railway employee and an Italian mother, he was born in Trieste on 4

224

CLASSICS Illustrated

January 1907, in the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1922 he was an art student in Trieste, now a part of Italy, when Benito Mussolini and his blackshirts seized power. Premiani’s antifascist views and activities earned him the attention of the authorities. He left Italy and sailed to Argentina in 1930, where he worked for the daily newspaper Crítica and, in the 1940s, for several magazines. Premiani found Juan Perón’s authoritarianism no more congenial than Mussolini’s, and he left Argentina in 1948 for the United States, where he began working on the Tomahawk series for National/DC. Around the time of Eva Perón’s death in 1952, the artist returned to Argentina. In 1960, Premiani found himself once again in New York.10 There he established an imme-

diate connection with the Gilberton Company through art director Leonard B. Cole. A major project was in the works, and Bruno Premiani received the assignment. Al Sundel, an authority on the Spanish exploration and exploitation of the New World, had scripted an adaptation of Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España. The resulting comic book, The Conquest of Mexico, No. 156 (May 1960), would be a landmark issue that showed the Feuerlicht Era Classics Illustrated at its best. Sundel’s sophisticated abridgment of the 16th-century narrative manages to convey in small compass the sweep of the epic eyewitness work yet never condescends to the reader. Researcher Helene Lecar unearthed a wealth of material for Premiani, who made the most of it, recreating conquistador accoutrements and Aztec architecture with impressive authenticity. The artist painted a dramatic cover showing a mounted conquistador plunging into battle. He incorporated an Aztec pictograph on the title-page splash, and his swiftly moving panels echo the ancient art form throughout the 45-page abridgment. The artist’s illustrations are perfectly wedded to the substantial text, establishing the principal characters and pushing the action from panel to panel with a visual excitement seldom matched in the series. Although The Conquest of Mexico was Premiani’s sole Classics Illustrated credit, he supplied sections for Special Issues No. 156A, The Atomic Age ( June 1960), and the unnumbered, undated United Nations. He also provided artwork for six World Around Us editions: The Crusades, No. W16 (December 1959); Festivals, No. W17 ( January 1960); Great Scientists, No. W18 (February 1960); Communications, No. W20 (April 1960); Whaling, No. W28 (December 1960); and Vikings, No. W29 ( January 1961). “The Walled City,” a chapter on the Siege of Antioch in The Crusades, features panels filled with mail-clad Crusaders and scimitar-wielding Muslims, all drawn with an attention to historical detail that rivals if not surpasses The Conquest of Mexico. Following his transitional time with Gilberton, Premiani undertook for DC the work for which he is best known, National/DC’s Doom Patrol,11 a series about a trio with superhuman abilities that he and Arnold Drake co-created and that he illustrated from 1963 to 1968. In time, the artist returned to Bruno Premiani, The Conquest of Mexico (May 1960). A wealth of historical detail filled the artist’s panels.

XXII. “ROBERTA’S REFORMS”

225

Argentina, where he provided illustrations for a Buenos Aires magazine. The widely traveled Bruno Premiani died on 17 August 1984.

TONY TALLARICO While George Evans and Reed Crandall were occupied with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Gray Morrow was completing The Octopus, and Norman Nodel was preparing Cleopatra, art director Leonard B. Cole, in his last assignment, handed Al Sundel’s artfully edited script for H.G. Wells’s The Food of the Gods, No. 160 ( January 1961), to Brooklyn-born Anthony (Tony) Tallarico (b. 1933), a former Charlton artist with a distinctively light touch who later drew television tie-ins such as Bewitched and F-Troop for Dell.12 His major achievement in the comics field was to create the short-lived but historically significant Dell Western comicbook series Lobo (1965–1966), which featured anA frican-Americanp rotagonist. Venturing into the realm of political satire with a liberal perspective, Tallarico created The Great Society Comic Book, featuring Super-LBJ, in 1966. Over the years, the prolific artist wrote and illustrated hundreds of children’s books, often collaborating with his musician son, who is also known as Tony. In the 1990s, Tallarico decorated puzzle books and illustrated the I Can Draw series, introducing aspiring young artists to techniques for rendering such things as monsters, spaceships, and animals. His bestknown series was Where Are They? The Food of the Gods was the only Classics Illustrated title drawn by Tallarico. The artist’s childlike, cartoonish approach bore little resemblance to the EC brand of realism that had shaped the Gilberton house style in the late 1950s. Still, Tallarico’s playful style gave visual Tony Tallarico, The Food of the Gods (January 1961). A subversively light touch expression to the satirical thrust of Wells’s for a deeply unsettling tale. philosophical fantasy about a race of giants appeared as an artist to be ideally suited to the folk tales and who embody the principle of the “growth that goes on forever.” fairy tales of Classics Illustrated Junior. His style perfectly comThe artist subverts the reader’s expectations with the lightly plemented How Fire Came to the Indians, No. 571 (April 1961), sketched, whimsical figures that inhabit the first half of the an early foray into the field of multiculturalism and, in terms book. A textual shift in tone occurs midway, beginning a moveof script and art, one of the most satisfying issues in the series, ment toward a quasi-tragic and ultimately prophetic mode, and Brightboots, No. 574 (c. October 1961), a high-spirited but the same caricature-like effect persists. The resulting aestale of a resourceful soldier who unwittingly serves his king. thetic disjunction is intentionally jarring and eerily effective. Tallarico’s decisive simplicity enhanced both books. Like Lin Streeter and Peter Costanza before him, Tallarico

226

CLASSICS Illustrated

Other fine efforts appeared in World Around Us issues No. W27, High Adventure (November 1960); No. W29, The Vikings (January 1961); No. W30, Undersea Adventures (February 1961); No. W33, Famous Teens (May 1961); and No. W36, Fight for Life (October 1961). Bold linework particularly distinguished “The Strongest of the Vikings,” a chapter in No. W29 based on a saga about the Jomsvikings and their leader Sigvald’s rash vow that led to a crushing defeat. After the Frawley organization assumed control and began issuing second painted covers in an effort to breathe life into the expiring series, the artist was commissioned to paint a Fess Parker look-alike for a new edition of Daniel Boone, No. 96 (Winter 1969) and a new, more men-

acing Cyclops to replace Alex A. Blum’s rather contemplative Polyphemus on the cover of The Odyssey (Spring 1969).

JACK KIRBY Among the distinguished freelancers who collected Gilberton paychecks in the early 1960s was comics legend Jack Kirby (1917–1994), whose influence on the medium was incalculable. Born Jacob Kurtzburg in New York’s Lower East Side, he enrolled at the Pratt Institute at the age of fourteen.13 The artist worked on Popeye cartoons for the animation studios of Max Fleischer and subsequently drew adventure and humor comic strips for Lincoln Features. At first, he signed his work “Jack Curtiss,” but when he began producing another strip for a different syndicate, he adopted the name “Lance Kirby.” Merging the two pseudonyms in 1940, Jacob Kurtzburg became forever Jack Kirby.14 In 1941, he illustrated the first issue of Captain Marvel Adventures. That same year, he collaborated with Timely (Marvel) editor Joe Simon to create a comic-book icon, Captain America. Kirby and Simon were a perfectly matched dynamic duo of the comic-book Golden Age. They grasped the distinctive narrative potential of comic books, and together invented, among other new methods of expression, the two-page splash illustration.15 The centerspread splash became something of a trademark Classics Illustrated convention in 1952 and 1953 in such issues as David Balfour, Daniel Boone, and Buffalo Bill. Moving to DC Comics in 1942, the team — always billed as Simon and Kirby — worked on Boy Commandos and an early incarnation of the “Sandman” character. A year later, both artists received their greetings from Uncle Sam.16 After World II, the pair produced a variety of comics for Prize, including westerns and, in a wildly successful effort to reach a more mature female audience, Young Romance (September 1947), the first “love” comic book.17 Buffetted by the mid-1950s anticomics uproar, the collaboration dissolved in 1956. Kirby returned to DC, where he helped to inaugurate the comicbook Silver Age with the “Challengers of the Unknown” series for Showcase.18 After a couple of years, the artist was on his own again, drawing a syndicated comic strip, Sky Masters, with Wally Wood. It ended Jack Kirby, “Fort Sumter” in The War Between the States (June 1961). The comics legend takes on the Civil War.

XXII. “ROBERTA’S REFORMS”

227

badly, in a breach-of-contract action filed by “Challengers” editor Jack Schiff of DC.19 Thus, in 1961, Kirby found himself freelancing for the Gilberton Company. His first assignments were for The World Around Us, and he eventually produced artwork for six issues: Undersea Adventures, No. W30 (February 1961); Hunting, No. W31 (March 1961); For Gold and Glory, No. W31 (March 1961); Spies, No. W35 (August 1961); and Fight for Life, No. W36 (October 1961). Of particular interest are the strikingly conceived panels Kirby drew for a section titled “Early Hunters” in Hunting, where dramatic perspectives enliven the educational text. The artist also contributed to two Classics Illustrated Special Issues: The War Between the States, No. 162A (June 1961), and To the Stars!, No. 165A (December 1961). Another Gilberton Civil War book had already appeared in the World Around Us series, but so great was centennial-year enthusiasm for the conflict among 10- to 12-year-old boys that a Special Issue on the subject was deemed a commercial necessity. Kirby’s finest work for Gilberton can be found in his cleanly executed title-page splash and individual sections for The War Between the States devoted to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the Peninsula campaign, the siege of Vicksburg, and a Confederate attempt to terrorize New York. Despite the artist’s anachronistic importation of gray Confederate uniforms, the Fort Sumter chapter is a particularly compelling rendering of the war’s fateful first shots, with its focus dramatically concentrated on the determined defenders.20 The only actual Classics Illustrated Jack Kirby, The Last Days of Pompeii (March 1961). The villainous Arbaces causes probissue drawn by Kirby was the March 1961 lems for the hero Glaucus. revision of No. 35, The Last Days of and-sandal” motion-picture epic based on the book inspired Pompeii, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s turgid tale of love among the unearthing of the long-buried title. the soon-to-be ruins. The title, Henry C. Kiefer’s first fullKirby’s work on the adapted Bulwer-Lytton novel is unscale Gilberton assignment, had been off the reorder list since even. Here and there, a hint of the artist’s celebrated originality 1949; the religious element, which had made the original is evident, as in the starkness of the panel showing only the edition objectionable, was excluded from the new version, and villain Arbaces’ head and raised hand with dagger, the elegant the love interest reigned supreme. A 1960 Steve Reeves “sword-

CLASSICS Illustrated

228

linearity of the depiction of Arbaces felling the hero Glaucus with a single blow, the physical animation of the gladiatorial contests, and the panic of the fleeing crowds as Vesuvius erupts. However, Kirby, as he later informed Classics collector and researcher Ron Prager, sped through the pencils for Pompeii in ten days.21 Veteran inker Dick Ayers, who was teamed with Kirby on many projects during the 1960s, finished the pages.22 Signs of haste are evident throughout the book, with the features of the principal characters (excepting the villain) changing from panel to panel and the backgrounds barely sketched in or nonexistent. Perhaps the artist felt constrained by the formalistic regularity of Gilberton’s uniform panel design. Or it may simply have been that Kirby was less comfortable in recreating an ancient setting to Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht’s specifications than he was in imagining parallel realities. The editor demanded numerous redraws, prompting the artist’s later comment that his work for Gilberton was “the worst paying job of my entire life, including times I worked for free.”23 Whatever the case, with Kirby’s return to Marvel later in 1961 came his most signal contribution to comics history. During the next few years, he, artist Steve Ditko, and writer-editor Stan Lee created the superheroes that essentially reinvented the comics industry: the Fantastic Four (1961); the Incredible Hulk (1962); the Mighty Thor (1962); the Amazing Spider-Man (1962); and the X-Men (1963). The artist’s sophisticated simplicity gave Marvel its own unique house style and a model for future comics artists.24 Subsequently, Kirby and Lee quarreled and parted company. The artist found himself again at DC, where his love of fantasy came to the fore in the creation of his own mythology in such short-lived but influential series as The New Gods (1971) and The Forever People (1971).25 The brief encounter with Gilberton—a creative detour—was by then a fading memory. By the time of his death in 1994, Kirby had become the most emulated and revered figure in the history of comics.

and Cooper Union. In the 1950s he drew horror comics at Atlas (Marvel). Later, he supplied artwork for Sick and Cracked, two Mad competitors.26 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Perlin illustrated Ghost Rider. Among his other credits are The Defenders, Werewolf by Night, and Transformers. For an educational comics series about African-American historical figures, issued by Seattle’s Baylor Publishing Company in 1983, the artist turned his attention to the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.

DON PERLIN A Gilberton one-timer, Don Perlin (b. 1929) studied as a teenager under Burne Hogarth and subsequently at the Pratt Institute

Don Perlin, Robur the Conqueror (May 1961). Proto-Steampunk surfaces in the Verne adaptation.

XXII. “ROBERTA’S REFORMS” Perlin’s sole Classics Illustrated title, Jules Verne’s Robur the Conqueror, No. 162 (May 1961), was the “prequel” to the better-known Master of the World, No. 163 ( July 1961), and included some of the same characters subsequently drawn by Gray Morrow for that issue. It was the only time in Gilberton’s history that two connected stories were published in immediate sequence and was part of the Kanters’ effort to convince the Post Office that Classics Illustrated was a continuing periodical series rather than individual books issued under a common imprint. Robur the Conqueror is an aeronautical variation on the plot and theme of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with the nominal herovillain standing in for Captain Nemo and Uncle Prudent for Professor Aronnax. The artist’s titlepage splash showing representatives of different cultures watching the skies sets the stage for the appearance of Robur’s “flying apparatus.” His attention to Victorian period detail makes the oddness of the Albatross, Robur’s airborne vessel, seem even odder. Throughout the book, Perlin’s illustrations deftly capture the story’s mixture of whimsey and madness.

229

pact of the adaptation. Even the coloring was lackluster, emphasizing flat reds and blues. Some sequences, however, such as Bulba’s capture and execution of his son Andrey, were dramatically effective. One can’t help wondering wistfully what Reed Crandall and George Evans might have done with No. 164, but they were contemporaneously revising Oliver Twist, far from the steppes where the Cossacks “grew used to looking peril straight in the face and forgot there was such a thing as fear in the world.”

SIDNEY MILLER (?) The first new Classics Illustrated issue to deviate from the bimonthly publication schedule, The Cossack Chief, No. 164 (October 1964), also marked the only probable contribution of art director Sidney Miller to the series. (This is a tentative attribution by comics historian Hames Ware, who has also spotted a Milleresque four-page section in the World Around Us issue on Fishing, No. W34 [June 1961].27) Al Sundel had adapted and retitled Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba, which he had discovered in “a Russian bookstore that the CIA must have been watching through binoculars from a nearby loft.”28 It was another of the more challenging books, such as The Conquest of Mexico and Faust, that Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht encouraged Sundel to add to the Vernes, Wellses, and Hentys that were so heavily represented in the later issues. While Sundel’s script was unsparing in conveying the brutality of the nominal hero and his violent world, the light linework and often indistinguishable characters attributed to Gilberton’s art director dissipated the im-

Sidney Miller(?), The Cossack Chief (October 1961). The new Gilberton art director favored a minimalist style.

XXII. “ROBERTA’S REFORMS”

CHARLES BERGER Dropped from the reorder list in 1952, No. 8, Arabian Nights, had been the poorest selling of the first ten Classics Illustrated titles. Perhaps the regular readership regarded it as geared toward the younger audience that would be targeted by Classics Illustrated Junior in 1953. In fact, one of the stories from the 1943 Arabian Nights, Aladdin and His Lamp, was published as Junior No. 516 in May 1955. By 1961, Gilberton had made considerable headway in returning out-of-print Classics to the newsstands. Arabian Nights was revived, with new adaptations of “Aladdin,” “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” and “Sinbad the Sailor.” “The Magic Horse,” which had been included in the original 64page edition, was omitted from the 48-page revision. The new model performed less satisfactorily than the old, which, even as a relatively weak performer, had gone through seven printings in the ten years it was available; the 1961 version was never reprinted. A major part of the problem may have been the result of uncertain distribution at an uncertain time for the Gilberton Company. Arabian Nights was reissued in the autumn of 1961, in the wake of the Post Office fiasco, and was difficult to find in circulation. Artist Charles Berger was born and grew up in Rochester, New York. He received a three-year scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art, from which he graduated in 1943. After moving to New York City, Berger was active as a freelance illustrator and commercial artist.29 His delicate yet detailed style brought him to the attention of Sidney Miller. Berger’s first Gilberton projects were noncomics text illustrations for two “World of Story” filler items in World Around Us issues No. W32 (April 1961) and No. W33 (May 1961)— “Two Merry Pranks of Till Eulenspiegel” and “The Knight of the Couchant Leopard” from Sir Walter Scott’s novel of the Crusades, The Talisman. This combination of the whimsical and the historical (not to mention the Middle Eastern touch in the Scott piece) won Berger the Arabian Nights assignment. In the new No. 8, the artist’s lightly inked panels were intended to suggest the influence of Persian art. But the heavyhanded printing process compromised the potential charm of the finished product. It was often difficult to see the pictures because the coloring was heavier than the surrounding linework. (The German Illustrierte Klassiker edition strikes a better balance.) Further, the artist was working within the confining conventions of the Miller-era Gilberton page layout, and illustrations were squeezed into four or five panels per page. Other than the title page, no splashes were allowed for greater scope, and Berger was forced to confine his characters to the monot-

231

onously regular rectangles. Even so, the whimsical illustrations have a winning appeal and are not unworthy of comparison with the 1943 originals by Lillian Chestney.

DINO BATTAGLIA (?) The identity of the artist who produced the revamped Classics edition of Adventures of Cellini, No. 38 (October 1961), has been a subject of spirited debate. In the early 1990s, Norman Nodel was named in collectors’ circles as illustrator for the second edition, but the artist explicitly rejected the attribution.30 Alex Toth was erroneously named in a European website directory, despite the artist’s statement in a letter to The Classics Collector that he never worked for Gilberton.31 Comics authority Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., in a 2000 email, described the mystery figure as a “very competent, even excellent, artist,” but noted that no one at that point had been able to connect the work persuasively with any known American illustrator.27 However, in a 2003 review of the first edition of this book in the Comic Book Marketplace, Paul Gravett raised the intriguing transatlantic possibility of Venetian-born Dino Battaglia (1932–1983), who produced a popular comic strip, Mark Fury (1952–53), set in Edwardian England.32 Indeed, Battaglia’s distinctive style bears more than a passing resemblance to the artwork in Cellini. The artist later illustrated an adaptation of Moby Dick and was drawn toward classic writers such as Rabelais, Edgar Allan Poe, and Guy de Maupassant.33 At the time the revision of No. 38 was published, Gilberton had a well-established European presence, and William Kanter was already contemplating a move to England. Battaglia, meanwhile, had established connections with British publishers, illustrating Robin Hood for Thriller Picture Library, among other projects. Hence, a brief encounter in 1961 with Thorpe and Porter, Gilberton’s English alter ego, along with an offer to illustrate an Italian Renaissance subject, doesn’t seem outside the bounds of biographical probability. Mr. Gravett’s argument in favor of Dino Battaglia as the exceptional artist responsible for the revised Classics Illustrated No. 38 is persuasive with respect to both style and circumstance; one hopes that his suggestion will prompt further examination and discussion among comics-arts tudents.34 In its revised state, Adventures of Cellini is one of the outstanding later editions published by Gilberton. Once again, adapter Al Sundel produced a miracle of compression, infusing each of the forty-five pages with the spirit of Benvenuto Cellini’s self-infatuated autobiography. The artist rose to the occasion, supplying visually active panels in which the delicate

Opposite: Charles Berger, Arabian Nights (October 1961). A short-lived replacement edition.

CLASSICS Illustrated

232

Left: Dino Battaglia(?), Adventures of Cellini (October 1961). An attribution by Paul Gravett deserves serious consideration. Right: Unidentified artist, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Fall 1961). Possibly the worst Classics art since the 1942 Count of Monte Cristo.

linework lends speed to the narrative, whether the hero is battling brigands in the street, contending with a storm on a lake, or escaping from a castle tower. Backgrounds are suggested rather than detailed, and the emphasis remains on the dramatically rendered foreground figures throughout the book.

UNIDENTIFIED ARTIST Efforts to connect a rather nondescript style with a particular artist in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, No. 50 (Fall 1961), have been to no avail. The issue was perhaps the most misguided revision in the post–L.B. Cole era. Apart from the first-page splash featuring Samuel Clemens at a desk, the illustrations display little imagination or energy, particularly when compared with Aldo Rubano’s eccentric pencils and inks. If the effort was intended to make Mark Twain dull, the artist

nearly succeeded.35 In selecting the inaugural issue for the new Classics Illustrated Study Guides, editor Madeleine Robins passed over the “improved” Tom Sawyer for the livelier 1948 model.

H.J. KIHL Illustrator of the visually appealing “Rockets Through Time” section of Rockets, Jets and Missiles, No. 159A (December 1960), and, from 1958 to 1961, contributor to 21 of 36 World Around Us issues, H.J. Kihl provided artwork for only one Classics Illustrated issue, a Spring 1962 revision of No. 39, Jane Eyre. While the revised adaptation was an improvement over the 1947 abridgment, the new Gilberton bare-bones style was simply wrong for Charlotte Brontë’s gothic-tinged masterpiece. Harley M. Griffiths’s heavily brushed panels were replaced by

XXII. “ROBERTA’S REFORMS” Kihl’s thin-lined drawings, spare backgrounds, and brightly lit atmosphere. The effect was strangely cheerful — a species of upbeat moroseness. Occasionally, the scale and proportions of different characters sharing the same panel are simply wrong, as in the one depicting Rochester’s revelation of the existence of his demented wife. Norbert Bachleitner has observed of the 1962 “remake” that “[t]he panels are strictly rectangular and in their regular distribution on the pages — mostly two rows of two or three

233

panels — contribute to a more ‘orderly’ appearance, compared to the 1947 adaptation, which is rather fanciful as to the shape and arrangement of panels.”36 When Jane Eyre was reprinted in 1997 as a Classics Illustrated Study Guide, Kihl’s airy, “orderly” revision was rejected in favor of Griffiths’s darker, more “fanciful” rendering. But the 1962 interpretation surfaced again when Jack Lake Productions reissued No. 39 in November 2009.

HELENE LECAR , RESEARCHER AND EDITOR A member of Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht’s editorial team, Helene Lecar came on board as proofreader and editorial assistant. She went on to research both text and pictorial information for artists and to script Classics Illustrated filler items and World Around Us issues. Eventually, in the final months of new-title production, she served as editor. As a newly minted college graduate, she arrived at 101 Fifth Avenue in response to an ad in the New York Times.37 “We were in a dowager building,” Lecar reminisced, “just new enough to have an elevator up to the sixth floor, but too old to be air-conditioned. It was not dowdy. There was still an elevator man, and we had west-facing windows that we could actually open. They were large, letting in lots of light. On the other hand, the management of the building shut off the heat every Friday afternoon, so by Monday the office was frigid. It didn’t warm up properly until Wednesday, and by Friday it was toasty. In winter, our outfits were set by the day of the week.”38 Regarding the workspace, Lecar recalled that “[t]he editorial section of the enterprise occupied one large room with partitions for each of us to have some private space in which to meet with our artists and writers. The art department, although H.J. Kihl, Jane Eyre (Spring 1962). Trendy minimalism strips the Brontë story of any trace of Gothic atmosphere. (And what happened to the perspective in the bottom panel?)

234

CLASSICS Illustrated

smaller in square footage, was separate, and also got that bright natural light.”39 Offices for Albert and William Kanter and O.B. Stiskin were farther back, in the interior space. Lecar’s job at the Gilberton Company was multifaceted from the beginning. “I was hired as a proofreader, going over the finished black and white storyboards for errors, ink smudges, fit of the text in the dialog balloons, and genHelene Lecar’s graduation photo erally making myself (1958), taken just before she began working for Gilberton (courtesy useful,” she wrote. “The only person junior to Helene Lecar). me at that time was the scribe, a high-school grad named Steve Addeo. It’s hard to imagine now what pre-computer production was like, but Leroy lettering, a dual-stylus arrangement with an alphanumeric template for one nib and an inked point for use on the board, was how we inserted text into pictures and captions. Since there were relatively few font sizes, we were counting not only the number of words, but the number of characters to write in. It was excellent training in keeping things simple.”40 Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht soon assigned the young editorial assistant to research duties farther afield. Having met Feuerlicht’s exacting standards in the office, Lecar was soon sent out regularly on missions to the private collection at the 42nd Street Library. The library, which was founded and is still richly endowed by private money (although it now also includes a regular branch of the city’s library system), is a New York City landmark, a grand palazzo facing Fifth Avenue, guarded by two dignified lions, Patience and Fortitude. “In those pre-internet, pre–Wikipedia days,” Lecar wrote, “the grand library, had ... a collection of graphic material organized, not by esthetic or by photographer but by content. Other agencies such as the Bettman Archive and Brown Brothers were doing the same thing, but they charged by the picture. The library was free, and the pictures circulated. You could go in wanting to know what Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand looked like, or Versailles, or the particulars of royal Aztec clothing, and you could take your prize home with you for a month, in special file folders.”41 When, for example, Lecar was doing groundwork for the World Around Us issue devoted to Great Explorers (W23, July

1960), “I needed to know what people on Madagascar were wearing when Vasco da Gama put into port there after rounding the Cape of Good Hope. First I read up enough to know that there were merchants in residence who came from all over the Indian Ocean—Arabs, different ethnic groups from coastal India, spice traders from Burma, and Thailand, as well as people from east-coast Africa. So now I could focus on 16thcentury Arabs or Hindus and spent several hours wallowing through the rich collection of images detailing what Europeans made of such people. I brought the best of these back to discuss with the artist [George Evans] and let him play.”42 The flow of the work dictated specific assignments. As Lecar recalled, “Once the titles were decided, by Roberta in conference with [Bill] Kanter, she would draw from a regular stable of writers to do the scripts. In conference, the writer, Roberta and Sid [Miller], and sometimes the artist as well, decided on the main themes the [issue] would highlight, and how hot topics would be handled, in text and in pictures. When the draft script came in, it would be in a two-column format: left side had captions and dialog for each scene, right side had instructions, as needed, for the artist — descriptions of the characters, the action that we didn’t have space to explain in words, colors, time of day and other visual clues about the context of the action, especially if some background object were later to play an important part in the plot. Roberta (and sometimes Al [Sundel], if he was managing that issue) would then edit the text while the artist sketched each picture.”43 At this point, Lecar would be invited in to provide research information regarding costumes and scenery for the artist and would soon be on her way to the picture collection at the 42nd Street Library. In time, the research assistant assumed more editorial responsibilities, such as script development, writing, and reviewing completed boards, “mainly looking out for consistency, panel to panel and page to page, and for accurate visual transcription of the writer’s instructions in that right-hand column.”44 According to Lecar, “the artists as a group were remarkably self-reliant. Whether it was the right kind of frou-frous on those 18th-century French dresses in The Conspirators or the proper rigging on sailing ships in Toilers of the Sea, they were able, without direction from me, to get things more or less right. And when I would ask afterwards to be sure they were working from historical sources, they could document anything I asked for. To a man they were familiar with all sorts of military and naval historical gear.”45 Lecar contributed back-of-the-book articles to Classics Illustrated issues, such as “The Roman Power Struggle” for Cleopatra No. 161 (March 1961) and “The Sepoy Revolt” for Tigers and Traitor No. 166 (May 1962). Her passion, however, was for the World Around Us series, for which she wrote both filler items and full-scale scripts. “I can’t recall exactly how the

XXII. “ROBERTA’S REFORMS” topics were decided for any particular issue of World Around Us, but there was undoubtedly a conversation with Roberta about what should be highlighted once the original idea was assigned to somebody. It was all collaborative and free-wheeling—a trio of junk minds with pieces of knowledge from all over time and space trying to think like inquisitive twelve-year-olds to decide what our readers might like to know.”46 Reflecting on the division of labor, Lecar commented that “Al had his favorite subjects — the Conquest of Mexico and all things pre–Columbian, Egyptian history, Japan. I went in for Greco-Roman antiquity, European history in general, medieval history, and particular topics like pre-historic times and the discoveries of archaeology. Roberta and I had a common history as children of recent immigrants from Eastern Europe. We were both first-generation Americans and grew up with stories about life in the Old Country that were, generally, appalling. ... The short added pieces frequently fell to me, and they involved the pleasantest kind of background reading, like ‘The Wonderful Earth Movie’ [for Prehistoric World, No. 167A ( July 1962)].”47 On occasion, Lecar was called upon to represent Classics

235

Illustrated in public venues: “I remember serving, along with Roberta, as impromptu demonstrator/sales staff for Gilberton at a [New York] conference for teachers. The World Around Us series of non-fiction comics was a new venture at the time. It was fun to put together, and to me it was a lark to be paid for researching Pirates, Vikings, the Conquistadors and so on, until one teacher came up to me to thank us for putting out a book on Space Exploration because, she explained, ‘It’s the only textbook our district can afford.’ That changed the rules of the game entirely.”48 At the same educators’ conference, Lecar recalled, “[B]usiness in the publications room was slow once the formal presentations began. I was standing around, with nothing much to do, when two teachers cruising the scene on the way in came to a dead halt in front of the booth. One pointed and said, ‘Look, Ethel — funnies!’ They both laughed and walked on without saying a word to me. Roberta got a kick out of that one, and the line became something of an in-house gag when things got unglued at the office.”49 Lecar stayed at Gilberton until 1962, “when the attempt to turn out a Reader’s Digest knock-off called This Month failed. I found a new job, writing captions for a picture encyclopedia called The World and Its People, but it was only a stop-gap until my husband finished his Ph.D. We then moved to Washington, D.C., where we lived for 22 years.”50 Later, the family moved to California, where Lecar ran a consulting business, Words at Work, teaching writing in the workplace. Since retiring, she has become active in various civic affairs, especially education reform and community colleges.51

END

“Look, Ethel — funnies!” Classics Illustrated trade-show booth (circa 1960). The woman in the short jacket facing right is Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht; the woman to her left with lighter-colored hair (behind the woman whose back is toward the camera) is Helene Lecar (courtesy John “Buzz” Kanter).

OF AN

ERA

Master of the World marked the appearance of the final design change for Classics Illustrated. The familiar open-book device, which had first been used on issue No. 6 in 1942 and had been a standard cover

236

CLASSICS Illustrated

on Classics Illustrated Junior covers and a logo makeover for The World Around Us, was evident in the stylized depiction of Robur’s airship, the Terror, struck by lightning. Why the abandonment of the open book was viewed as an improvement is a puzzle. The issue number, squeezed into a fraction of the space it had occupied before, was hard to find, let alone read. The eye was accustomed to finding that particular space filled, and, initially, the open book’s absence appeared to throw the cover’s balance off. Perhaps the openbook device was omitted to further distance Classics Illustrated from any connection with the concept of “books.” In any case, ten years had passed since the introduction of painted covers, and, apart from the tablet aberrations of Nos. 83–85, the same basic design had been in place for a decade. A change may have been due, but the compromise between the original banner style and the post1947 reduced rectangle changed both too much and too little. The end was still a year away, but for some young traditionalists it seemed already to have arrived. The plug was pulled in 1962, a little more than twenty years after Albert Kanter launched Classic Comics with The Three Musketeers. “Sociological and distribution patterns were changing,” wrote Alfred Sundel. “Supermarkets were now coming into locales with the dramatic impact that Medical Centers have today. They were wiping out the old candy stores where the kids hung out. Americans were also ... now edging into affluence. The government was soon to sponsor the purchase of juvenile books for liUnidentified artist, Master of the World (July 1961). A “New Frontier” in cover design. braries. Paperback juveniles were to appear in a year or so on new kinds of racks. The winds of emblem since issue No. 35 in 1947, disappeared, much to the change were blowing that would hurt CI, and nobody in the dismay of many loyal readers. In a move evocative of the Classic front office knew how to cope with it.”52 Comics style, the issue number and price were shifted to the bottom of the yellow banner. Art director Sidney Miller’s milIn addition to the eclipse of five-and-dime stores, the aditant modernist minimalism, which had already asserted itself verse decision in the postal-rate case, and the increased avail-

Unpublished Classics Illustrated reorder list (Spring 1961). The list shows five titles never published in the U.S. series; four of them were never published anywhere (collection of John Haufe).

238

CLASSICS Illustrated

a market study and concluded that because of declining sales, the chain would no longer carry comic books. At the same time, Coronet, the Curtis Circulation Company’s Reader’s Digest competitor, went under. Noting the Woolworth report and Gilberton’s failure to win a renewal of its second-class postage permit, Curtis representatives persuaded Albert Kanter to discontinue new-title production and to publish, instead, a digestsized Coronet replacement.54 The new magazine, This Month, was edited by Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht. Unfortunately, it was barely noticed and expired within six months of its March 1962 debut.55 Gilberton had better success, however, with William Kanter’s crossword-puzzle magazine, Merit, which lasted longer than the original Classics Illustrated series.56 Meanwhile, the comics lines chugged on with works in progress, the Juniors concluding in June 1962 with No. 576, The Princess Who Saw Everything, and Classics Illustrated and the Special Issues in July with No. 167, Faust, and No. 167A, Prehistoric World. New-title production shifted to England, where William Kanter moved to oversee the operation. When it, too, discontinued the publication of additional titles in 1963, Al Sundel continued to write scripts for the Joint European Series Classics, which were often illustrated by less than satisfactory artists.57 Given the choices made for the British and European lines and the literary tastes of Feuerlicht and Sundel, it is likely that, had the American series continued to issue new titles, classical Greek and Roman and 19th-century Russian authors would have been heavily represented, alternating with the usual reliable “boys’ books.” Historical works similar to The Conspiracy of Pontiac and The Conquest of Mexico probably would have appeared with greater frequency, especially after the loss of The World Around Us as a nonfiction venue. Al Sundel signed a contract in April 1961 for the planned U.S. No. 171, The Siege of Sevastopol by Leo Tolstoy; he completed the script in May. Among the additional titles scheduled but never issued were Two Little Savages by Ernest Thompson Seton (scheduled No. 167), When the Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells (scheduled No. 172), and The Boy Captain by Jules Verne (scheduled No. 173). A mock-up list showing those Classics that never arrived was printed in the spring of 1961. Another planned title, scheduled in 1961 for Unidentified artist, Tigers and Traitors (May 1962). The last of twelve Jules release in 1962 as No. 169, was an adaptation of John Dryden’s heroic-couplet version of Virgil’s Verne titles in the series.

ability of cheap juvenile paperback classics such as those published by Washington Square Press (Pocket Books), Dell, Signet, and Airmont,53 another, perhaps decisive, factor came into play. Those children who, a few years earlier, might have read comic books for entertainment were now held in thrall to the unprecedented power of television. With its somewhat more rarefied appeal, Classics Illustrated stood to lose more ground than the superheroes or other comics genres. In 1961, F.W. Woolworth, one of the principal circulation vehicles for Classics Illustrated nationwide, had commissioned

XXII. “ROBERTA’S REFORMS” Aeneid, which was released in Britain in 1963 as No. 161 and finally published as No. 170 in the North American line by Jack Lake Productions in 2007. The fate of The Aeneid was actually linked to the continuing mid-century debate on the proper role of Classics Illustrated in the larger culture. As editorial assistant Helene Lecar recalled: For the duration of my tenure with the company, every March or April, Classics would get a couple of letters asking why we didn’t issue the Aeneid. There was some urgency in the tone of the letters that I didn’t understand, until Roberta explained that they always came from one of the posh New England private boys’ schools..., where every kid had to take Latin, and there was to be a final exam on Virgil. She said that she and Bill Kanter had made an editorial decision not to do the Aeneid, just to

239

avoid adding fuel to the controversy about comic-book versions of the classics dumbing down the originals.58

Hence, a title mentioned in 1960 as a future release and shown on the 1961 mock-up publication list had to wait fortyfour years before being added to the American series. In 1962, Bill Kanter took Reed Crandall’s artwork with him to England, where, perhaps, the question of “dumbing down the originals” was not so heated a topic of discussion. For the next few years Gilberton continued reprinting existing editions and returning some retired titles — such as The Master of Ballantrae, The Gold Bug, and All Quiet on the Western Front— to active duty on the reorder list. But it was just a matter of going through the motions.

Gilberton Company envelope, 1963. Note the persistence of the older logo in the return address, more than 10 years after it had been replaced on Classics Illustrated covers.

XXIII

William E. Kanter: About a Son T

After the war, Bill Kanter began working for his father. he Gilberton Company’s business and creative structure Although the Gilberton Company was very much a family might be considered, in symbolic terms, a triptych of outfit involving his father and his uncles Maurice and Mike, sorts, with founder Albert Kanter and editor Roberta Strauss Bill soon came to play the central role in the day-to-day Feuerlicht occupying two of the panels. The third would be running of the operation. Indeed, in his role as editor in 1947– filled by Albert Kanter’s second son, Bill, the man who shaped 48, he may have been the chief advocate for changing the series’ Classics Illustrated into an international publishing phenomename from Classic Comics to Classics Illustrated. Meanwhile, non. William Ehrenreich Kanter was born on 29 May 1923 in Albert Kanter increasingly focused on promoting the product, Savannah, Georgia, the second child of Albert and Rose Ehrena niche that he perfectly filled with his well-honed natural reich Kanter. He remained close to his brother Hal and his salesman’s gifts. sister Saralea, and he was the most intimately involved of the “In general,” Buzz Kanter observed, “family businesses siblings in the family business. are very difficult, just by the nature of them. I know there was Bill Kanter studied at Hofstra University, where he realways a great deal of pressure and high expectations for Bill. ceived a full scholarship. As his son Buzz remarked, “He always loved learning.”1 He was part of the university’s first graduating class; he also enrolled in law school but never completed the program. While working at Hofstra as a teaching assistant, Bill met his future wife, Selma Roslyn (Penny) Lapin, when she was on campus considering the school. They married at the end of the Second World War while Kanter was home on leave. During the war, he served in the army, having moved through Officer Candidate School as a lieutenant and been promoted to the rank of captain. Highly decorated, Kanter was awarded a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts.2 Bill’s wartime service, as well as his brother Hal’s, may have figured to some degree in the prominence given military subjects (including a page devoted to decorations) in Classic Comics filler items at that time. (See, for example, “Medals for He- Albert L. Kanter, unidentified WOR radio host, and William Kanter (1952). Bill Kanter joins roes” in The Deerslayer, No. 17 his father in promoting the recently published Hamlet and other Classics Illustrated titles (courtesy John “Buzz” Kanter). [January 1944].)

240

XXIII. WILLIAM E. KANTER

241

P.D.C. did not make the newly renamed Classics Illustrated a truly national presence. As an astute businessman, Bill Kanter grasped the potential and actively sought a larger market. Hence, he began doing business on Gilberton’s behalf with the Cohen family, owners of Hudson News Company, a magazine wholesaler in northern New Jersey and parts of New York City. Bobby Cohen, a contemporary of Bill’s — and, like him, the son of the owner of the family firm — suggested that Kanter meet the president of Curtis Circulation Company, a major distributor in an altogether different league. The Curtis management was impressed with Classics Illustrated and offered a test distribution program in Canada. When the results proved positive, with the series becoming a best-selling line for Curtis in Canada, the Philadelphia-based distributor agreed to add Gilberton to its roster of publications as an independent national client. Classics Illustrated was only the second publication in the network, after Esquire, that Curtis did not own. Helene Lecar remembered Kanter as “a classic Type A guy” who was “very straight, friendly and unstuffy, and a wholehearted supporter of Roberta. His operating business model was that the Classics line was a magazine, not a book, which worked well as long as he had that class 2 mailing permit. It allowed him to sell subscriptions, stabilizing his customer base.”5 In the words of his son Buzz, Bill Kanter was simultaneously a “very handsWilliam Kanter (1954). Bill Kanter, the number-two man at Gilberton, was responsible on manager” and “man of letters” who for much of the company’s day-to-day business decision-making and direction. “enjoyed reading good literature.”6 Not Al cherished the role of patriarch and master story teller — to surprisingly, he played a significant role in title selection for his grandchildren and the world in general. Bill was the guy the series. In addition, wrote Buzz Kanter, “he was always who got things done, often behind the scenes.”3 Occasionally, looking for ways to expand the line. He was concerned about Albert Kanter, operating in an expansive mode, would “make lack of diversification.”7 claims or statements in public that Bill would then have to exBill and Penny Kanter started their family in the early 1950s, plain or correct — a chore he did not care for.”4 and their four sons—Andrew, John (Buzz), James, and Peter— At the time Bill Kanter joined the family enterprise, were baby boomers like so many members of the Classics IlGilberton publications were sold primarily to New York City lustrated constituency. That personal experience possibly fueled retailers on a direct-from-publisher basis. An arrangement with his interest in expanding the range of Gilberton publications.

242

CLASSICS Illustrated

William Kanter, handing an award to a member of the Canadian Curtis Distribution staff, 1960s.

Once the Curtis-Gilberton connection was established, Albert Kanter spent much of his time promoting the publications through radio and television interviews, as well as on publicity tours, thus allowing the elder Mr. and Mrs. Kanter the opportunity to indulge their fondness for travel. “So,” Buzz Kanter commented, “Bill was responsible for pretty much all aspects of producing, printing, and distributing the products. He also managed the finances and staffing.”8 The latter duty led to his most significant hiring decision when he offered a position to the young Roberta Strauss in 1953. During that period, William Kanter was again listed on annual ownership, management, and circulation statements as Editor. In 1962, new-title production shifted from the New York office to the London-based affiliate Thorpe & Porter, which

also published Mad magazine in a number of European editions.9 The following year, Bill Kanter and his family moved to England, at the dawn of the Swinging Sixties (just in time for the younger Kanters to experience Beatlemania on its native ground). Kanter’s mission, as managing director of Thorpe & Porter, was to oversee the expansion of the Joint European Series ( JES). Under his guidance, new British titles were added and foreign-language titles proliferated. Among the latter were translations of Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Stephen Crane’s The Blue Hotel, and Jack London’s Martin Eden. Kanter hired Gilberton scriptwriter Al Sundel to produce such historical works such as Alexander the Great, Rogers’ Rangers, and Custer’s Last Stand. Sundel’s adaptations for the American,

XXIII. WILLIAM E. KANTER British, and European series remain an impressive body of work. Kanter worked closely with European colleagues such as Rolf Jansen in Sweden, where much of the printing of British and JES editions was done. The two men were contemporaries and shared a love of practical jokes. Buzz Kanter recalled an example: “During one trip to Sweden to meet with CI publishers there, [Bill Kanter] got off the airplane wearing one of those fake arrows through the head. He did not know that Rolf Jansen, also a joker, had told the local politicians that a famous American publisher was flying in. So as Bill came out of the airplane and on the stairs leading down to the tarmac..., the town mayor was there with a band to welcome Bill (who was wearing the arrow through his head). Both Rolf and Bill thought it was hysterical; I doubt the local mayor shared the humor.”10 In 1969, Kanter sold Thorpe & Porter to Warner, an American publisher and distributor, and returned to the United States, where he “dabbled in what is now called investment banking”11 and bought interests in a tire-retreading business, a folding-furniture business, and a South American pump-manufacturing company. By this time, Patrick Frawley had acquired control of the American parent Classics Illustrated series, and the Gilberton name was no longer used in connection with the series. (Back-cover reorder list coupons from the

243

Frawley era no longer mentioned “Gilberton Co., Inc., Dept. S.” in the address but instead simply listed the addressee as “Classics Illustrated, Dept. S.”) The Kanter publishing operation was consolidated and moved to William Kanter’s home in Stamford, Connecticut. It was renamed Penny Press, after Bill’s wife Penny. The line consisted of crossword-puzzle magazines and books, including Approved Crosswords, Merit Crosswords, and, as a salute to the long-running family business, Classic Crosswords. Penny Kanter, an artist, improved the design of her namesake publications Bill with his love of publishing, found himself spending more time on Penny Press than on his other business activities, which he eventually sold in order to devote more time to building the puzzle lines.12 Just as he had joined his father at the Gilberton Company after the war, so Bill’s sons John (Buzz) and Peter signed on with the family firm in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Buzz left in 1990 to launch his own publishing venture, TAM Communications, which publishes motorcycle magazines. A couple of years later Penny Press purchased and merged with Dell Magazines, a major competitor in the crossword-puzzle field.13 (It was something of an echo of Gilberton buying out Famous Authors in 1951.) Peter Kanter is now president of Penny Press. Both sons carry on the legacy of their father, William E. Kanter, the man who made things happen.

XXIV

Five Little Series and How They Grew: Picture Progress; Classics Illustrated Junior; Classics Illustrated Special Issues; The World Around Us; The Best from Boys’ Life Comics I

n addition to Classics Illustrated, the Gilberton Company published five other series for young readers. Each demonstrated the publisher’s commitment to its Horatian goal of teaching while entertaining. Only one was an unqualified commercial success. By the fall of 1953, with more than 110 titles issued, Classics Illustrated stood unchallenged in its field, having vanquished and absorbed its sole competitor, Stories by Famous Authors. The series was winning increasing, if grudging, respect from parents and teachers, and Gilberton emphasized its purpose in a 1953 promotional poster announcing that “CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED Will Help YOU OPEN THE DOOR TO GOOD LITERATURE.” At this point, the trademark had attained a degree of stature and success at home and abroad that enabled Albert Kanter to trade upon the value of the logo by developing new lines. An Educational Series under the Classics banner had produced two commercially sponsored titles in 1951 and 1953, Shelter Through the Ages (Rubberoid) and The Westinghouse Story: The Dreams of a Man (Westinghouse), both illustrated by Henry C. Kiefer. But, despite their solidly instructional texts, these 16-page comics had been little more than one-shot glorified advertising supplements. Now Gilberton was ready to expand its own educational mission.

PICTURE PROGRESS In September 1953, aiming further to enhance Gilberton’s prestige and profitability, Albert Kanter launched Picture Parade, a line of comics aimed directly at schools, with a publication cycle tied to the academic year. Eleanor Lidofsky, Gilberton’s public-relations director, named the series and believed passionately in its potential for reaching young readers. “No one had published anything for the fourth-grade reading level on atomic energy or the United Nations,” Mrs. Lidofsky recalled. “I thought this would help fill in some educational gaps.” She named the publication and scripted the entire first year’s cycle of issues.1 Picture Parade focused on one topic per twenty-four-page issue. As an ad for the series in the October 1953 issue of The Instructor explained: “In addition to the main story, each issue will contain special features such as picture quizzes, vocabularybuilding crossword puzzles and educational magic tricks. There will be no advertising. ... As educational advisor, we have retained Dr. Jeanne Chall of CCNY’s Department of Education and co-author of the famous Dale-Chall Formula for Predicting Readability.”2 A publisher’s letter that accompanied the September 1953 inaugural issue noted that “The selection

244

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW of subjects for the 1953–54 school year ... was based on the recommendations of elementary school teachers from almost every state in the Union.” It seemed an auspicious beginning. The first issue was Andy’s Atomic Adventures, illustrated by Peter Costanza. It dealt with a subject that had become for many postwar children a source of anxiety. In the story, the young hero’s dog Spot emerges uncontaminated from exposure to a nuclear test after chasing a rabbit onto the nearby Nevada proving grounds. Scriptwriter-editor Eleanor Lidofsky was assisted on the issue’s contents by her husband, Columbia University nuclear physicist Leon J. Lidofsky, who also served as a research scientist with the Atomic Energy Commission.3 Historian William W. Savage, Jr., has commented on the “rather curious variety of folklore” that developed in the United States during the years following Hiroshima— “a mythic vision of the Bomb, intended to accommodate the thing to everyday life, to make it an unobtrusive engine of death, so to speak.” The comic book played its part in sustaining the postwar myth, Savage contends, by “advancing the idea of a benign Bomb, a friendly Bomb, a Bomb that would never hurt anybody unless we willed it — and certainly it would never hurt us.”4 With a precarious cease-fire having brought the Korean War to an inconclusive conclusion as recently as July 27, 1953, and the anti–Communist campaign of Senator Joseph McCarthy still proceeding at ramming speed, Picture Parade did its duty. Andy’s Atomic Adventures does nothing if not accentuate the positive. “Children were terrified,” Mrs. Lidofsky said of the “duck-andcover” school-drill era. “The atomic bomb was part of their world, and it wasn’t going away. We were trying to help them understand that nuclear energy wasn’t only a destructive force.”5 Andy visits his quarantined pup at the proving-grounds laboratory, where he receives an upbeat lesson in nuclear fission (helpfully pronounced “fish-un”), complete with a matchhead demonstration of a chain reaction. He later learns that “Atomic energy will light cities ... run big factories ... and run my electric train.” In the penultimate panel, Lou Cameron, The Man Who Discovered America (September 1955). A Thomas Alva Edison Award winner.

245

Mr. Wilson, driving home with his son and the radioactivefree Spot, sagely explains, “We have to have [the Bomb] to protect us if we need it. I hope it will never again be used to destroy.” “I hope not,” Andy replies, going on to assure young readers that “This world is going to be even more wonderful when all that atomic energy is really put to work.” After the fourth issue, the name of the series was changed to Picture Progress, at the insistence of the publisher of the nationally distributed Sunday supplement Parade.6 The range of subjects covered history (Paul Revere’s Ride, The Lewis and Clark Expedition); science (The Story of Flight, The Discoveries of Louis

246

CLASSICS Illustrated

Pasteur); geography (The Hawaiian Islands, Alaska: The Great Land); current events (Around the World with the U.N., 1954: News in Review); and entertainment (Life in the Circus, Summer Fun). As mentioned earlier, one of the later titles, The Man Who Discovered America, Vol. 3, No. 1 (September 1955), illustrated by Lou Cameron, won the Thomas Alva Edison Award in 1956. Meanwhile, Picture Progress was lauded in a November 1955 article in The Instructor by Helen Heffernan, Chief of the Bureau of Elementary Education in the California State Department of Education. Responding to critics of comic books who showed a tendency to “throw the baby out with the bath,” Heffernan analyzed various kinds of comics and then favorably spotlighted the Gilberton educational series. She cited two examples of students who had been engaged by Picture Progress issues. One of them, “Terry,” was reading The Time of the Cave Man, which his teacher had dropped on his table: The mammoth elephant and the fur-clad primitive men on the cover were irresistible. Terry pored over the exciting cover and then turned the page. He forgot himself, the classroom, the sounds and sights outside the classroom window. He was back thousands of years with the sabertooth and the cave bear[.] ... When Terry looked up, he drew a deep breath, and his teacher knew that other books, thicker ones with more information on the cave man, would be welcomed by Terry.7

In a caption accompanying a reproduction of a page from The Star-Spangled Banner, Heffernan noted with approval that “This series makes a point of including helps in pronunciation and word meaning, and of using some text besides the conversation.”8 Ironically, the approbation appeared in print two months after the final Picture Progress title was published. Indeed, all of the recognition came too late. Despite a subscription price of eighty cents for nine issues — a bargain even by Eisenhower Era standards — and a publicity campaign that included back-cover Classics Illustrated ads in the spring of 1955, Picture Progress could not attract enough interest from schools. The timing, undoubtedly, was unfortunate. Despite praise from Helen Heffernan and other progressive educators, the anticomics campaign was at its apex. In the eyes of many conservative-minded parents and teachers, a Classics version of Swiss Family Robinson purchased at the neighborhood variety store might have been preferable to a copy of The Haunt of Fear, but comic books were still comic books, and the classroom was no place for them. As Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht observed, years later, in a letter to Classics collector Rich Rostel of Louisville: “The series was discontinued because it was ahead of its time and therefore lost money. Back in the 1950s, teachers were not willing to accept comic books as an educational tool. By the time they did, Picture Progress was dead.”9 So, after eighteen issues in the 1953–1954 and 1954–1955 school years and two issues in the

fall of 1955, Picture Progress abruptly came to an end, but not before setting the pattern for the more significant Special Issues and World Around Us.10

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED JUNIOR Next to Classics Illustrated, Albert Kanter’s most successful venture was Classics Illustrated Junior, a line geared, as the name suggests, to younger readers. Debuting in October 1953, the 32-page comic books featured adaptations — or in some instances, such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears, No. 508 (May 1954), liberal expansions — of fairy and folk tales. Where all of Kanter’s other publications were issued under the Gilberton imprint, Classics Illustrated Junior was produced by Famous Authors, Ltd., the former rival that was now a division of the thriving business housed at 101 Fifth Avenue. An editors’ notice to readers appeared in the inaugural Junior edition, announcing that “[t]his is the beginning of a new and delightful series of colorful publications especially designed for the younger folks. ... We plan to spare no expense in presenting the very best in editorial matter and art work. Our beautiful front covers are reproductions of original paintings especially prepared for us. Every issue will be as painstakingly prepared, as carefully presented, as delightfully told as this, our first issue. ... Parents will find pleasure in recapturing wonderful memories while joining their children in these enchanting stories of make-believe and the wealth of thrills they hold.” Except for the last few months of 1954 and the first half of 1955, the Juniors were issued monthly through 1958, when a bimonthly schedule was established that remained in place until the tumultuous last half of 1961. The final Gilberton Classics Illustrated Junior was The Princess Who Saw Everything, No. 576 ( June 1962), but The Runaway Dumpling, No. 577 (Winter 1969), was subsequently issued under Frawley ownership. The Junior artwork emphasized visual simplicity for its kindergarten and elementary school audience; images were generally streamlined, though there were striking exceptions, such as the books by Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia or the relatively intricate illustrations by Kurt Schaffenberger11 for Aladdin and His Lamp, No. 516 (May 1955). The Aladdin story, which had been included in the discontinued Classic Comics No. 8, Arabian Nights, fared better in its Junior incarnation, remaining in print for the life of the publication. Artists such as Peter Costanza, Lin Streeter, and Tony Tallarico, whose drawings in Classics Illustrated often seemed too light or juvenile for the context, thrived in the Juniors. Alex A. Blum illustrated the first issue, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, No. 501 (October 1953). His delicate linework was eminently suitable for the familiar story, though he seemed

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

247

unable to invest the wicked queen and her wizened alter ego with much malevolence. Similarly, in Blum’s Jack and the Beanstalk, No. 507 (April 1954), the giant looks more like a jolly farmer than a menacing ogre; rather than crashing into the ground, he falls into a lake. As art director for the Junior series, Blum appeared to take pains not to frighten young readers and evidently advised his freelancers to follow suit. Managing editor Meyer A. Kaplan adopted the same policy for scripts. Early issues frequently soften the harsh or ambivalent endings of the original fairy tales. Thus, in Little Red Riding Hood, No. 510 (July 1954), the wolf, who has merely locked Grandma up in the closet, is chased away by the woodsman and is “never heard from again.” The trespassing heroine of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, No. 508 (May 1954), writes a note of apology to her aggrieved hosts, and all is forgiven. The little man in Rumpelstiltskin, No. 512 (September 1958), stamps through the floor upon hearing his name but is rescued by two guards. He then goes “back to the woods to find that temper he lost so badly.” William A. Walsh, who scripted Mickey Mouse stories for Dell, illustrated more Juniors than any other artist — indeed, he might be called the Henry C. Kiefer of the series. His whimsical style and light touch in such titles as The Ugly Duckling, No. 502 (November 1953), The Three Little Pigs, No. 506 (March 1954), and The Little Mermaid, No. 525 (April 1956), connected with a younger readership than Gilberton had previously attracted. Overall, Alex A. Blum, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (October 1953). Blum’s old-fashioned illustrations established the Once-Upon-a-Time style of the new Classics Illustrated Junior The Ugly Duckling, with its artful series. page layouts and winning swan-inCertain titles, such as Pinocchio, No. 513 (November training hero, is Walsh’s strongest Junior effort. Yet his limited 1954), The Dancing Princesses, No. 532 (November 1956), The range is apparent in some of the two dozen or so issues he drew Chimney Sweep, No. 536 (March 1957), and The Golden Fleece, and inked, and the reputation the series has for uneven quality No. 544 (November 1957), show Walsh exceeding his usual is chiefly due to his hit-and-miss efforts.

William A. Walsh, The Ugly Duckling (November 1953). Walsh became the most prolific of the Junior artists.

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

249

self-imposed limitations. The Dancing Princesses contains an in-house joke on pages 20 and 25, where the princesses are shown greeting and bidding good night to the princes, all of whom have Gilberton-associated names, including Albert (Kanter), Maurice (Kanter), William (Kanter), Alex (Blum), Aladar (Blum), Michael (Kanter), and Oscar (Stiskin). In The Golden Fleece, a retelling of the legend of the hero Jason, the artist was working in a more realistic mode; he avoided the round-faced cuteness that had afflicted another foray into the realm of Greek myth, The Golden Touch, No. 534 ( January 1957). Had The Golden Fleece been expanded to 48 pages and the tragic aspects of the story relating to Medea been developed, the book would have belonged on the Classics Illustrated list. (As it happened, The Argonauts was the last title published in the British Classics Illustrated series.) Peter Costanza, who illustrated seafaring tales by Cooper, Kipling, and Hawes for the parent publication, seemed more at ease stylistically with the Juniors, for which he produced two exquisitely wrought titles: Cinderella, No. 503 (December 1953), and The Sleeping Beauty, No. 505 (February 1954). As elsewhere in the artist’s work, great attention is devoted to the characters’ eyes. Costanza clearly had great fun in Cinderella endowing the wicked stepmother and two stepsisters with comically unpleasant physical attributes to match their splenetic dispositions. The awakening scene in The Sleeping Beauty was scripted with a rather chaste climax, in which, without the benefit of a Peter Costanza, Cinderella (December 1953). The artist brought elements of whimsy and kiss, the slumbering princess opens satire to the best-selling Junior title. her eyes as soon as her deliverer enters belina, No. 520 (November 1955), and The Nightingale, No. her bedchamber. 522 ( January 1956), were painted by the artist. Although his An artist whose style was ideal for Classics Illustrated so-called “primitivism” would have looked out of place in ClasJunior was Dik Browne (1917–1989), best known as the creator sics Illustrated, it added an engaging sprightliness to the covers of Hi and Lois and Hagar the Horrible. Many of the early Junior and interior art for The Pied Piper, No. 504 ( January 1954), covers, including Puss-in-Boots, No. 511 (August 1954), Thum-

250

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: Dik Browne, The Pied Piper (January 1954). A first-rate cartoonist, Browne left his stamp on Classics Illustrated Junior. Right: Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia, The King of the Golden River (December 1955). The pencil-and-ink team kept the panels lively in John Ruskin’s Victorian parable.

Beauty and the Beast, No. 509 ( June 1954), and The Steadfast Tin Soldier, No. 514 ( January 1955). Browne’s vibrant panels particularly enlivened The Pied Piper, based on Robert Browning’s poem; the artist’s portraits of the wily Piper and the venal burghers of Hamelin added a satiric dimension to the retelling. The Steadfast Tin Soldier is closer stylistically to Browne’s later comic strips and offers perhaps the finest example in the series of the artist’s elastic simplicity — page after page, the artist demonstrates how much can be conveyed in a few decisive lines. Some of the best illustrations in the Juniors came from the pencil of Mike Sekowsky, whose work was inked by Frank Giacoia or at times by Mike Peppe. In The Golden Goose, No. 518 (September 1955), Paul Bunyan, No. 519 (October 1955), The Gallant Tailor, No. 523 (February 1956), and The Magic Fountain, No. 533 (December 1956), Sekowsky and Giacoia

set standards for the series that were seldom met by other artists. Their treatment of John Ruskin’s Victorian wastelandmotif fairy tale, The King of the Golden River, No. 521 (December 1955), may be the most satisfying single issue in the line, with its delightfully eccentric title character, the kindhearted young hero Gluck (in some ways a rehearsal for the artists’ handling of Huck Finn a few months later), and the grasping, greedy older brothers, Hans and Schwartz. Throughout the book, Sekowsky and Giacoia shifted point-of-view angles for greater visual effect. While not as well rendered as the Sekowsky-Giacoia collaborations, the titles by Sekowsky and Peppe are still engaging. Although the artists cut corners on the Yellow Brick Road and drew the cowardly lion with disappointing cartoonlike features in The Wizard of Oz, No. 535 (February 1957), they never-

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

251

theless made it clear that they were illustrating L. Frank Baum’s book rather than the 1939 MGM movie. Silly Willy, No. 557 (December 1958), is, on the whole, a better executed performance of a tale from the Brothers Grimm that in some respects is the male companion to Simple Kate, No. 549 (April 1958) (possibly illustrated by Jerry Fasano), an earlier title with a similar theme — that of the “holy fool” who blunders his or her way into good fortune. George Peltz’s cartoonlike drawings proved appealing in such issues as The Magic Dish, No. 558 (February 1958), with its broadfaced hero and almost Disneyesque supporting cast of fish, ants, and ravens, and Hans Humdrum, No. 561 (August 1959), in which the illustrator’s gifts for caricature found expression in the features of the freckled, chinless protagonist and the long-nosed troll farmer he outwits. A less successful effort was The Japanese Lantern, No. 559 (April 1959), where the artist attempted to fuse “orientalism” and realism with oddly wooden results. In The Salt Mountain, No. 564 (February 1960), Peltz produced a superbly balanced mixture of comically sketched characters and realistically rendered ships, buildings, and Russian costumes. If Dik Browne’s covers established a lighthearted newsstand identity for the early Juniors, those by Leonard B. Cole in 1959 and 1960 demonstrated the Gilberton art director’s versatility, issue after issue. Some of Cole’s Junior covers, such as The Happy Hedgehog, No. 568 (October 1960), showed the same playfulness that he had brought to Frisky Animals in the late 1940s and George Peltz, Hans Humdrum (August 1959). Peltz’s elastic figures contributed to the early 1950s. Others, including The appeal of his Junior titles. Magic Dish, No. 558 (February 1959), The majority of the Junior titles consisted of Märchen and The Enchanted Pony, No. 562 (October 1959), with their collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (Rumpelstiltskin), fairy lovingly rendered horses or other animals, added a touch of tales written by Hans Christian Andersen (The Emperor’s New fairy-tale magic. One of Cole’s best nonanimal covers, for The Clothes), or French and Italian folk tales adapted by Charles Japanese Lantern, No. 559 (April 1959), was a gracefully balPerrault (Puss-in-Boots). The retellings, many of which were anced composition tinged with the exotic.

252

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: Leonard B. Cole, The Magic Dish (February 1959). Another of the artist’s fondly regarded horse covers. Right: Tony Tallarico, How Fire Came to the Indians (April 1961). Tallarico’s brighter style signaled a new direction in the Junior line.

scripted by freelancer Marion Gartler, adhered to the three-part patterns of the originals but allowed room for character development, as in the case of the henpecked fisherman in The Enchanted Fish, No. 539 (June 1957), or the gullible Inga in The Silly Princess, No. 565 (April 1960). Scripts became more sophisticated as the line expanded its range. In addition to European folk and fairy tales, the Junior series made available to young readers a wide range of stories from various sources, from Greco-Roman myths (filtered through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wonder Book) such as The Magic Pitcher, No. 548 (March 1958), to American folklore such as Johnny Appleseed, No. 515 (March 1955). A Native American legend, How Fire Came to the Indians, No. 571 (April 1961), illustrated in a spare, modern style by Tony Tallarico, was a landmark early step in multicultural storytelling for children. The tale celebrates the virtues of cooperation and community within the framework of an origins myth. Some of the stories were unavailable in any other version.

When The Runaway Dumpling, No. 577, an adaptation of a Japanese tale by Lafcadio Hearn, appeared in 1969, no other edition was in print. Not until the publication in 1972 of The Funny Little Woman, a Caldecott Medal winner by Arlene Mosel and Blair Lent, did another retelling of the story reach a contemporary audience. Beginning with issue No. 509 in June 1954 and continuing through No. 576 in 1962, two- to five-page retellings of “Aesop’s Fables” (“The Ant and the Grasshopper”) or other short folk parables (“Stone Soup”) appeared as filler material. Adapters and artists devoted as much attention to these wellconstructed Classics in miniature as they did to the title stories, and they produced some memorable work on a smaller scale, as in William A. Walsh’s “The Fox and the Stork.” Rounding out each issue were “The Animal World,” a feature that profiled such creatures as the dingo, the armadillo, and the chinchilla, and nursery rhymes (“Sing a Song of Sixpence”) or poems by

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

253

Robert Louis Stevenson (“Windy Nights”) or Edward Lear (“There Was an Old Man with a Beard”). Classics Illustrated Junior almost rivaled the parent publication in popularity. Comics historian Hubert H. Crawford has asserted that the series led all children’s books, as opposed to simply comic books, in sales.12 A December 1960 Famous Authors ownership statement declared an impressive average monthly circulation of 262,000.13 The two best-selling issues, Cinderella, No. 503 (December 1953), and Paul Bunyan, No. 519 (October 1955), were both reprinted ten times — an indication that the series had equal appeal to girls and boys. Only the final issue, The Runaway Dumpling, had no reprints, but by the time it was published in 1969, the Frawley organization was only two years away from shutting the entire operation down. One of the intriguing “what ifs” in Gilberton lore involves an abortive animated television series based on Classics Illustrated Junior. In 1958, Albert Kanter approached P.A.T., the production team that would soon become famous for Rocky the Flying Squirrel, and proposed a cartoon program based on Junior titles. Bill Scott, Jay Ward’s partner and the voice of Bullwinkle, began to work up a script and storyboard adapted from the Junior edition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The project, however, was abandoned, and Ward and Scott would in short order offer their own “Fractured Fairy Tales.”14 At about the same time, M-G-M Records released, on its budget Lion label, a forty-five-minute album of The Wonderful World of Fairy Tales (Gilberton promotion, 1959). A back-cover ad (No. songs and stories adapted from twelve 501 reprint) for an M-G-M/Lion recording of Junior stories by television and radio perClassics Illustrated Junior issues, in- sonality Robert Q. Lewis. cluding Pinocchio, The Pied Piper, The Classics Illustrated Junior issues were often to be found in Wizard of Oz, and The Sleeping Beauty, performed by radio kindergarten or elementary-school classrooms. Special-needs and television personality Robert Q. Lewis. The record, like teachers made effective use of the series. Writing in the Dethe projected cartoon series, was evidence of Kanter’s faith in cember 1967 edition of The Instructor, Charlotte Stafford of his product and his entrepreneurial determination to seek as the Lincoln School in Willoughby, Ohio, praised Classics Ilmany different media outlets for it as possible.

254

CLASSICS Illustrated

lustrated Junior, which she used to introduce her hearingimpaired students to the “fairy stories, Aesop’s fables, and nursery rhymes that are part of our culture.”15 She noted, in particular, the impact of two titles —The House in the Woods, No. 543, and Jack and the Beanstalk, No. 507. Stafford’s article concluded with precisely the sort of endorsement that Albert Kanter had sought from the beginning: “The drawings and styles of different periods of time give children background information that they could not possibly learn in such detail by words alone. Later, when they become proficient readers, they may read more complete versions. But the foundation is laid in the early reading years.”16

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED SPECIAL ISSUES In December 1955, Gilberton issued a ninety-six-page Classics Illustrated Special Edition titled The Story of Jesus. The

timing was significant—and not merely because of the seasonal factor. Classics Illustrated was putting its best foot forward at a time when comic books were enduring sustained scrutiny and attack. As further proof of its bona fides as an educational publisher, Gilberton had recently added Macbeth to its list and was preparing to include Caesar’s Conquests. Having just scrapped Picture Progress, Albert Kanter was ready to produce an even more emphatic demonstration of the difference between Classics and other comics. What better subject, then, than Jesus? How could even a Fredric Wertham take exception? The answer, of course, was that critics might see it, as Wertham had viewed the comic-book versions of Shakespeare, as a vulgarization or even desecration of the source material. Anti-Semitic fundamentalists might even object to Kanter’s credentials as publisher. Still, the potential for prestige and profit made the venture worth the risk. The concept of biblical comics, like the concept of “classic” comics before it, was not new. In the 1940s, Max Gaines’s seven-issue Picture Stories from the Bible had sold millions of copies.17 Two of the New Testament numbers from the series had been reprinted in 1945 as a 96-page Complete Life of Christ. More recently, Atlas had published, from August 1953 to March 1954, five issues of Bible Tales for Young People, and Famous Funnies had begun a four-issue run of Tales from the Great Book in February 1955. Convinced that Gilberton could improve on the formula, managing editor Meyer A. Kaplan hired an AfricanAmerican author and former missionary, Lorenz Graham, to script the Classics book. A preliminary script had been submitted in 1953 by Eleanor Lidofsky for the Picture Progress series, but the 1955 comic book would be more than twice the length allowed for the now-defunct publication. Graham’s adaptation would have pleased the most rock-ribbed biblical literalist. Indeed, it satisfied the conservative Daniel A. Poling, editor of the Christian Herald Magazine, who delivered a back-cover endorsement expressing his happiness “that the manuscript follows the gospel texts in the classic King James vernacular, and that it tells that immortal story, the greatest story ever told, without distortion or interpretation.” Representatives of the Roman Catholic Archbishopric of Mexico, the Canadian Council of Churches, and the Queens Federation of Churches also supplied testimonials. Gilberton marketed the book as “The Classic of Classics.” Not only was the adaptation faithful to the letter of the Authorized Version, the illustrations, by Junior workhorse William A. Walsh and Classics veteran Alex A. Blum, Unidentified artist, The Story of Jesus (December 1955, December 1958). The variant “Three Camels” cover.

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

255

are stiffly reverent in the best tradition of Sunday School art. Perhaps some misgivings occurred with Victor Prezio’s painted cover, showing Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount. It was briefly replaced in a 1958 reprint with what collectors call the “Three Camels” cover, a highly desirable variant, but the original returned in the final two printings. In the summer of 1956, another 35-cent Special appeared, this time and henceforth as an Issue rather than an Edition. The Story of America, No. 132A ( June 1956), was simply a compilation of recycled Picture Progress stories: Lou Cameron’s award-winning “The Man Who Discovered America,” Lin Streeter’s “The Birth of America,” Peter Costanza’s “Paul Revere’s Ride,” and Tom Hickey’s “Star Spangled Banner.” The year ended with an Old Testament story to balance the 1955 Story of Jesus. The Ten Commandments, No. 135A (December 1956), illustrated by Norman Nodel, was the first of two Paramount movie tie-ins arranged with the assistance of Albert Kanter’s son, Hollywood screenwriter and director Hal Kanter. An ad for the film gracing the inside back cover promised that “If you have enjoyed this book you are certain to enjoy this motion picture masterpiece.” Norman Nodel’s well-researched illustrations, with their scratchboard effects and experiments in shading, stood in dramatic aesthetic contrast to the reverently inhibited panels in The Story of Jesus. Once again, Lorenz Graham provided an unobjectionable text, based, unlike the movie—or the competing Dell Giant Moses and the Ten Commandments (August 1957), illustrated by Mike Sekowsky — on the Book of Exodus. Like The Story of Jesus, The Ten Command- George Wilson, Adventures in Science (June 1957). The Cold War looms large ments boasted back-cover blurbs from religious in the year of Sputnik. leaders. Daniel A. Poling returned, declaring Atomic Adventures,” “The Discoveries of Louis Pasteur,” and that “Unqualifiedly I endorse this work.” He was joined by “From Tom-Tom to TV” (an unpublished Picture Progress issue spokesmen for the National Conference of Christians and Jews covering a subject that would be explored in greater depth in and, again, the Canadian Council of Churches, and a rabbi a 1960 World Around Us issue on communications). Peter and a Methodist minister from New York City, the latter utCostanza illustrated the first three stories and Lin Streeter the tering the rather Delphic pronouncement: “We think in piclast. The popularity of Adventures in Science may have been tures and these are pictures which make us think.” due both to the Cold War appeal of its missile-launcher cover Running a close second to The Story of Jesus in sales was and to the book’s appearance on the threshold of the space race Adventures in Science, No. 138A ( June 1957), which enjoyed a between the United States and the Soviet Union, when the very total of three printings. Following the method employed in word “science” was invested with talismanic properties. The Story of America, the editors merely assembled four Picture Gilberton’s next Special proved to be the most honored Progress features, “The Story of Flight,” the redoubtable “Andy’s

Left: George Evans, The Rough Rider (December 1957). Artist Evans received the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation National Mass Media Award “for Art Work in The Rough Rider as ‘The Best American History Comic Book’”— a project that he regarded as a disappointment. Right: John P. Severin, “Texas and the Alamo” in Blazing the Trails West (June 1958). Period authenticity was one of artist’s Severin’s most consistent qualities.

256 CLASSICS Illustrated

Joe Orlando, “The Pony Express” in Crossing the Rockies (November 1958). Pony Bob’s achievement is neatly summed up on this page of original art (collection of the author).

258

CLASSICS Illustrated

of all the titles in the series. Published under the imprimatur of the Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Commission, The Rough Rider, No. 141A (December 1957), was a factually accurate, if hagiographic, portrait of the energetic young president, presenting his various incarnations as cowboy, police commissioner, soldier, governor, and hunter. The book, penciled by George Evans, received congressional approbation, a ringing testimonial from the Director of the Centennial Commission, and the now standard praise from the dependable Daniel A. Poling and other worthies, including the Director of the President’s Council on Youth Fitness and the First Vice-President of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. All four of the Special Issues published in 1958 and 1959 were devoted to an impressive trilogy outlining the history of America’s westward movement—and a related Canadian excursion. One of Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht’s most ambitious projects, the well-researched, handsomely executed serial represented one of Gilberton’s finest educational efforts. The editor’s demand for accuracy led her to engage the services of Sylvester Vigilante, Bibliographer of the New York Historical Society, as series consultant. Blazing the Trails West, No. 144A (June 1958), illustrated by George Evans and John Severin, began with an overview of colonial history, recounted the careers of Daniel Boone and Kit Carson (both of whom had starred in their own Classics Illustrated issues), followed the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Santa Fe Trail, and concluded with chapters on the Alamo and the Mexican War. Although the issue of “Manifest Destiny” was taken at face value (“[M]any Americans were saying that the United States ought to include all of the Far West”), and nothing of the debate on the Mexican conflict was reflected, the book nevertheless offered young readers a compelling account of the nation’s expansion. Severin’s work, in particular, was outstanding, with its close attention to American and Mexican uniforms and period attire and a heroic style that vividly conveyed a sense of the sweep of history. The sequel, Crossing the Rockies, No. 147A (December 1958), was another visually strong installment, featuring cover artwork by Gerald McCann and interior illustrations by Norman Nodel Everett Raymond Kinstler, “The Last Warpath” in Men, Guns and Cattle (December 1959). The distinguished portrait painter provides a striking view of Geronimo.

(“The Oregon Trail,” “Death and the Donners,” “This Is the Place”), by George Evans (“The Gold Rush”), and by Joe Orlando (“The Apache Wars,” “The Overland Mail,” “Pony Express,” “Bound By Rails”). In particular, Orlando’s “Pony Express” presented a compelling depiction of the excitement that attended the ambitious mail-delivery mission. Most of the stories, however, lacked much of the dramatic conflict found in Blazing the Trails West, and the issue failed to attract a wide readership. The final volume, Men, Guns and Cattle, No. 153A (December 1959), with its focus on the post–Civil War era of cattle

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW drives, gunslingers, and Indian wars, fared somewhat better at a time when cowboy programs such as Gunsmoke and Maverick dominated prime-time television. Artistically the least unified of the Western titles, the book included a cover painting and internal art by Gerald McCann and additional illustrations by Leonard B. Cole, George Evans, noted artist Everett Raymond Kinstler, Norman Nodel, and George Peltz (whose childfriendly rendering of the Pecos Bill legend would have been more appropriate for the Classics Illustrated Junior series in which most of his work appeared). An attempt at an evenhanded treatment of Native Americans was made in the script’s narration of the slaughter of the buffalo and the origin of the Ghost Dance; even so, Geronimo was depicted as the baddest of bad guys, and the massacre at Wounded Knee was rendered almost in terms of tragic necessity. The white man’s perspective prevailed, and most of the book’s 96 pages dealt with the exploits of Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, and the Earp brothers. A sketch of Wild Bill’s career depicted a more complex, ambivalent figure than the straight-shooter eulogized in Classics Illustrated No. 121. Wedged in among these titles was a nod to the Western history of the north, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, No. 150A ( June 1959), for which retired Mounties Superintendent J.C. Story served as consultant. Although the intent may have been not to slight young Canadian readers while the Western trilogy was under way, the result was the weakest of the Special Issues— the subject would have been more appropriate for thes maller-scale World Around Us series. Further, the artwork for the Mounties book was of varying quality, with the best contributions by Graham Ingels (“Pony Soldiers”) and Ray Ramsey (“Manhunt!”). If the former’s tame drawings bore little resemblance to his inventive “Ghastly” creations for EC, the latter’s style had grown more refined since his simpler Golden Age drawings for the 1942 Classic Comics version of The Last of the Mohicans. Having covered a significant portion of the American past, editor Feuerlicht turned her attention to the more current matters of science and technology in The Atomic Age, No. 156A ( June 1960), and Rockets, Jets and Missiles, No. 159A Gaylord Welker, The Atomic Age, original cover painting (June 1960). The images on this cover did little to dispel Cold War anxieties (collection of Øystein Sørensen).

259

(December 1960). Both titles contained a mixture of good and indifferent art, the best represented by Norman Nodel, Bruno Premiani, George Evans, and Gray Morrow. Perhaps the finest section in either book was Premiani’s beautifully rendered nine-page historical overview of atomic theory in No. 156A, extending from ancient India through the early 19th century. The Atomic Age enlarged upon the optimism of “Andy’s Atomic Adventures,” looking forward to a time when, “[f ]rom infancy to old age,” thanks to the benefits of atomic research, “man will live with little fear of disease. He will live more easily and longer.” As Norwegian Classics authority and original-art collector Øystein Sørensen observed, The Atomic Age “is a very interesting period piece. Especially the last chapter, with its retro-futuristic optimism: Nuclear power and happy people

260

CLASSICS Illustrated

Gray Morrow, “Seven for Space” in Rockets, Jets and Missiles 1959). A handsome primer on Project Mercury.

everywhere!”18 The Special ended, however, on a cautionary note: “Whether the atom is used to build up a new world, or blow up the present one, is up to us.” Rockets, Jets and Missiles addressed the fascination of the space race and the anxieties of the Cold War. Airplane specialist George Evans lavished attention on a Flying Fortress, an F-51 Mustang, an F-80 Shooting Star, and the experimental X-1 in a superbly paced introductory section on Chuck Yeager’s 1947 flight that broke the sound barrier and served as a “stepping

stone for faster flights to come as man reached for space.” Gilberton anticipated Tom Wolfe’s enshrinement of the laconic Yeager as the original exemplar of “the right stuff ” by nearly two decades. John Tartaglione’s “Jets Around the World” offered sharply drafted examples of commercial (Boeing 707, Convair 880) and military (Saab-35 Draken, MIG-21) models; his “Rocket Engines” contained side-view diagrams of solid-fuel, liquidfuel, and other rockets. Somewhat ominously, the editors surveyed the Polaris, Thor, SM-65 Atlas, and other missiles and rockets, accurately rendered by Gerald McCann, who also illustrated biographical sketches of rocket and jet pioneers Robert Hutchings Goddard and Frank Whittle. Individual planets were discussed on text pages, and the final third of the book, illustrated by Gray Morrow and others, centered on Project Mercury, the seven astronauts, and the future of the space program. John F. Kennedy had just been elected president, and a New Frontier in space beckoned. No issue published by Gilberton had been as timely, but the rapid movement of events within the next few months would make Rockets, Jets and Missiles seem suddenly dated. A sequel would be required. Meanwhile, the year 1961 witnessed the beginning of the Civil War Centennial; marketing had been well under way in 1960. Not until the American Bicentennial 15 years later would there again be such public enthusiasm for a national historical epoch, and Gilberton took full advantage of the spirit of the times, issuing The Civil War, No. W26, in its World Around Us series in October 1960 and The War Between the States (adopting the Southern locution) as Special Issue No. 162A in June 1961. Two artists overlapped — Sam Glanzman and George Peltz — and so, inevitably, did some of the subject matter. Strong showings were made in the Special Issue in sections by Jack Kirby (“Fort Sumter,” “The Peninsula,” “Vicksburg,” “New (December York City”) and George Evans (“Shiloh,” “Reconstruction”). However, some of the flatness that seems to have coincided with Sidney Miller’s tenure as art director crept into the sections by Glanzman (“The Causes,” “Gettysburg”). As history, The War Between the States was well-researched and impressive in its scope. A four-page section titled “The Causes” (marred slightly by artist Glanzman’s misplacing of the Missouri Compromise Line on a map) succinctly covered such topics as the Compromise of 1850, the Dred Scott Decision, and the struggle between proslavery and abolitionist

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

261

erratic, World War II, No. 166A, landed on newsstands and forces in Kansas. Strategic and tactical considerations were predrugstore racks. The recent popularity of William L. Shirer’s sented in sections on New Orleans, the Seven Days’ Battles, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (and a Landmark edition for Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. young readers), the box-office success of Judgment at Nuremberg, A structural weakness was evident in The War Between and the televised trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in the States in the extended attention devoted to the exploits of Jerusalem made the subject a timely addition to the series. John Hunt Morgan’s raiders in Kentucky or those of ConfedThe art in World War II was uniformly superior; the three erate saboteurs in New York at the expense of the more significontributors — Angelo Torres, George Evans, and Norman cant battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness, which received half-page summaries each. Still, the text dealing with Gettysburg provided a well-proportioned ten-page account of the campaign, including the behind-the-scenes conflict between Union generals, Henry Halleck and Joseph Hooker, that led to General George Meade’s assumption of command, and the disagreement between Confederate generals, Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet, over the third-day disaster that would become known as “Pickett’s Charge.” Exactly 100 years to the day after the firing on Fort Sumter, on 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin became the first person to reach outer space and to orbit the earth. The Civil War Centennial had been upstaged at its formal inception, and attention shifted again to the space race. By the end of 1961, two Americans had briefly entered outer space, and a third, John H. Glenn, would soon achieve the status of national hero with his orbital flight on 20 February 1962. Against that backdrop, Gilberton published Special Issue No. 165A, To the Stars! (December 1961). Up to the minute, the book covered the recent exploits of both Gagarin and Alan Shepard, the first American in space. As in all other science-oriented Specials, the script provided a historical perspective — in this instance, expertly drawn, thoroughly researched sections by Angelo Torres on the history of flight, and by George Evans on the changing concept of Earth’s position in the universe, the evolution of the telescope, and William Herschel’s discovery of Uranus. A significant portion of To the Stars! abandoned the traditional panel format of comics in favor of illustrated text. Indeed, it may have been the most straightforwardly educational of any book issued by any of the Gilberton lines. In its comprehensive treatment of the sun, the planets, and the constellations, To the Stars! offers some indication of the direction Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht might have pursued with the Special Issues had new-title production not ceased Angelo Torres, “Stalingrad” in World War II (Spring 1962). Editors Feuerin 1962. licht and Lecar produced a wide-ranging survey of the causes, campaigns, At some point in the first half of 1962, when the and consequences of the Second World War, illustrated by three of the Gilberton publication cycle had become increasingly best Classics Illustrated artists.

262

CLASSICS Illustrated

historic World, appeared. The first fifty-seven pages of artwork were by Angelo Torres, and the remaining 39 were divided among George Evans, Norman Nodel, Jo Albistur, and Gerald McCann. Fine scripting by Al Sundel complemented the carefully researched and well-wrought illustrations. The popular title was reprinted once. Sixty of the book’s ninety-six pages carried no speech balloons; instead, much of the issue offered halfor full-page drawings (with appended pronunciations) of such dinosaurs as Tyrannosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Plesiosaur, and sections on prehistoric mammals and early man, where minimal dialogue was introduced. A cleverly designed section scripted by Helene Lecar, “The Wonderful Earth Movie,” dramatically conveyed the concept of geological time. The principles of evolution were presented more thoroughly than in some school textbooks of the era, beginning with “The First Fishes,” continuing with “Living on Land,” and on through “The Dawn Men” to “Homo Sapiens.” An unnumbered Special Issue on the United Nations was published in 1964 to capitalize on the New York World’s Fair, but it was not part of the U.S. series.19 Begun by George Evans, Angelo Torres, and Bruno Premiani before the Gilberton Company’s new-title production was ended in 1962, the book was finished by European artists. The English-language edition was printed in Norway for sale at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Under the guidance of Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, Classics Illustrated Special Issues afforded young readers a wealth of educational material that exceeded in scope anything attempted before in the comics medium. The best titles went beyond such popular noncomics series as How and Why Wonder Books and compared not unfavorably with Random House’s Landmark Books. With the series, Albert Kanter saw his dream of using comic books as an educational medium exceed his original expectations. Yet, in a sense, the last three Specials were no longer comic books, and that perception, which would have been welcomed by the editorial staff in 1961, ultimately served to strand the series in a conceptual limbo between the dime store and the classroom, where its daring George Evans, “The Dawn Men” in Prehistoric World (July 1962). An “illumi- comprehensiveness and solid artistic merits remained, unfortunately, unsung. nating” account of the discovery of fire. Nodel — were from the top tier of freelancers. An incisive, occasionally eloquent script also distinguished the issue, which surveyed such subjects as the origins of the conflict, the fall of Western Europe, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the war in the Pacific, the Nazi death camps, and the Nurembergw ar-crimest rials. In July 1962, a final American Special Issue, No. 167A, Pre-

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

THE WORLD AROUND US Similar in format to Classics Illustrated Special Issues but priced a dime cheaper at twenty-five cents, The World Around Us covered a broader range of topics, from the Crusades to fishing, from pirates to medicine, from railroads to ghosts. Both series represented extensions of the Picture Progress concept. While two Special Issues reprinted several Picture Progress titles, The World Around Us incorporated four unpublished Picture Progress titles — featuring new scripts and art, Through Time and Space: The Story of Communications, American Presidents, and Whaling appeared as separate issues, and Weather did duty as filler material.20

Left: Leonard B. Cole, The Illustrated Story of Horses (November 1958). The horse-loving artist’s favorite (and only signed) horse cover. Right: Graham Ingels, “Bloody Blackbeard” in The Illustrated Story of Pirates (March 1959). Among the piratical profiles in the seventh World Around Us issue was Graham Ingels’s chapter devoted to Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.

263

The World Around Us, published under the slightly different corporate name of Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc., was a particular passion of editor Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, who adopted from the outset a user-friendly approach for the series. Where the rather imposing Story of Jesus had launched the Special Issues, the humbler Illustrated Story of Dogs, No. W1 (September 1958), premiered the new line. Gilberton’s top artist, George Evans, drew and inked the first section, “Heroic Dogs” (a throwback to the late 1940s and early 1950s “Dog Heroes” Classics filler articles), which contained, among other canine biographies, the tale of the legendary Balto. The rest of the sections were competently, if uninspiringly, illustrated by Ernest H. Hart (who also painted

264

CLASSICS Illustrated

Classic Comics in 1945, contributed a section on Napoleon’s the much more impressive cover), George Peltz, Lin Streeter, rise to power. and William A. Walsh. At the time, The French Revolution was the most compreThe unevenness of the artwork remained a constant probhensive European historical project yet undertaken by Gilberlem for the series, as did the eclecticism that Feuerlicht enviton (the American westward movement having already been sioned as one of its chief merits. Dogs was followed the next month by Indians, No. W2 (October 1958), and then by Horses, No. W3 (November 1958), and Railroads, No. W4 (December 1958). A timely issue devoted to Space, No. W5 ( January 1959), anticipated more extensive treatments of the topic in the Special Issues. One of the most popular titles, The FBI, No. W6 (February 1959), appeared at a time when crimefighter dramas captured a large share of the television audience. Pirates, No. W7 (March 1959), was an impressively comprehensive historical survey of a favorite preadolescent subject, with solid sections on Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, and Captain Kidd. Expanding on a Picture Progress theme and setting the stage for a future Special Issue was Flight, No. W8 (April 1959). An armed forces miniseries allotting one recruitment-oriented title apiece to the United States Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard, and the Air Force filled the prime enlistment months of late spring and summer. Then suddenly, with a single issue, the character of The World Around Us changed dramatically. In October 1959, Gilberton published No. W14, The French Revolution, an exceptionally well-researched and well-organized work. The 80page book explained the three Estates of prerevolutionary France, discussed the economic crisis that led to the calling of the Estates-General, explained the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and offered visually gripping accounts of the fall of the Bastille, the march on Versailles, the royal family’s abortive escape to Varennes, the attack on the Tuileries, the trials and executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the birth and death of the Terror, and the rise of Napoleon. Biographical sketches of Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and other leaders were provided. The French Revolution was stronger artistically than most World Around Us titles; more than fifty pages were illustrated by Gerald McCann, Norman Nodel, and George Evans. DC Superman inker George D. Klein (1915–1969) provided a dramatic visual account of the flight George Klein, “Escape to Varennes” in The Illustrated Story of The French Revto Varennes. Ann Brewster, who had worked olution (October 1959). Shifting vantage points enhance the drama of the arrest with Robert Hayward Webb on Frankenstein for of the royal family.

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

265

addressed in the Special Issues); it demonstrated the comics medium’s largely unacknowledged ability to address great themes without diluting or trivializing them. Further, the subject matter lived up to the international scope of the series advertised in the name The World Around Us. The book also paved the way for other complexly rendered historical studies on the Crusades, the American Civil War, and the Spanish conquest of America. With the next title, Prehistoric Animals, No. W15 (November 1959), the series’ page count dropped from eighty to seventy-two. Like Prehistoric World, the Special Issue that followed it nearly three years later, most of the issue consisted of illustrated text. Sections outlining the origins and evolution of life on earth predominated. Sam Glanzman’s detailed full-page renderings of dinosaurs were the artist’s finest contribution to any Gilberton publication. Gerald McCann provided artwork for biographical sketches of William Smith, Baron Cuvier, and Charles Darwin, while Gray Morrow depicted the process of fossilization and the earliest discoveries of prehistoric “Tracks, Teeth and Bones.” In “Death of the Dinosaur” and “Mammals, Men and Ice,” Al Williamson created characteristic fusions of landscapes and figures for what proved to be visually the strongest sections of the book. Attention then shifted to The Crusades, No. W16 (December 1959), an impressive overview that was as consistently well-illustrated — by Gerald McCann, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Bruno Premiani, Edd Ashe, and H.J. Kihl—as The French Revolution. Less successful was a multicultural survey of Festivals, No. W17 ( January 1960), which, apart from sections on Christmas by George Evans and Thanksgiving and Chanukah by Norman Nodel, was an anthology of artistic disappointments. A who’s who of Gilberton freelancers — George Evans, Al Williamson, John Tartaglione, Bruno Premiani, Gray Morrow, Norman Nodel, and Angelo Torres — contributed to the ambitious Great Scientists, No. Geoffrey Biggs, The Illustrated Story of Prehistoric Animals (November W18 (February 1960), an edition that reached back as 1959). Dueling dinosaurs. far as Eratosthenes and concluded with Einstein. When and Franklin D. Roosevelt. A further reduction to sixty-four the book appeared, American educators were emphasizing pages occurred in the issue. Summer reading included such the need to strengthen and expand science courses in the navaried subjects as Boating, No. W22 ( June 1960), Great Extion’s schools. plorers, No. W23 ( July 1960), Ghosts, No. W24 (August 1960), Issues devoted to The Jungle, No. W19 (March 1960), and and Magic, No. W25 (September 1960). Communications, No. W20 (April 1960) followed. As the 1960 Ghosts was something of a departure for The World presidential primary season headed toward the summer conAround Us, which, even in its lighter moments, had focused ventions, The World Around Us capitalized on the growing inonly upon the factual and verifiable. Although some attention terest in the campaigns with American Presidents, No. W21 was given to research on extrasensory perception, most of the (May 1960), which profiled each chief executive through Eisenbook was just plain fun. The best sections were the modern hower, with sequential-art chapters on Washington, Jefferson, urban myths “The Hitch-Hiker,” strikingly rendered by John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt,

266

CLASSICS Illustrated

their rain-soaked, cross-hatched panels exude a delicious creepiness. As publicity concerning the Civil War Centennial mounted during the fall of 1960, The World Around Us published a sixty-fourpage overview of the conflict. The Civil War, as noted earlier, was later complemented by a Special Issue No. 162A, The War Between the States. Norman Nodel depicted a battle scene in the cover painting, where the sword-borne officer’s cap between the tattered Union and Confederate flags immediately drew the viewer into the action. Nodel also provided interior art, along with Gerald McCann, Angelo Torres, George Peltz, H.J. Kihl, Sam Glanzman, and Gray Morrow, whose “War Drums,” an account of a Union drummer boy’s battlefield initiation, was the best section in the book. A substantial amount of space was devoted to illustrated text (as opposed to panels), including “These Brave Fields,” a Union lieutenant’s account of the battle of Gettysburg, and biographical sketches of paired “War Leaders” such as Lincoln and Davis, Grant and Lee, and Meade and Jackson. In High Adventure: The Illustrated Story of Men Against Mountains, No. W27 (November 1960), members of a “European Advisory Board” were listed for the first time beneath the Gilberton editorial credits on the inside front cover. As a result of the publisher’s struggles with the Post Office over the renewal of its second-class mailing permit, beginning with this issue, the editorial staff turned a hefty portion of the “back of the book” into a collection of separate and unrelated sections —“The World of Story” (a noncomics adaptation of Mark Twain’s “Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”); serials (“D-Day” and “The Red Planet”); and “The World of Science,” a continuing feature. As Dan Malan noted, “Gilberton had been so successful in marketing [Classics Illustrated] as books that they were unable to convince Bruno Premiani, “The Walled City” in The Illustrated Story of The Crusades (December 1959). Exquisitely wrought panels in a thoughtfully nuanced account postal authorities of the periodical nature of their publications.”21 The continuing features of a complex subject. began in issue No. W27, High Adventure George Evans, and “Room for the Night,” superbly drawn by (November 1960), and new serials on the Salem Witch Trials Gray Morrow. Both Evans and Morrow understood the atand the Spanish Armada were under way when the series ended mospheric imperatives of the tales they were recreating, and the following year.

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

Norman Nodel, The Illustrated Story of The Civil War (October 1960). A popular issue that was Gilberton’s first commemoration of the Civil War Centennial.

Whaling, No. W28 (December 1960), featured some of the most impressive art in the entire series, particularly “The Long Voyage” by Gray Morrow. A cautionary note was sounded at the end: “No one knows what the future of whaling will be. There are signs that the whale population is getting smaller. Some whalemen believe that by the year 2000, whaling will be at an end. But others feel that the cry ‘There she blows!’ will sound for many years to come.” The underlying attitude suggested by the title —Whaling rather than Whales— makes the book a curious artifact of the years just before a major shift in international public consciousness occurred. For an issue devoted to Vikings, No. W29 ( January 1961), Alfred Sundel and Helene Lecar supplied a solidly researched text that featured handsomely rendered sections by Evans, McCann, Nodel, Torres, Glanzman, Tallarico, and Premiani. The following month, Undersea Adventures, No. W30 (February

267

1961), covered frogmen, submarines, sea monsters, and sunken treasure. Hunting, No. W31 (March 1961), which introduced a new cover design by Sidney Miller that ran the World Around Us banner above the cover illustration, provided a historical perspective on “the excitement of the chase and the danger of the unexpected,” from prehistoric times to the 20th century. Jack Kirby’s strikingly conceived panels employed dramatic perspectives to enliven the educational text. The best of the later issues was For Gold and Glory, No. W32 (April 1961), a sequel of sorts to the previous year’s Classics Illustrated No. 156, The Conquest of Mexico. The new book, reflecting scriptwriter Alfred Sundel’s sympathy for the subjugated Indians of the Americas, covered the Spanish conquest of the New World, with special attention devoted to Pizarro’s destruction of the Inca empire of Peru. For Gold and Glory was the only Gilberton comic book to feature a cover photograph. Taken by Sundel, the image was “of a rare Zapotec urn (easily 100 pounds) that a husky [Museum of Natural History] curator had taken out of storage for the shot.”22 Celebrating Famous Teens in issue No. W33 (May 1961), the series simultaneously courted its target audience and acknowledged its increasingly powerful role in the changing culture of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. (That same year, Motown scored its first chart-topping hit, Bob Dylan released his first album, and the Beatles recorded their first sides in Germany.) In the next issue, Fishing, No. W34 ( June 1961), only sixteen out of forty-eight pages in the lead section contained panels with speech balloons, and the best efforts of the artists were reserved for a portrait of Izaak Walton and sketches of catfish, barracuda, and sturgeon. Art director Sidney Miller’s preference for minimalism was much in evidence. Spies, No. 35 (August 1961), had a Cold War resonance and a whimsical cover that was undoubtedly intended to look urbanely witty and uncompromisingly modern. The final issue, a history of medicine titled Fight for Life, No. W36 (October 1961), was the most poorly illustrated of the lot—not even a few lackluster sections by Jack Kirby could save it. Moreover, Gilberton’s best efforts couldn’t save The World Around Us. In retrospect, it seems that, with its fragmented appeal to different audiences, the series never established a clearly defined identity and never secured the necessary reader loyalty from month to month. Indeed, in the last two issues, a questionnaire occupied the inside back cover, asking readers “What made you buy this book?” and “Do you have trouble finding The World Around Us in stores?” The queries reflected the harsh new reality at 101 Fifth Avenue. The very use of the term “book” was a signal of surrender in the wake of the Post Office Department’s denial of Gilberton’s petition for second-class “magazine” status for The World Around Us.23 The administrative-law ruling killed the potential for the series to survive as a subscription-based pub-

268

CLASSICS Illustrated lication; distribution in stores was the only possibility for the line to continue. A subsequent appeal failed to bring about a reversal of the administrative order, and The World Around Us ceased publication the next year, after having issued some of the most outstanding comics to appear under the Gilberton aegis. The series more than fulfilled the educational role that Bill Kanter and Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht envisioned for it. But its “death-by-bureaucrat” fate was an ominous bit of foreshadowing for the parent series. The parallel British World Illustrated series continued until 1963 with new-title production, including such issues as Day of Fury (originally a filler item on D-Day in the U.S. series), The Sea, Great Escapes, Northwest Passage, The Golden Horde, The Cossacks, and Disasters. Scripts for these books had been prepared for The World Around Us line, and Bill Kanter oversaw their release in Britain, extending by a couple of years the life of what may have been Gilberton’s most ambitious project.

THE BEST FROM BOYS’ LIFE COMICS

George Evans, “Peru! Peru!” in For Gold and Glory (April 1961). The capture of the Inca ruler Atahualpa in scriptwriter Al Sundel’s ambitious history of the Conquistadors.

A short-lived Gilberton series, The Best from Boys’ Life Comics had a mere five-issue run. The quarterly debuted in October 1957 and expired in October 1958. Each of the 96-page editions consisted of material (none by Gilberton personnel) reprinted from the official Boy Scouts magazine, Boys’ Life, which had introduced its own comics section in 1952. Among the reruns were Dik Browne’s “Tracy Twins,” Mal Eaton’s “Rocky Stoneaxe,” Percy K. Fitzhugh’s “Pee Wee Harris,” Craig Flessel’s “Stories from the Bible,” Al Stenzel’s “Scouts in Action” and “Space Conquerors,” and Lee J. Ames’s well-illustrated “Old Timer Tales of Kit Carson.” Thirty-two pages of unimaginatively designed

XXIV. FIVE LITTLE SERIES AND HOW THEY GREW

269

Left: Leonard B. Cole, The Best from Boys’ Life Comics, No. 5 (October 1958). The covers for the Boy Scouts series were the first Cole painted for Gilberton. Right: Private First Class David Carson receiving a copy of The Best from Boys’ Life Comics, No. 1, from Albert L. Kanter (Fall 1957). As a Boy Scout, Carson had rescued two children during a tornado; his heroic action was the first issue’s cover story (courtesy John Haufe).

noncomics “Special Features” added dead weight at the back of the book and boosted the cover price to a comparatively expensive thirty-five cents, the cost of a Special Issue. The handsome covers, painted in the Classics Illustrated style, proclaimed that the books had been “Published in Cooperation with the Boy Scouts of America.” Respectability didn’t get much more respectable than that. The first three cover paintings emphasized action and real-life heroics performed by actual Scouts featured in the issues. The last two painted covers were, though well executed by Leonard B. Cole, insistently wholesome examples of kitsch. Prefacing the first issue was a message from Chief Scout Executive Arthur A. Schuck, who emphasized the educational purpose of the publication: Comics, using pictures to tell stories, have become part of our literature. They have dramatized some of the greatest classics, including the Holy Bible. In the hands of imaginative artists and writers, they are more than just “funnies”; they are a vital way of communicating ideas.... The stories and articles in this collec-

tion open the doors to the world of great books. Read the comics, and if you enjoy the stories they tell, read books, too. Read them, enjoy them, for in them you will find information, adventure, and friendship. Books can be your life-long friends.

The credo could have served for Classics Illustrated, as well. Gilberton editor Meyer A. Kaplan, who had defended the cultural role of his publication in 1951 and now oversaw Gilberton’s end of the joint venture with the BSA, added a note expressing his “hope that boys everywhere will read, enjoy and benefit from the articles and stories....” Despite the noble intentions, the hybrid series had trouble finding its niche. The Boys’ Life in the title may have initially attracted some Scouts, and the Classics Illustrated logo on the front cover and familiar reorder list on the back may have sold a few copies to budding collectors (many of whom would attempt to find those issues decades later). But the former probably saw no point in paying for comics they had read long ago, while the latter most likely wondered what had happened to d’Artagnan and Ivanhoe.

XXV

“Frawley’s Folly”: The Twin Circle Era (1967–1971) P

atrick Frawley (1923–1998), like Albert Kanter, was a successful entrepreneur. A colorful man “given,” as his New York Times obituary put it, “to instant and excessive enthusiasms,”1 he owned a variety of businesses at one time or another, including Schick, PaperMate, Technicolor — and Classics Illustrated. Born in Nicaragua, the son of an Irish father and a FrancoSpanish mother, Frawley was educated in San Francisco. A high school dropout at sixteen, he returned to Nicaragua, where he learned the basics of business dealings while working with his father, a self-made man. Following service with the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, Frawley married, settled in San Francisco, became a United States citizen, and set about making and remaking his fortune with the companies he purchased. Under his direction, PaperMate developed the leak-proof pen, Schick introduced the stainless-steel blade, and Technicolor pioneered a film-cartridge technology that foreshadowed the videocassette. A devout Roman Catholic, Frawley became renowned in the political arena as a staunch supporter of conservative candidates and organizations. The enterprise closest to his heart was the Schick Shadel chain of alcohol-and-drugtreatment centers, which he founded.2 Where the Russian-born New Yorker Kanter had expressed the depth of his religious feeling in his fervent support of Israel, investing a substantial portion of his income in the country, the Irish-born Californian Frawley put his faith in practice by backing Dan Lyons, a Jesuit priest and journalist, in the founding of a national Catholic weekly newspaper called Twin Circle.3 In 1964, Frawley contacted Gilberton Vice-President and General Manager O.B. “Bernie” Stiskin and indicated his interest in buying the rights to Classics Illustrated.4 According to a 1968 Curtis Circulation Company marketing brochure, the phone call was prompted by Frawley’s enthusiastic reading of a Classics issue belonging to one of his children.5 Bernie Stisken’s recollection was somewhat less filtered. According to

the Gilberton officer, the Classics Illustrated title that fired Frawley’s interest in acquiring the series was A Tale of Two Cities, “which he was reading while on the head in his yacht.”6 As negotiations proceeded, the prospective purchaser’s plan for the series evolved. He hoped to accomplish twin objectives: first, to resuscitate the fading comic-book line, and secondly, to promote the new Twin Circle publication by offering a free Classics Illustrated title with each weekly edition.7 Although associates advised him against selling, Albert Kanter signed off on the deal in December 1967.8 The purchase price, according to Albert Kanter’s brother Mike, was $500,000.9 The former owner received a five-year consultant’s contract, while Bernie Stiskin remained as General Manager, with Mike Kanter continuing in charge of the warehouse. 10 But the main office, in effect, had shifted to the West Coast, and Classics Illustrated was now one part of the growing enterprise that would soon be known as the Frawley Corporation. Dan Lyons nominally supervised the new acquisition; he was succeeded in 1969 by Gladys Briggs, a former Technicolor regional sales manager.11 For a two-year period, Frawley did his best to restore Classics Illustrated to its former prominence among juvenile publications. Copies were included in Twin Circle issues, but postal regulations, which prohibited the inclusion of a separately sold item in a periodical, once again proved insurmountable.12 Twin Circle then began printing the issues serially within the newspaper, reproducing 105 Classics Illustrated and Classics Illustrated Junior titles between 1968 and 1976.13 The Curtis Circulation Company, which still distributed the books, was optimistic and in 1968 offered a plan, modeled on its 1951 strategy, to enhance the shelf appeal of the series and to increase profits. Frawley would commission new painted covers for certain titles (two of which, The Deerslayer and The Pioneers, retained their original 1940s line-drawing covers), the new covers would be printed on a heavier paper stock, and the publisher would raise the retail price from 15 to 25 cents.14

270

XXV. “FRAWLEY’S FOLLY”

271

To the great delight of collectors, new painted covers appeared on Frawley-era editions of Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, Les Miserables, Don Quixote, Rip Van Winkle, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Deerslayer, Michael Strogoff, Lorna Doone, The Pioneers, Jane Eyre, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Alice in Wonderland, Black Beauty, Western Stories, Joan of Arc, The Odyssey, The Master of Ballantrae, The Jungle Book, Daniel Boone, The Red Badge of Courage, Hamlet, Kit Carson, Romeo and Juliet, The First Men in the Moon, Ben-Hur, and Off on a Comet.15 One of the reissued titles, The Jungle Book, featured entirely new external and interior art by Norman Nodel; it was the only instance in the history of the series when a revised Classics edition employed the original script. Some of the covers, such as Nodel’s Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables, Albert Micale’s Black Beauty, Edward Moritz’s Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, and Taylor Oughton’s Rip Van Winkle and Ben-Hur, were striking if not always successful conceptions. For Hamlet (Spring 1969), Moritz placed Ophelia, oddly, in the foreground. Some collectors called this the “Marianne Faithfull cover”; the English singer-actress appeared in Tony Richardson’s film of the play that year. Also debuting in 1969 was Moritz’s balcony-scene cover for Romeo and Juliet, which replaced the Romeo-Tybalt duel scene on the 1956 cover. This romantic image was undoubtedly a response to the immense success of Franco Zeffirelli’s youth-oriented 1968 film production. Meanwhile, the spirit of late 1960s’ social consciousness was reflected in the proud black man who dominated the cover of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, replacing the hunted slave on the 1954 exterior. Others, however, such as Daniel Boone and Kit Carson, were less potent than the covers they Edward Moritz, Romeo and Juliet, original cover painting (1968). The artist’s replaced. Tony Tallarico’s close-up portrait of sentimental painting emphasized the innocent hope of the balcony scene (colBoone bore more than a passing resemblance to lection of the author). Fess Parker, who was enjoying great success for the cover of The Master of Ballantrae. The perpetrator, known only second time in his career as a coonskin-cap-wearing frontier as “Siryk,” evidently was unacquainted with Stevenson’s dark hero. A decade after he portrayed Davy Crockett on television tale of fraternal loathing and produced what appeared to be a and in film for Walt Disney, 20th Century–Fox Television cast sunny poster for a worse-than-usual community theatre prothe actor as Daniel Boone in an NBC series that ran for 165 epiduction of Brigadoon. Words fail in any attempt to describe sodes from September 1964 to September 1970. If Frawley hoped the godawful sub-kitsch quality of the artwork, which gives to capitalize on the connection, it didn’t work. The Tallarico every indication that what awaits the reader is a happy story cover, introduced in 1969, was never reprinted. Edward Moritz’s about happy people living their happy lives in happy anticiKit Carson cover, issued at the same time, suffered the same fate. pation of a happy ending. The star-crossed brothers of the The worst example was the dreadful portrait of a smiling novel, James and Henry Durie, deserved better. Scotsman of indefinite era, sporting a tam o’ shanter, on the

272

CLASSICS Illustrated

Unidentified artist, In Freedom’s Cause (Winter 1969). Scheduled for release in 1962 but in fact issued after Negro Americans, the relatively rare In Freedom’s Cause is now the most valuable Frawley Era title.

XXV. “FRAWLEY’S FOLLY”

273

Then, too, there was the odd decision to ditch the relatively recent painted cover of Off on a Comet (March 1959). If any single cover in the history of Classics Illustrated had attained iconic status and talismanic significance, it was the dramatic depiction on No. 149 of a foreground figure clutching a fragment of Earth while hurtling into space. The unknown artist’s cover for the Jules Verne story had appeared on every reorder list on nearly every Classics edition issued since September 1959 — including the Fall 1968 reprinting of Off on a Comet that introduced Edward Moritz’s rather tepid painted cover showing two balloonists observing the planet. No editorial decision in the Frawley years more completely symbolized the clueless ineptitude of the people then calling the shots than this feckless abandonment of what almost amounted to a second trademark. As part of the effort to rejuvenate Classics Illustrated, Frawley briefly resumed the production of new titles in 1969. The publisher recruited Norman Nodel to illustrate issue No. 169, Negro Americans: The Early Years (Spring 1969). The book contained brief biographies of Crispus Attucks, Benjamin Banneker, Phillis Wheatley, James Beckwourth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Daniel Hale Williams, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Matthew Henson. Aimed at schools, rather like a latter-day Picture Progress title, it did well enough at a time of increased interest in black history to warrant a reprinting. In the meantime, a bit of unfinished business from 1962 presented itself in the form of the missing No. 168. In Freedom’s Cause, with artwork by George Evans and Reed Crandall, had been advertised as the next issue in Faust, seven years earlier, and had already appeared in the British and European series. The G.A. Henty title was published as the Winter 1969 issue and bore a 1970 copyright date. Thus, it appears that In Freedom’s Cause, No. 168, was published Norman Nodel, Negro Americans — The Early Years (May 1969). Harriet Tubman was one of the pioneering African-Americans honafter Negro Americans, No. 169. It went through a single ored in the last Classics Illustrated title of the first series. printing and is among the rarest of the later titles. (Like other stiff-cover Frawley-era Classics, it suffers from inexact comic-book abridgment of The Three Musketeers with the color registration on the interior pages.) hopeful “No. 1” placed next to the Classic Comics banner. In a Printing and paper costs were rising, the market was letter written that day to Ralph Yarrish, a Gilberton sales and shrinking, and dealers were returning shipments unopened at marketing representative, Kanter ruefully remarked that “It Frawley’s expense. According to O.B. Stiskin, “Patrick Frawley should have been better. It could have been better.”19 16 never understood publishing or the practice of returns.” In All of the Classics Illustrated plates were stored; much of 1970, Kanter suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak or the original artwork was sold. Kanter moved on. In retirement, to move his right side. With his friend Bernie Stiskin’s assishe and his wife Rose traveled extensively, visiting their grandtance, however, he recovered to a remarkable degree. 17 Unchildren, other family members, and business associates with daunted, he returned to his office at 101 Fifth Avenue. whom he shared his passions for reading, humor, baseball, In the meantime, Frawley had reluctantly decided to cut deep-sea fishing, the theatre, and Jewish charities.20 On 17 his losses and shut down the operation that had come to be March 1973, less than two years after the demise of his dream known as “Frawley’s Folly.”18 The end came on 21 April 1971, child, Albert Lewis Kanter died.21 not quite a full thirty years after Albert Kanter published his

XXVI

Classics Abroad: The Worldwide Yellow Banner T

he shoestring operation that began in 1941 as Classic Comics evolved during the next two decades into an international publishing phenomenon under the corporate name

Gilberton World-Wide Publications. By 1962, when the Gilberton Company ended original-title production in the United States, Classics Illustrated was well-established in more than two

Treasure Island, Australian Classics Illustrated horizontal edition No. 31 (January 1950).

274

XXVI. CLASSICS ABROAD

275

dozen other countries, where growth continued for some time to come.1 Foreign publication had begun in the 1940s with a series in Canada. Classic Comics had been available there as early as 1943, when the price notation “15¢ in Canada” was added to the cover of the U.S. edition of Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman beneath the circle bearing the U.S. “10¢” mark. The phrase remained (with “and Foreign” added in 1947) on the cover of every U.S. Classic Comics and Classics Illustrated issue until March 1951, when the U.S. series raised its price to fifteen cents.1 A Canadian-produced series began under the auspices of the Gilberton Company, Ltd., in Toronto with the publication of Robinson Crusoe, No. 10, in April 1946. For the most part, the titles were simply reprints of U.S. editions, though a couple of interesting variants appeared in the Canadian series: Don Quixote and The Hunchback of Notre Dame had never been published in the U.S. under the Classics Illustrated logo with the original Classic Comics line-drawing covers, but both books were released in Canadian editions under the new series name. Toward the end of its run, the Canadian series featured 32 filler articles, written in the New York home office, on Canadian subjects such as the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (later a Special Issue), Ontario’s Fire Rangers, and, of course, hockey, with profiles of players, the history of the sport, and even, in one issue, the 1948–49 National Hockey League schedule.2 After the publication of Mr. Midshipman Easy in February 1951, at the point when the Curtis organization was assuming distribution duties in the U.S., the Canadian series ceased to exist as a separate entity. A Fera Do Mar (Moby Dick), Brazilian Edição Maravilhosa edition No. 4 (October American editions were now available. 1948). While the Canadian series for the most sported redrawn variants of American artwork, a practice later part closely resembled the parent line, the editions produced common in the Mexican Clásicos Ilustrados. Homegrown Ausin Australia, beginning in July 1947 with Gulliver’s Travels, tralian covers continued to appear until June 1953, when the were perhaps the most distinctive anywhere. For two years, line produced its last title, Bring ’Em Back Alive. In the from 1948 to 1950, after having published regular-format issues following month, the British publisher of Classics Illustrated under the Classic Comics name, the Australian series adopted began direct distribution in Australia. the Classics Illustrated logo and featured comic books that were Classics established a presence in South America in July printed in an oblong, horizontal format. The interiors were 1948 when a Brazilian series, Edicão Maravilhosa, was launched black-and-white reductions of U.S. editions, while the covers

Left: The Black Tulip, British Classics Illustrated edition (1961). Right: Sail With the Devil, British Classics Illustrated edition (1962).

XXVI. CLASSICS ABROAD

277

with a Portuguese-language edition of The Three Musketeers. Other familiar Gilberton titles, including Ivanhoe, Moby Dick, and The Prince and the Pauper (featuring the “horror” cover) soon followed. In 1950, the publisher, Editora BrasilAmérica Limitada, under the direction of Adolfo Aizen, expanded its reach to include comic-book adaptations of works of 19th- and 20th-century Brazilian literature by José de Alencar (O Guaraní), Jorge Amado (Mar Morto), Joaquim Manuel de Macedo (A Moreninha), José Lins do Rego (Cangaceiros), Bernardo Guimarães (O Garimpeiro), Dinah Silveira de Queiroz (A Muralha), and other authors. Meanwhile, international Classics Illustrated titles such as Crime and Punishment, A Study in Scarlet, and The Time Machine continued to appear. It was an impressive achievement, surpassing the U.S. parent line in scope and matched only by the Greek series. Established in Athens in March 1951 by the Pechlivanides family (the Greek equivalent of the Kanter and Aizen dynasties), Klassika Eikonographimena began its epic run with a translation of the Classics Illustrated edition of Les Miserables. In time, the publisher issued ninety sequential-art renderings of Greek mythology, drama, and history, in addition to most of the original U.S. and European titles. Among the subjects treated were Perseus and Andromeda, Heracles, Alexander the Great, Iphigenia, Oedipus, Antigone, Medea, Athena, Apollo, Pericles, Lord Byron, the Battle of Marathon, the Battle of Thermopylae, and the Battle of SalDoctor No, Greek Klassika Eikonographemena edition No. 1117. amis. In addition, the Greek publisher introduced the Junior series in 1957; all seventy-seven U.S. be accessible to collectors and affordable. Finally, a third Greek Juniors were published, as well as fifteen of the twenty-six Joint series of reprints appeared in 1989. The emphasis on national European editions and eighty new Greek titles.3 culture and heritage served both the Brazilian and Greek Classics Illustrated offspring well in terms of reader interest and loyalty. According to Classics authority Dan Malan’s best estimate, Meanwhile, a British series was launched in October 1951. the original Klassika Eikonographimena ended around 1970— The U.K. Classics line, which initially had tracked the U.S. dating is notoriously difficult to ascertain in the Greek series— issue-numbering sequence, abruptly changed to its own rather after the publication of 276 titles. A second weekly series, with eccentric system in 1956 when it became a partner in the Joint 270 titles (mostly reprints), ran with a couple of interruptions European Series. For example, former No. 116, The Bottle Imp, from March 1975 to November 1980. These have proved to

278

CLASSICS Illustrated

batable whether it was ever actually printed. (It is possible that copyright barriers arose, as they did in the case of the Kipling titles, none of which appeared in the British line.) More than twenty new painted covers were introduced in the British series between 1958 and 1962 to replace U.S. linedrawing or painted covers. Most striking among these were The Deerslayer, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, and The Black Tulip. In 1962, Albert Kanter’s son William—who had served as Classics Illustrated editor and business manager and was listed with his father and uncle Maurice as one of the owners in annual publisher’s statements — moved to England, where he supervised the publication of thirteen new titles that were never issued in the American series. These included Daniel Defoe’s Sail With the Devil (Captain Singleton) (U.K. No. 143), Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (U.K. No. 147), Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost (U.K. No. 150), R.M. Ballantyne’s The Dog Crusoe (U.K. No. 156), Alexander Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades (U.K. No. 157), Leo Tolstoy’s Master and Man (U.K. No. 159), and Virgil’s Aeneid (U.K. No. 161). (See Appendix J for other titles.) The most interesting — and collectible—British edition was an adaptation of Ian Fleming’s Doctor No (U.K. No. 158A), or, to be more precise, a treatment of the 1962 film version. Illustrated by Gilberton stalwart Norman Nodel, the title was originally intended as a Dell Movie Classic but was published in the U.S. in the DC Showcase series only after all black and oriental characters were recolored white. After appearing in the British Classics Illustrated Le traceur de pistes (The Pathfinder), French Classiques Illustrés edition No. 47. line, the title was picked up in the Greek Klassika Eikonographimena, the only other CI-related series to became No. 45, though No. 46, Kidnapped, remained No. 46. carry it. (German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian Meanwhile, The Octopus (U.S. No. 159), The Food of the Gods editions were published in those countries’ Detekiv series.)4 (U.S. No. 160), and Cleopatra (U.S. No. 161) were catalogued as Nos. 139, 139A, and 139B, respectively. Apparently it was too Gilberton World-Wide Publications also found profitable confusing even for the U.K. publisher, Thorpe & Porter, which footholds in the Netherlands (October 1948), Mexico (Degave The King of the Mountains (U.S. No. 127, U.K. No. 65), cember 1951), Germany (September 1952), Norway (November Wild Animals I Have Known (U.S. No. 152, U.K. No. 93), and 1954), and elsewhere. In 1956, the same year in which Thorpe The Invisible Man (U.S. No. 153, U.K. No. 127) both American & Porter restructured the British Classics Illustrated line, a Joint and British issue numbers in different printings. Lord Jim (U.S. European Series (JES) was inaugurated, with the never-reprinted No. 136) was listed in the U.K. catalogue as No. 51, but it is deAlice in Wonderland as issue No. 1, bearing the painted cover

XXVI. CLASSICS ABROAD that would not appear in the U.S. parent publication until 1960. The JES covered the continent and beyond, reaching millions of readers in twenty-four countries and publishing 230 titles in thirteen languages from 1956 to 1976. Subsidiary series — such as Juniors, Special Issues, and The World Around Us— also appeared. In the course of time, and to greater or lesser degrees, the countries involved included Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Mexico, Belgium, Italy, Ireland (Gaelic), Canada (French), Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Yugoslavia, Spain, Morocco, and South Africa.5 Beginning in 1956, five different countries shared in the business of printing JES Classics Illustrated editions (two of which were Soviet bloc states): Denmark (1956–58); Sweden (1959–65), generally agreed to be of the highest quality and superior to the American product; Poland (1966–1970); Italy (1971–74, but with three editions printed in Sweden during that period); Hungary (1975–76). A repackaged Star-Logo series ran simultaneously from 1970 to 1974, with nine countries participating. Various other European Classics Illustrated series have appeared through subsequent decades down to the present, including a new German Illustrierte Klassiker series, reprinted Norwegian hardcover omnibus volumes, and a li-

279

censed revival of a new British line, published by Jeff and Jon Brooks’s Classic Comic Store Ltd. in cooperation with Jack Lake Productions of Toronto. Gilberton editorial staffer Helene Lecar recalled the tangible presence of the foreign Classics operations at 101 Fifth Avenue during the early 1960s. “The stockroom included a bookcase holding representative samples of all the Gilberton publications that had been translated into the various European languages that the company had franchised. ... I used to borrow the foreign-language Classics from the storeroom over a weekend. ... The interesting thing to me was that the words often ran out of the balloons. It was too costly to redo the printing plates to accommodate the other languages. German and Spanish, on average, took more and/or longer words to convey meaning than our English versions. And then there was a kind of cultural disassociation. A Journey to the Center of the Earth, which we published in English, was, of course, written in French by Jules Verne. The book has a German hero, who leads his Icelandic expedition safely up the quiescent cone of Mt. Etna in Italy. All the polyglot conversations are mutually understood by everyone involved, peasants as well as professors, and in the version I brought home, the entire text was in German.M ind-boggling.”6

XXVII

The Wilderness Years: The Seventies and Eighties COPYCATS

C

AND

PIRATES

lassics copycats had appeared as early as 1942, when Dell published Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer as Famous Stories. Dell tried again in the 1950s, with the Dell Junior Treasury, featuring Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (August 1955), Gulliver’s Travels ( January 1956), The Wizard of Oz ( July 1956), and seven other titles. These issues featured artwork that rivaled or surpassed Classics Illustrated. Other Dell literary adaptations included the irregularly issued Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli: Jungle Book (August 1953, August 1954, April 1955) and single-issue editions of Black Beauty (December 1952) and Bob Son of Battle (November 1956). Then, of course, there was the Classics clone, Fast Fiction/Stories by Famous Authors (1949–1951), which Gilberton ultimately absorbed. In the 1970s, while Frawley was serializing Classics Illustrated titles in Twin Circle, other publishers made efforts to fill the void left by the disappearance of the series. Distributor David Oliphant aimed at the educational market in 1972 with his authorized Now Age Books Illustrated, a set of twelve blackand-white repackaged Classics Illustrated and Classics Illustrated Junior editions. When sales proved disappointing, he discontinued the line and in 1973 began producing Pendulum Classics, which featured all-new black-and-white art. Some of the artwork, as in The Three Musketeers and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, owed obvious debts to Classics Illustrated. By 1978, a total of seventy-two titles were in print, some of which, such as Heidi, The Return of the Native, and The Turn of the Screw, had not appeared in the Gilberton publication. Stan Lee recycled a dozen colorized Pendulum issues in his Marvel Classics Comics (1976–1978) before introducing original art and adaptations “in the Mighty Marvel Manner” as the covers (many by Gil Kane) boasted. The series ran out of steam after thirty-six issues. It appeared that the classics weren’t quite at home in the house that Spider-Man rebuilt. On the cover of The Odyssey, Polyphemus the Cyclops was de-

picted as a one-eyed, one-horned, purple people-eater; on the cover of Frankenstein, the author’s last name was misspelled “Shelly”; and on the cover of The First Men in the Moon, Jules Verne was credited with having written H.G. Wells’s book. True to 1970s Marvel house style, characters were crowded into cramped panels while speech balloons PUNCHED the WORDS that were IMPORTANT. During the same period, from 1977 to 1979, King Features published twenty-four titles in the King Classics series.1 The 32-page books were printed in Spain for American distribution. Some, such as The Last of the Mohicans, Moby Dick, and The Black Arrow, were new versions of titles that had appeared under the Classics Illustrated banner. Three of the adaptations —Baron Munchausen, Five Weeks in a Balloon, and Lawrence of Arabia— were unique to the Spanish series. If critics condemned Classics Illustrated for uniform blandness despite the variety of styles and eccentricities Gilberton fostered over the years, one wonders what they would have made of the competent but uninspired content of King Classics had they taken the trouble to compare. If imitation was the mode in the 1970s, outright illegality characterized the first half of the next decade. An unauthorized agent provided two publishers, Regents (1981) and the Cassette Book Company (1984), with Classics Illustrated art in violation of copyright law. Dumbed-down dialogue replaced the original speech balloons in the Cassette Book Company’s reprints of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Robinson Crusoe, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Two Years Before the Mast, and Treasure Island. Legal action brought an injunction in 1986. Because the Regents product had an educational purpose, Frawley allowed its continued dissemination, subject to royalty payments. The Cassette Book Company, however, was ordered to destroy the six booklets and tapes it had produced.2 All of this activity was an indication that Classics Illustrated had left a noticeable void in the comics market. Readers would have to wait until 1990 for good news. In the

280

XXVII. THE WILDERNESS YEARS

281

Pirated Classics Illustrated editions released by the Cassette Book Company (1984). Ironically, the accompanying cassette tapes bore copyright notices and the phrase “Copying Prohibited By Law.”

meantime, as the baby-boomer fans of the series moved through the 1970s and into the 1980s, making the transition from twenty-somethings to thirty-somethings, nostalgia crept upon them, and the collecting bug bit.

CLASSICS

IN THE

MOVIES

Classics Illustrated issues have show up from time to time in motion pictures as period references, plot-related props, or visual jokes. Perhaps the greatest number of instances occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s; it was as if filmmakers were distinctly referencing them as relics of a bygone era. The first cited visual reference to Classics Illustrated in a movie occurred when director Hal Kanter, as a playful act of homage to his father, included a copy of The Gold Bug in a couple of scenes in Elvis Presley’s Loving You (1957). A news-

paper photographer accompanying a Dallas reporter is shown reading the comic book while waiting on Elvis to appear. He then folds it and stuffs it in his jacket pocket, with the yellow logo plainly visible on the camera side — an early example of product placement. Fast forward to 1985 and Explorers, Joe Dante’s sciencefiction children’s fantasy, in which the aspiring young space voyagers discuss a copy of The War of the Worlds (a late 1950s reprint, as it happens) before setting off to encounter their own aliens. As Tom Hanks packs up his personal effects after quitting his oppressive job in John Patrick Shanley’s Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), he holds up a vintage line-drawing-cover edition of Robinson Crusoe, a book that has some thematic relationship to the movie’s subsequent plot development. A copy of The Man in the Iron Mask can be seen on a table in a scene with the card-playing Demi Moore in Dan Aykroyd’s Nothing but Trouble (1991).

282

CLASSICS Illustrated

Classics Illustrated figured most prominently, though, in David S. Ward’s Major League (1989). Seeking to win the approval of literate Rene Russo, ballplayer Tom Berenger is shown reading — anachronistically, given the time frame, and improbably, considering the relative rarity of the issue — a 1940s Classic Comics edition of Moby Dick. Berenger’s absorption in the comic book is catching, and soon his teammates are gleefully tossing each other copies of the 1951 first printing of Crime and Punishment and the 1968 first U.S. painted-cover edition of The Deerslayer. (Collectors invariably cringe when watching the scene.) Although a copy of the comic book doesn’t appear in

Sleepers, Barry Levinson’s 1996 film based on Lorenzo Carcaterra’s autobiographical novel, a reference to the “Classics Illustrated comic” version of The Count of Monte Cristo leads the protagonist to a deeper acquaintance with Dumas’ tale of revenge. In the novel, the comic book has great significance for the young “Shakes” Carcaterra. In Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005), a clip from a home movie made by the troubled singer-songwriter and artist as a teenager shows his collection of comic books, a source of early inspiration. Prominently displayed, if only fleetingly, is a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front.

XXVIII

Great Expectations: First Publishing’s Graphic Novels A

fter nearly two decades of dormancy and several abortive attempts to resurrect the line or at least exploit the logo, including Sunn Classic made-for-television movies in the 1970s and negotiations between Frawley and Motown, Classics Illustrated returned — with a substantial difference.1 First Publishing, a new Chicago comics company with attitude, had quickly established itself as an industry leader with such youngadult titles as American Flagg! (1983), Grimjack (1984), and Nexus (1985).2 Although the publisher had also issued an adaptation of Beowulf (1984), it was perhaps best known for its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. In 1990, First revived Classics Illustrated, creating a new logo and producing an ambitious, visually stunning collection of titles with completely new adaptations and artwork. Yet despite the participation of some of the most outstanding contemporary comics artists, the new line expired after the appearance of issue No. 27, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair ( June 1991), the victim of an overabundance of corporate optimism and a changed commercial and cultural climate. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Golden Age of comics was a distant memory. So, too, was the era dominated by EC-style realism. Instead, the comics industry of the period was under the spell of the “graphic novel,” which brought a rather self-conscious sophistication to both the visual and textual elements of sequential storytelling. Encouraged by First’s success in marketing “literary” comic books, publisher Rick Obadiah was convinced that the time was right for a return of the Classics, and he approached the Frawley Corporation. With the support of Frawley Vice-President Kathryn Turpin, an exclusive licensing agreement was reached with First Publishing in 1988. Initially, the idea was to reprint the old Classics, and a feint was made in that direction with the photographic reproduction of No. 64, Treasure Island, as a promotional item for the Long John Silver restaurant chain in connection with a TNT television film of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure tale. Partly as a result of disappointing sales of

the reprinted book, First Publishing executives concluded that the better course would be to introduce a new line with fresh covers and contemporary interiors. The decision was also supported by Obadiah’s recognition that “[t]imes have changed, and the reading public has changed.”3 While the original series had been aimed primarily at the adolescent male comic-book fan who already had a frame of reference thanks to a popular culture awash in film adaptations of novels by Sir Walter Scott, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the contemporary comic-book reader was often clueless about either the classics or Classics Illustrated. Hence, the new series targeted a visually oriented youngadult audience that may have been adept at deconstructing the film mythos of David Lynch but was apparently incapable of deciphering Moby Dick. Citing, in a 1990 interview, studies that indicated a 20 to 25 percent illiteracy rate in the United States and a rising average age for bookstore customers, Obadiah saw Classics Illustrated as a means of attracting otherwise reluctant readers. First Publishing consulted with various literacy programs, and the books were intended to some extent for use as reading tools.4 Although the educational mission had not changed substantially since Albert Kanter’s day, the odds against success were greater. The cultural consensus that had given Classics Illustrated a certain authority in the 1940s and 1950s had dissolved, and comic books of whatever stripe were now fighting a rearguard action in the postliterate era. Still, First Publishing was determined to fight the good fight. It was, Obadiah insisted, “a major labor of love.”5 Wade Roberts, the first editor of the resurrected series, hoped to create greater contemporary appeal by avoiding the house-style look that characterized Classics Illustrated in the Iger and Feuerlicht eras. Consequently, First Publishing contracted with artists known for their highly individualized approaches. When the first four titles appeared in February 1990, the distinctiveness of the artwork in each book was unmistakable.

283

284

CLASSICS Illustrated

Indeed, the prominence accorded each artist was among the most striking features of the new series. Apart from the occasional cover signature of a Henry C. Kiefer or the titlepage splash acknowledgment of an Alex A. Blum, most of the artists who worked in the original Classics line contented themselves, as did Norman Nodel, with small signatures or no identifying mark whatsoever. By the 1990s, however, comics artists had become not merely stars in their field but, more significantly, auteurs— they were to the comic books they drew what film directors had become to the movies they made. Thus, John K. Snyder III’s name was printed as large as Robert Louis Stevenson’s on the cover of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, while Bill Sienkiewicz’s name was actually larger than Herman Melville’s on the cover of Moby Dick. One of the most recognizable names and styles inaugurated the new series. Issue No. 1, The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, spotlighted the macabre wit of Gahan Wilson, with such poems as “Annabel Lee” and “The Conquerer Worm” serving as springboards for the artist’s clever variations on ghoulish themes. Wilson later adapted The Devil’s Dictionary and Other Works, No. 18 (February 1991), for the series and found himself very much at home in the realm of Ambrose Bierce’s waspish imagination. An accomplished artist and the compiler and illustrator of A Treasury of Victorian Murder (1987), Rick Geary (born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1946) was a logical candidate for the second title, Great Expectations. His drawings were engaging on their own terms but less successful in capturing the atmosphere of Dickens’s novel than Henry C. Kiefer’s darkly oppressive 1947 illustrations. Rendered in the bubblefaced technique of 1960s underground comics (the artist’s work has appeared in National Lampoon, Heavy Metal, Raw, and MAD), the bright, exaggerated panels with pink-faced, red-cheeked characters often seemed to be working against the darker-hued Victorian text. Still, Geary pulled off a triumph in his pinched Miss Havisham, who presides over her decaying domain in all her spidery creepiness. The same tensions between thematic darkness and artistic brightness are evident, though to a lesser degree, in the artist’s treatment of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, No. 13 (October 1990). His Heathcliff and Cathy, however, are potent figures and a decided improvement on Kiefer’s 1949 Olivier-Oberon stand-ins. In Geary’s most successful work for First, The Invisible Rick Geary, Great Expectations (February 1990). A distinctive interpretation of the Dickens masterpiece by a Victorian specialist.

Man, No. 20 (March 1991), the artist’s distinctive style proved an ideal match for the fantastic elements of H.G. Wells’s science-fiction period piece. It was an imaginative triumph. Kyle Baker (b. 1965), a product of New York’s School of Visual Arts, produced a superb postmodern rendering of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in issue No. 3. The illustrations showed the influence of Milton Glaser, for whom Baker once worked, in their clean graphic style and striking allocation of color and space. Chapter 4, “Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” offers a wide-panel introduction to the pair, followed by two almost full-page illustrations of “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” and succeeded by smaller, packed panels that reflect Alice’s subjective experience of the twins’ increasingly nightmarish nonsense. A later issue illustrated by Baker,

XXVIII. GREAT EXPECTATIONS

285

enthralled and may have served to alienate a segment of the audience that might have been drawn to the revived line simply on the strength of the White Whale’s enduring appeal. Even so, it was one of the best-selling titles in the First series. If Moby Dick perplexed some hesitating purchasers, John K. Snyder III’s outstanding illustrations for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, No. 8 (April 1990), enraged others — at least, those who were still expecting the new Classics to resemble in some fashion the old. A brilliant hallucinatory treatment of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “fine bogey tale” of human duality, the artist’s work owed an obvious debt to the German Expressionist film masterpiece, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with its menacing buildings and distorted faces. Snyder (b. 1961), whose comics credits included Grendel, Grimjack, and Nexus, produced an even stronger adaptation

Kyle Baker, Through the Looking Glass (February 1990). The artist effectively reimagined the strangeness of Lewis Carroll’s vision in a postmodern style.

Cyrano de Bergerac, No. 21 (March 1991), captured the verve of Edmond Rostand’s sword-and-pen-wielding hero and wouldbe lover. Among the first four titles, the one that attracted the most attention was issue No. 4, the dark, brooding pictorial commentary on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick by Bill Sienkiewicz (b. 1958). A powerful, stylized evocation of the novel rather than a traditional sequential narrative in the manner of Louis Zansky’s and Norman Nodel’s versions, the book was the clearest declaration that the new Classics Illustrated would be nothing like the old. Sienkiewicz’s Moby Dick, with its challenging blend of paintings and text, was one of the greatest artistic triumphs of the brief First Publishing era and an extraordinary achievement in its own right. Yet despite its disturbing beauty and interpretive genius, the demanding book baffled almost as many readers as it

Bill Sienkiewicz, Moby Dick (February 1990). Sienkiewicz’s interpretation of Melville’s epic was visually the most ambitious of all Classics Illustrated editions.

286

CLASSICS Illustrated

Left: John K. Snyder, III, The Secret Agent (February 1991). The angular anxiety of Snyder’s illustrations created a perfect match of style and subject. Right: Dean Motter, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (May 1991). Painted cover. The artist’s treatment of Coleridge’s “lyrical ballad” amounted to a visual tone poem. Note the spectral background figure.

of The Secret Agent, No. 19 (February 1991), Joseph Conrad’s prescient 1907 novel about modern terrorism. Employing the same expressionistic visual vocabulary that he had used in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the artist effectively conveyed the moral limbo inhabited by Verloc and his fellow revolutionary conspirators through claustrophobic frames and recurring motifs such as eyes, skulls, and knives. Nowhere in the series were panels more inventively stretched, compressed, and exploded. One of the finest Classics in the new series was the sole Shakespeare —Hamlet, No. 5 (March 1990). The adaptation by Steven Grant (b. 1953) improved upon Sam Willinsky’s 1952 script, dispensing with connecting expository rectangles and employing more of the play’s dialogue. Tom Mandrake (b. 1956), whose credits included Batman, Captain Marvel, and Swamp Thing, as well as First Publishing’s Grimjack, con-

jured a splendidly menacing atmosphere with his crowded panels and alternating closeups. Hamlet and his father’s ghost are rendered mostly in shades of gray, accented occasionally with purple or red; Ophelia is shown in white; Gertrude, Claudius, and the court at Elsinore provide contrasting patches of color. Dean Motter’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, No. 24 (May 1991), was an impressively evocative treatment of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s parable of sin and redemption. The entire poem was reproduced, and the artist’s paintings of ghostly figures and the haunted ship could be “read” as well, offering an imaginative visual experience that enhanced the reader’s encounter with the familiar Romantic text. Motter (b. 1953) was the creator and writer of the series Mister X and a collaborator on the graphic novel The Sacred and the Profane, and he brought a philosophical depth to his illustrations for the

XXVIII. GREAT EXPECTATIONS

287

Ancient Mariner that transcended the comics category. The final title in First Publishing’s Classics catalogue, The Jungle, No. 27 ( June 1991), adapted from Upton Sinclair’s novel of social protest and illustrated by Peter Kuper (b. 1958), rivaled or surpassed the books by Sienkiewicz, Snyder, and Motter in terms of originality and the appropriateness of the graphic design. The artist, who had served as cofounder, coeditor, and publisher of the political comic World War 3 Illustrated, adopted a stylized, geometrical approach somewhat reminiscent of early 20thcentury Russian Constructivism. Kuper’s Jungle represents a sophisticated union of art and text, hammering home the author’s polemical intent, and serves as a fitting capstone for First’s striving for excellence in the revived series. Indeed, it stands independently as an authentic work of art. While the more experimental books generally proved the most successful artistically among First Publishing’s Classics, some of the more straightforward issues were also impressive. Perhaps the single most charming issue in the history of Classics Illustrated—old or new— was Mike Ploog’s adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, No. 9 (May 1990). The joyously playful illustrations show the influence of Will Eisner, with whom the artist had worked as an assistant before venturing into the comics and film industries. Ploog (b. 1940) displays a mischievous affinity for Mark Twain’s boyhood idyll, from the whitewashing episode to Tom and Huck’s discovery of treasure in McDougal’s cave. The artist’s use of caricature serves to universalize the experience of the comic book; Tom becomes Everyboy, inviting reader identification.6 An almost cinematic immediacy is present, testimony to the sharpening of Ploog’s narrative skills as a storyboard artist, designer, Peter Kuper, The Jungle (June 1991). The last title published in the second series, writer, and editor for such films as The Un- and the best. bearable Lightness of Being, Little Shop of Hormature for inclusion in the original Classics Illustrated series, The rors, and Melvin and Howard. Scarlet Letter had become a staple of high school reading lists For P. Craig Russell’s adaptation of Nathaniel Hawby 1990. The only shortcoming in Thompson’s treatment of thorne’s The Scarlet Letter, No. 6 (March 1990), Jill Thompson the familiar story is that in some respects it suggests a latter(b. 1966) produced a beautifully textured work that made symday teenage romance movie, with Arthur Dimmesdale in parbolic use of light and shading. The artist’s subtle watercolors ticular looking a bit too “buff ” for the austere 17th-century capture something of the characters’ spiritual isolation and anPuritan New England setting. guish against a lush colonial forest backdrop. Considered too

288

CLASSICS Illustrated

Eric Vincent, The Island of Dr. Moreau (August 1990). Vincent’s neo-realist style looked back to the horror comics of the past.

A newcomer to comics, children’s book illustrator Jeffrey Busch (b. 1962) produced two quite different yet equally delectable titles for First Publishing’s Classics. His adaptation of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, No. 11 ( July 1990), combined detailed character linework and simple backgrounds in a whimsical manner. His lush, green-dominated Jungle Books, No. 22 (April 1991), evoked the sense of mystery at the heart of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli tales. Another new Classics artist with a background in children’s book illustration, Eric Vincent (b. 1953), was a 1984 Children’s Choice Award winner for Clovis Crawfish and the Orphan Zo-Zo. In 1989, he inked Steven Grant’s science-fiction tale, Twilight Man, a four-part First Publishing graphic novel. For the new Classics Illustrated series, Vincent delivered a chilling rendering of Grant’s adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, No. 12 (August 1990). The feverish drawings were marred only slightly by a rather excessive reliance on conventional comic-book sound effects (“Wap!” “Rrraaaaaaarggh!” “Blam!”), which were rarely used in either the original Gilberton series or the First Publishing line. The artist also adapted and illustrated 25 Aesop’s Fables, No. 26 (June 1991), employing a range of period settings for his witty retellings. With his attention to the most minute details of hair, clothing, and furnishings, Garry Gianni (b. 1954) evoked the “Gibson Girl” magazine style in his period drawings for O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi and Other Stories, No. 15 (November 1990). The artist’s work in the title story is tightly focused on the two principals, as attested

XXVIII. GREAT EXPECTATIONS

289

ter’s gamble on the appeal of Dumas, Scott, and Cooper. Furby the substantial proportion of single “head shots.” In “A Rether, eight of the First Publishing titles had never appeared in trieved Reformation,” on the other hand, Gianni offers an early the Gilberton series, while a ninth, The Rime of the Ancient 20th-century urban panorama with a splendidly realized cast Mariner, had been printed in the 1960s as a part of the Joint of characters. His affectionate restatement of the Gibson European Series. manner encompassed both the broad humor of “The Pimienta Projected issues included Kidnapped, Around the World Pancakes” and the treacly sentiment of “The Last Leaf,” and in Eighty Days, The Last of the Mohicans, 20,000 Leagues Under he delivered it all without affecting a knowing, ironic distance. For Ivanhoe, No. 25 (May 1991), Ray Lago (b. 1958) used watercolors to add richness and depth to Sir Walter Scott’s medieval pageant. Each panel is exquisitely composed, with colors and detailed or minimal backgrounds perfectly underscoring the accompanying text. The artist’s characters are remarkably contemporary in appearance (though certainly no more so than the Troy Donahue-like Ivanhoe on the 1957 Gilberton painted cover), while the costuming, in keeping with the historical Romanticism of the novel, is solidly in the Romantic vein. Lago’s neotraditionalist edition, along with Ploog’s Tom Sawyer, became a favorite with older collectors.7 Other titles in the First Publishing series included Dan Spiegle’s The Count of Monte Cristo, No. 7 (April 1990), which, as drawn by the veteran Dell artist, harkened back to an older comics style; Ricardo Villagran’s The Call of the Wild, No. 10 ( June 1990), a visually compelling production; Jay Geldhof ’s The Fall of the House of Usher, No. 14 (September 1990), with its gripping renderings of inner torment; Joe Staton’s A Christmas Carol, No. 16 (December 1990), a warmly nostalgic account of the Dickens perennial; and Pat Boyette’s Treasure Island, No. 17 (January 1991), and Robinson Crusoe, No. 23 (April 1991), both packed with a rough vigor, though the Stevenson pirate saga featured a rather stocky Jim Hawkins and exhibited a certain indifference to period details such as the appearance of Captain Smollett, who looked more like a relative of the hirsute Robert Shaw in Jaws than a proper 18th-century naval officer. Lapses notwithstanding, the artwork in each issue was never less than well matched to the demands of the specific narrative. First Publishing achieved one of its goals in bringing classic literature in comics form Ray Lago, Ivanhoe (May 1991). Traditionalism also had its place in the Berkley/First into the 1990s, 50 years after Albert L. Kan- line.

290

CLASSICS Illustrated

the Sea, The Red Badge of Courage, Candide, Dracula, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and, most ambitiously, John Milton’s Paradise Lost. But publication of the new Classics ended abruptly after the 27th issue appeared in June 1991. A year later, Dark Horse Comics picked up the unpublished 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (art by Gary Gianni) and The Last of the Mohicans (art by Jack Jackson), issuing the books in a blackand-whitef ormat. Gianni, who retained control over his artwork, oversaw the publication of a large-format edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 2009. The muted coloring by Jim and Ruth Keegan emphasized the artist’s linework, which was shown to great advantage on the oversized pages. Gianni’s renderings of the underwater funeral and the claiming of the South Pole by Nemo are superlative compositions that are of among the finest illustrations of a work by Verne, whatever the medium. In the early 1990s, Classics Illustrated found itself once again prey to forces over which it had no control. The entire comics industry was enduring a sluggish period, and the downturn was reflected in the collectors’ market, always a driving factor. Comics aficionados were simply not responding to the new series. It was reported that First Publishing had printed more than 200,000 copies of each book but had sold only about 50,000 per title.8

It was apparent that the new Classics had failed to build a cohesive audience. Market analysts have argued that First’s updated art was in some instances too radical a break with the Gilberton-Frawley Classics tradition. Others contended that the time had simply passed for a newly scripted reenactment of Albert Kanter’s dream. No matter how many pictures accompany the text, the irreducible fact of a literary adaptation is the printed word. Perhaps First’s admirably stubborn insistence on the primacy of the author’s individual, idiosyncratic language (the new Classics were more faithful to the originals than many of the old) proved too great a cultural barrier for many readers bred on images. A third point of view, and one to which an increasing number of comics historians and industry watchers seem to subscribe, is that, far from being too wedded to a concept from another era, the First Classics arrived a decade-and-a-half too soon, before the widespread interest in graphic fiction had taken root.9 Meanwhile, internal turmoil at First Publishing was followed by restructuring under the new corporate name, Classics International Entertainment, Inc. (CIE), spurred by the energetic direction of Richard S. Berger. Although attempts to create a comic book store chain and a Classics book club collapsed, Berger remained determined,10 and by the mid-1990s, that determination paid off.

XXIX

“Your Doorway to the Classics”: Acclaim’s Study Guides F

ive years after the new Classics Illustrated series was terminated, the original series was, to borrow a phrase from Dickens, recalled to life. In May 1996, Acclaim Comics, a New York–based publisher, entered into a licensing agreement with First Classics, Inc., a CIE subsidiary, to republish the Classics properties. The new line would be marketed as Classics Illustrated Study Guides, and the educational thrust would be underscored by the motto “Your Doorway to the Classics.” Each issue would feature a backof-the-book essay by an authority on the author in question or the work adapted. Although Acclaim was authorized to reissue any title from either of the American series, editor Madeleine Robins discovered that the GilbertonFrawley editions proved more suitable for reproduction and recoloring in the digest-size format adopted by the publisher than the complex page designs of the First Publishing Classics.1 When given a choice between the original artwork or the Feuerlicht-era revisions, Robins tended to prefer the older drawings, such as those by Arnold Hicks for Oliver Twist, Rolland Livingstone for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Henry C. Kiefer for Julius Caesar, for their strong “period” appeal.2 Unfortunately, even with the exclusive use of the older comics, the linework in the Acclaim books frequently suffered. Subtleties of expression in the work of George Evans, Joe Orlando, and Norman Nodel were lost in the heavily inked reproductions. The computer recoloring was also erratic. VanHook

Studios supplied the most natural enhancements for the series in such titles as Les Miserables and Treasure Island. But Twilight

Acclaim Classics Illustrated publicity booklet (1997). The Acclaim titles were marketed as Study Guides and contained outstanding critical essays by reputable scholars.

291

292

CLASSICS Illustrated

Four Study Guides were published each month through May 1997; the schedule increased to six monthly issues from June through September 1997. During the first few months, Robins included in each set of four one work apiece by Shakespeare, Dickens, and Twain. In July, four of the six releases were Jules Verne adaptations, the editor’s nod to summer reading habits. Distribution became increasingly problematical as the year progressed, and Acclaim returned to the four-title cycle from October 1997 through February 1998. Another thematic grouping was packaged for Halloween—Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — and A Christmas Carol was issued in December. Plans for issuing collected editions of Dickens, Shakespeare, Wells, and horror tales (similar to Gilberton’s 1949 “Giants”) were scrapped as the series foundered. One of the benefits of editing the series, in Robins’s view, was “the opportunity to reacquaint myself with classics that I hadn’t read in years or that I hadn’t read at all. I doubt that I would have read a boy’s book like Captains Courageous otherwise.” Some of the works, she discovered, actually improved in the condensed comic-book versions. Recalling the “punitive experience” of reading George Eliot’s Silas Marner, she concluded that the Classics Illustrated treatment, with its rapidly paced, plot-driven narrative, “made a better book.”4 On the other hand, architectonically complex texts, such as Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, suffered from the reductionism inherent in the comics medium. In such books, Robins said, the critical supplements served to amplify the adaptations: “We try to put back in what was left out.”5 For example, in his essay on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Andrew Jay Hoffman noted that the Classics version includes Alexander Maleev, The Count of Monte Cristo (February 1998). Maleev only one “narrowly represented” plot line, the pawnbrowas one of several talented young artists recruited to provide covers for ker’s murder, and misrepresents the character of Raskolthe Acclaim series. nikov; he probed motivations and consequences, sumGraphics produced dimly lit editions of The Call of the Wild marized the omitted portions of the novel, and explored such and The Last of the Mohicans with day-for-night panels that concerns as reality and duality. Beth Nachison of Southern obscured facial features and dark-tan narrative boxes that were Connecticut State University offered a penetrating examination all but unreadable. of Stevenson’s Master of Ballantrae, emphasizing the neglected The first four issues —Tom Sawyer, Romeo and Juliet, A masterpiece’s thematic relationship to the author’s betterTale of Two Cities, and Jane Eyre— appeared in February 1997. known Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and provided historical context The editor restored Aldo Rubano’s 1948 artwork in the Twain in a discussion of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Vernian scholar title, which featured analysis by Clemens biographer Andrew Howard Hendrix of National University provided an illumiJay Hoffman. Robins, a Charlotte Brontë enthusiast and spenating discussion of A Journey to the Center of the Earth as a cialist for whom Jane Eyre was a “totemic” work, went back to “scientific romance,” linking the novel to the myth of the Harley Griffiths’s 1947 edition but rewrote a scene in Harry Fisher King. Miller’s adaptation between the heroine and Rochester that, Several outstanding contemporary artists provided she said, “reeked of 1940s’ women’s movies.”3 painted covers for the Acclaim series. Massachusetts-born and

XXIX. “YOUR DOORWAY TO THE CLASSICS”

293

Pratt Institute–trained fantasy artist Rebecca Guay brought an Arthur Rackham–style sensibility to her passionately romantic paintings, tinged with a hint of darker things awaiting her subjects, for Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights. Richard Case (b. 1964), a prolific comics artist, contributed memorably mysterious covers for such titles as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, and Cyrano de Bergerac. Before launching into his better-known work for the Daredevil and Spider-Woman series, Bulgarian-born Alexander Maleev (b. 1971) produced powerful images for the covers of The Jungle Book, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Count of Monte Cristo. In terms of publication history, perhaps the most promising development with Acclaim was editor Robins’s decision to commission scripts and art for previously unpublished Classics Illustrated titles. The “Original Editions” began appearing in February 1998 and included William Shakespeare’s Henry IV — Part One, No. SG 59 (February 1998) (art by Patrick Broderick), Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, No. SG61 (March 1998) (art by Jamal Igle, Ravil Lopez, and Mike DeCarlo), and Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, No. SG62 (April 1998) (art by Patrick Broderick and Ralph Reese). Unlike the bold First Publishing editions, however, the Acclaim new-title Classics featured artwork that was not only conventional but also, with the exception of a robust rendering of The Scarlet Pimpernel, downright dull. Henry IV — Part One was filled with too many closeup panels of talking heads. The artists who worked on the Frederick Douglass autobiography produced illustrations that were more inventively composed but that matched Stanley Maxwell Zuckerberg’s drawings in the 1942 Tale Linda Fennimore, The Scarlet Pimpernel (April 1998). “They seek of Two Cities for historical cluelessness — the Narrative’s him here, they seek him there.” But, like the Pimpernel, the later Acclaim editions proved to be “demmed elusive” if not impossible to setting is the first half of the 19th century, yet most of the find. The Orczy title is the most in demand. characters are garbed in late Victorian or even early 20theffectively killed comic-book dealers’ and collectors’ interest century attire, while an 1830s slave master is given an 18thin the series.6 Meanwhile, bookstore chains seemed uncertain centuryq ueue. how to categorize the odd little volumes. Still, Robins and her team were making an effort to turn It was the old Classics marketing conundrum: were they the series into something more than a line of reprints. A new comics? magazines? books? What, after all, were they? The century was approaching, and Albert Kanter’s dream continued graying early readers had never troubled themselves with such to resonate. As if to bring matters full circle, Robins commisfine distinctions. They had always known the answer —“good sioned Norman Nodel to illustrate Shakespeare’s Much Ado stories.” About Nothing. It seemed almost too good to be true. As it In their efforts to bring those good stories to a new readhappened, it was. ership, neither First Publishing nor Acclaim had considered Once again, a publisher had misjudged the market, and the approach that Classics fans had long urged. The answer Acclaim suspended publication in April 1998 after issuing 62 seemed simple, direct, and obvious. It remained for a Canadian titles. Unreleased were “Original Editions” of Beowulf, Shakepublisher with Kanteresque dreams to show the way as a new speare’s Henry IV — Part 2, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejcentury dawned. udice. The digest size and the emphasis on “Study Guides” had

XXX

Restoration: Jack Lake Productions and Papercutz JACK LAKE PRODUCTIONS CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED

I

f there is a consistent theme in Classics Illustrated history, it’s the persistence of the view among those who have edited and published the various incarnations of the series that they are engaged in something of greater moment than merely making a consumable product. That has certainly been the case with Jaak Jarve, president of Jack Lake Productions, Inc., of Toronto, Ontario. In early 2003, under license, the Canadian entrepreneur relaunched Classics Illustrated Junior, making the series available in the North American market for the first time since 1971. The following year, Jarve would reintroduce the Classics Illustrated Special Issues; in 2005, he would republish the first of many parent-line Classics Illustrated titles. Where the Berkley/First Publishing venture emphasized new adaptations and art in a graphic-novel format and where the Acclaim Study Guides offered vintage art in substantially reduced dimensions, Jack Lake Productions brought back digitalized renderings of the original painted-cover and interior artwork that approximated the Gilberton-Frawley editions in everything except for the inside front and back covers, which contained critical introductions or author biographies. This approach was in part a response to requests from Classics aficionados who missed the familiar comfort of the traditional lines but who also wanted the reprints placed in a literary and historical context. Jarve was introduced to Classics Illustrated around 1960 as a child of five in his native Toronto, where a nearby candy store’s newsstand racks “held many of the comics of the day.”1 At the age of six, his family moved to a dairy farm in Tottenham, Ontario. Between the ages of eight and fifteen, Jarve “traveled by Greyhound bus to Toronto on Saturdays to participate in piano lessons, Scout meetings, and midday matinees. On every trip back home, I would raid the bus terminal’s comic rack.”2 Among the copies of Richie Rich, Casper

the Friendly Ghost, Turok, and other comic books that boarded the bus with him were Classics Illustrated issues. Among his favorites were Western-themed titles such as Buffalo Bill and The Adventures of Kit Carson,3 which he would later reissue. “As a child,” Jarve recalled, “I remember the sanctuary of my bedroom on early Sunday mornings after breakfast, when I could escape into my world of adventure, intrigue, and fighting pirates, Indians, and bad guys. As the sun shone through the windows, you could hear the birds chirping outside, the din of family movements throughout the house, and you felt safe.”4 Those childhood memories played a significant part in Jarve’s commitment to relaunch Classics Illustrated. Following his graduation with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto, he spent a number of years in managerial positions with such companies as Granada Canada, Regal Greetings and Gifts, and, most auspiciously for later developments, the Okee Dokee Sticker Company, a children’s retail sticker business. In April 2002, Jarve’s father died. Struggling with his grief, he recalled his childhood relationship: “As I reflected on all the memories of my father, the happy times that kept jumping out at me were the talks I had with him and the sense of sanctuary when I was a child reading comics in my upstairs bedroom. At that time I had young children of my own, and I wondered what had become of the Classics Illustrated series. I was working at the Okee Dokee Sticker Company at the time as their product manager, so I had to keep abreast of all the children’s education products on the market and was disappointed with the quality and substance at the time. I immediately started looking for the copyrights on the CI line. After six months of hunting, I discovered First Classics Inc. and its president Dick Berger, who owned the CI copyright. We met in Chicago in late November 2002 and signed a publishing agreement.”5 In what might have been considered by some observers a counterintuitive move, Jarve began his ambitious project with a focus on the Classics Illustrated Junior line, a popular series

294

XXX. RESTORATION

295

ing by Canadian artist Christina Choma. Four years later, Irish in its day but one with comparatively modest collector appeal. artist Colin Mayne supplied a new cover for The Princess Who Still, the new publisher had younger children of his own in Saw Everything, while Canadian artist Wayne Downey prothe Junior demographic, and each issue was only thirty-two duced for the same issue the first all-new Junior interior art. pages in length, instead of the standard forty-eight in the Further overhauls were planned in the case of some titles, such mainline publication. This factor was significant because, as as Brightboots and The Runaway Dumpling, containing earlyJarve explained, at the time there was “no original artwork 1960sm inimalist-stylea rtwork. available to work from. I had to hire freelance artists to retrace Following the success of the first dozen titles, Jarve exand digitally restore the comics panel by panel.”6 With sixteen panded the scope of the reissues in 2004 with hardcover edifewer pages per issue, the Juniors provided a less expensive way tions of two Classics Illustrated Special Issues: The Story of Jesus to test the market for the Classics Illustrated relaunch. The first title to be reissued, in March 2003, was Classics Illustrated Junior No. 570, The Pearl Princess, based on “The Goose Girl at the Spring,” a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. Although a reviewer questioned the choice to set the revival in motion with a comic book that featured rather undistinguished artwork, Jarve was quite clear about his decision: “The Pearl Princess was my initial title I worked on, because as a child it was my favorite. The publisher urged all adults to reread the fairy tales they grew up with; there are very deep messages in them that will further enlighten your soul. In The Pearl Princess, the main theme is about forgiveness and understanding.”7 Indeed, the wisdom of folk tales and fairy tales was at the heart of the Jarve’s mission, as stated on his website: “To publish and distribute wholesome, nurturing literature to young readers.”8 He also sought to honor and preserve the Classics Illustrated family of publications as “a piece of American history for future generations to enjoy.”9 This commitment also led to the publisher’s inclusion of such items of Americana as Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed in early packages of reissued titles. Beginning with artists he had known in his capacity as product manager at the Okee Dokee Sticker Company (and later expanding to freelancers he had met at trade fairs and other venues), Jarve digitally tweaked the Juniors, brightening the colors and sharpening the images. For the first year’s releases, a biography of Classics Illustrated founder Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr., appeared on the inside front covers. These were replaced in subsequent issues with full-page profiles of such authors as the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, and L. Frank Baum. In 2005, Jarve commissioned the first cover variant in Junior history: a restoration of the orig- Christina Choma (after a line drawing by Jack Kirby), How Fire Came to the inal cover-design concept by Jack Kirby for No. Indians (2005). The first variant cover in the history of Classics Illustrated 571, How Fire Came to the Indians, in a new paint- Junior.

296

CLASSICS Illustrated

Distribution problems, however, plagued the operation, with the crucial United States firm Diamond dropping Classics Illustrated along with other reprint series in 2006. Yet other channels opened, and in 2007 Jack Lake resumed publication with two more reissued Special Issues: The Story of America and The War Between the States. At the end of the year, four mainline Classics Illustrated titles were released, with introductions by Jones that gave critical backgrounds for the individual works and traced the histories of the particular comic-book editions in GilbertonFrawley publishing history. Three of the titles — The Three Musketeers, The Last of the Mohicans, and Moby Dick— were among the first five numbers in the CI catalogue. The fourth release, The Aeneid, had never appeared under the Gilberton banner, though it had been published in the British and European Classics lines. Classics Illustrated historian John Haufe had lobbied for its inclusion in the relaunched Jack Lake series; he sent Jarve a copy of the rare British edition, which was scanned and became the basis of the new issue No. 170, the first new title on the parent reorder list since 1969. Junior titles continued to be digitalized, but most Classics Illustrated issues through 2008 were simply scanned. The quality of reproduction depended on the condition of the comic-book source, and, as a result, some artwork received less than its due. Jarve, who had never been especially keen on scanning from either an aesthetic or practical viewpoint, shifted direction with the reissue of Classics Illustrated Special Issue No. 141A, The Rough Rider, in 2008. The awardwinning biography of Theodore Roosevelt was the first Jack Lake edition to incorporate original Gilberton proof pages, obtained from Canadian Unidentified artist, Daniel Boone (October 2010). The cover, taken directly Classics dealer Calvin Slobodian. This circumfrom the 1952 painting, is representative of Jack Lake’s efforts to restore the stance allowed the publisher to introduce newly original Gilberton art whenever possible. colored pages, which gave The Rough Rider as clean and crisp a look as the Jack Lake Juniors. and The Ten Commandments. The next year witnessed a flirJarve’s Classics releases for 2009 and 2010 were strikingly tation with perfect-binding, an innovation that was abandoned handsome. In some instances — including All Quiet on the in 2007 (though adopted by the British licensee). But 2005 Western Front, Daniel Boone, Mutiny on the Bounty, Julius Caewas significant for Jack Lake Productions in another respect. sar, and Les Miserables— original cover paintings had been In the early fall, partly as a response to the release of Stephen made available by a network of international collectors. Other Spielberg’s film loosely based on the H.G. Wells novel, Jarve painted covers, such as Robin Hood and The Song of Hiawatha, published a digitalized, redrawn “50th Anniversary Edition” were brightened and enhanced by Christina Choma. Rarities of Lou Cameron’s iconic 1955 Classics Illustrated version of The (Great Expectations) and even Famous Authors titles (Nicholas War of the Worlds, in both softcover and hardcover formats. Nickleby) surfaced in the catalogue. Critical response was faPress and reader response was encouraging.

XXX. RESTORATION

297

vorable. Comics writer and scholar Paul Buhle praised Jack Lake’s “old-style” effort, in which the original editions were reprinted “just as before, as far as possible.”10 By 2010, Jarve had settled on an annual latesummer and fall publication cycle that would feature sixteen Classics, twelve Juniors, and the occasional Special Issue. The publisher turned his attention in 2011 to the World Around Us series (Pirates, Crusades, Vikings). In addition, he was working closely with Jeff and Jon Brooks, whose revived British line included study questions and enjoyed success in the educational market abroad. Renewed interest in licensing the Classics Illustrated line appeared in Brazil, Croatia, France, Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway, and South Africa.

PAPERCUTZ CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED Another fan of the original series, Jim Salicrup, “first encountered Classics Illustrated in a Parkchester soda shop in the Bronx when I was a kid.... I was totally fascinated by them!”11 As editor-in-chief of Papercutz, a New York–based publisher of modernized graphic-novel editions of Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and Tales from the Crypt, he already specialized in reviving classic franchises. What, then, could be more classic than Classics Illustrated? Papercutz had established a presence in school and public libraries, which had begun attempts to appeal to younger readers with the inclusion of graphic novels in their collections. The addition of Classics Illustrated to the publisher’s lineup seemed a natural step. Mazan, Tales from the Brothers Grimm (April 2008). French artists and So Salicrup and his partner, Papercutz publisher German tales brought critical acclaim. Terry Nantier, approached Jaak Jarve of Jack Lake in Newsweek, Malcolm Jones hailed it as “a visual masterpiece” Productions, which controlled licensing, with a proposal to in which “[e]very elegant page is composed with a dual revive the Berkley/First Publishing line and to launch a Deluxe purpose: to enchant the eye and to further the various series featuring new art in longer adaptations. Salicrup had a narratives that make up the loose plot.”12 The Wind in the Wilconnection with Rick Geary, who had adapted Great Expectalows was followed by a Deluxe edition of Tales from the Brothers tions and The Invisible Man in 1990 for Berkley/First; those Grimm, another French edition. Subsequent hardcover titles titles would become the first reprints in the regular Papercutz featuring illustrations by French artists included Frankenstein, CI series. Jarve, who controlled worldwide licensing for Classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Treasure Island. Illustrated, granted permission for the new series to proceed. Simultaneously, Papercutz released a handsome The first title, French artist Michel Plessix’s adaptation restoration of the Berkley/First Great Expectations as the initial of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, appeared offering in its regular Classics Illustrated line. Where the 1990– under the Classics Illustrated Deluxe banner in January 2008. 91 series encountered resistance in some quarters, the Papercutz (The “Deluxe” was a nod to the British hardcover series of the Classics enjoyed an enthusiastic reception from readers, comics 1950s.) Plessix’s wistful, whimsical artwork, which had origifans, and librarians. Rave reviews for the first Shakespeare ofnally appeared in France in 1996, attracted positive attention fering, Hamlet, appeared in the School Library Journal and the in its hardcover Papercutz English-language format. Writing

298

CLASSICS Illustrated

popular when they first came out, but they truly were ahead of their time. Today libraries and schools are much more open to the idea of graphic novels. ... [I received] a picture of Classics Illustrated Deluxe #3, Frankenstein, on a shelf of recommended books at the Queens Public Library in Astoria, [New York] That probably would never have happened twenty years ago. It’s great to see comics getting the respect they deserve, and we are grateful for the support we’ve received from librarians and educators.”14 For Salicrup and Petránek, the Papercutz Classics Illustrated project was, from the beginning, “truly a labor of love.”15 The use of artists with a variety of distinctive styles ensured a wide range of responses to familiar material. “It’s always a lot of fun to see how a great mind interprets a story you know very well, and to present these comics to a new audience,” Petránek said. “A graphic novel is only as good as the script it comes from, and the source material for these comics are some of the greatest literary works in the world. I think that’s a big reason why so many people are interested in Classics Illustrated; the stories are perennial.”16 Indeed, the return of the trademark is part of a larger popular-culture development in the first decade of the 21st century. From Graphic Classics to Marvel Illustrated, significant artists such as Michael Slack and scriptwriters such as Roy Thomas have turned their attention to adaptations of literary masterpieces. Meanwhile, educators have finally embraced the art form as a means of reaching reluctant readers or reinforcing advanced students. Seventy years after Classic Comics first appeared, Albert Kanter’s mission, Tom Mandrake, Hamlet (May 2009). New life for a series that was 20 years too often derided by those whose mindsets were ahead of its time. too rigid to accept a different approach to achieve a common goal, had been adopted by artists, Library Media Connection, which noted that it was “illustrated writers, and editors who remembered the yellow banner with in a way to draw the student into the darkness of the play.”13 affection or who, in some cases, may never have been aware of As Papercutz associate editor Michael Petránek observed, the man in whose shadow they stood. “It’s a shame that the Berkley/First editions were not more

XXXI

Classics Collected: Notes on the Evolution of a Pastime and a Passion F

rom almost the beginning, a substantial number of kids who read Classic Comics began collecting them. “Golden Age” publishers of all sorts quickly learned that, by the simple act of placing a number on the cover of a comic book, loyal readers would keep track and come back for more. Gilberton refined the practice in 1943 by adding a list of available titles, which could be ordered by sending in a “coupon or facsimile.” Classics Illustrated historian John Haufe has observed that young readers in the 1940s tended to be “anonymous [Classic Comics] consumers,” as opposed to collectors.1 This does not mean that there were no true fans during that time, but the systemized and obsessive gathering of “All Things CI” by individuals devoted to the series had not truly begun.

FANS’ NOTES : THE 1940S

AND

first time, as Zansky drew them.... (I see Zansky as a fast, risktaking, lyrical draftsman with a flair for action....) Action was the byword in those early Classics issues. Mme. Thenardier throwing the boulder in Les Miserables. (What was it doing in the garret?) The Horseman throwing the pumpkin at Ichabod’s head. (Was the Horseman really Brom Bones?) Rolland Livingstone, I presume! I loved Lillian Chestney’s jinn in Arabian Nights and her Lilliputians in Gulliver’s Travels, so exotic with their curls and fingernails, all embellished with Chestney’s filigreed art panels. Oh, I know that Allen Simon’s efforts are the butt of jokes of those who are in the know and that his Hunchback and Flayed Hand are editorial nightmares, but really now! This was the period when Classics stalwartly refused to take themselves too seriously, when Classics were just comic books. When Classics were, well, charming! The Iger Shop’s regime from 1945 to 1953 represents, for me, a backward step, an expulsion from Eden, an increasingly selfconscious period when Classics sought elevation from the status of “comics” to “the best in the world’s finest juvenile publication”— the Iger era of the potted book reports. Classics had gained the world but had lost its soul.1

1950S

Classics fans differ considerably in their attitudes toward the evolving artistic identity of the series. Those whose first encounters with the yellow rectangle occurred in the 1940s tend to prefer the earlier line-drawing covers and the less regimented art of that era. Toronto resident Bill Briggs, the second editor of The Classics Reader, a pioneering fanzine of the 1970s and ’80s, offers the following musings:

Another Canadian collector, whose passion for the series was ignited a decade later, was Wayne Munson of Calgary:

Classics Illustrated always had, for me, a note of magic. I was five years old, sickly, with no brothers or sisters. Classics kept appearing magically: inside a folded evening newspaper, at the foot of my bed in the morning, in a desk drawer. You get the picture. It was 1948 in Atlantic Canada.... A new issue appeared every two weeks. The covers were the first “hook”; filled with heroic figures and lavishly coloured, they invited the reader to enter worlds of wonder and romance not to be found in the humdrum of every day. The interiors of the Classics did not disappoint. I loved Zansky’s larger-than-life heroes: Captain Ahab, Robin Hood, the Don of La Mancha, Pathfinder, the Sleuth of Baker Street. I have always imagined these mythic figures as I saw them for the

299

The earliest recollection that I have of Classics takes me back to age nine. My dad was a sergeant in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and we lived on a small radar base about 25 miles from Halifax, Nova Scotia. The store there was not a large one but did carry a good variety of comics. My friends collected the usual books— Casper, Little Lulu etc.— but I had no interest in them and with the 25-cent allowance I received weekly, I was prudent how I spent my money. The first Classics Illustrated I remember seeing, around 1958, was #97, King Solomon’s Mines. The cover was spectacular and with that special yellow-and-black banner at the top, I knew I had to have it. The 15-cent price was not a deterrent, albeit an obvious strain on my budget. From then on, I bought whatever Classic was there that I didn’t have. On occasion, I would buy other comics to use as trade, but only if there were no Classics I needed. I acquired many from my friends, trading 2 non–CI for one Classic if the need arose. This went on for the next five years until my Dad retired from the Air Force. We moved to Calgary, and I was not able to hold onto my treasured Classics collection.

300

CLASSICS Illustrated covers I did not recognize, but I realized, right then and there, that this was going to become an important part of my life. Just a couple of years ago, when I expanded my interest in the U.S. series to include the Canadian Classics, I uncovered another childhood memory of sorts while reading the uniquely Canadian inside-cover stories, specifically one in #12, Rip Van Winkle. On the Air Force base in Nova Scotia, I attended an elementary school named “David Hornell School.” I never knew who this person was and never really gave it much thought. Well, when I opened #12, there on the inside front cover was the biography of Flight Lieutenant David E. Hornell! He was the first Canadian to win the coveted Victoria Cross for bravery during World War II. His plane sustained damage after sinking a German submarine over the North Atlantic and was forced into the ocean. Some of his crew survived but he did not. The VC was awarded posthumously. I now look back upon my days at that school with a different set of feelings, thanks to my wonderful Classics.2

Perhaps the most celebrated of early collectors in Classics lore was E. Nelson Bridwell (1931–1987), who was eventually hired as an editor at DC Comics in part because of his reputation as a “walking encyclopedia of comics.” The Oklahoma native was suggesting possible future titles to Gilberton editor Meyer Kaplan as early as 1952; Kaplan sent Bridwell an original sketch of Cyrano de Bergerac by “our # 1 artist,” Alex A. Blum, by way of thanks for his interest. In 1960, the 29-year-old enthusiast sent a detailed list of suggestions to Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht. (See her response in Chapter XVIII.) Bridwell is particularly significant as the author of the first fanzine article on Classics Illustrated, “The Classics Illustrated Story” in the EC-oriented Squatront! (April 1959). His analytical skills were very much in evidence as he divided Gilberton’s history into distinct eras and offered nuanced assessments of the artwork and scripts.3 The baby boomers who constituted the bulk of Classics Illustrated fans — and the core constituency of adult collecHenry C. Kiefer, King Solomon’s Mines (July 1952). Canadian col- tors — grew up with the painted covers introduced in 1951. lector Wayne Munson’s memorable first encounter with Classics Illustrated; the issue shown is the childhood copy of comics-art For them, the older artwork and line-drawing covers were authority Hames Ware (note the initials “CHW” carefully placed exotically strange variants. Some, as children, would trade on the elephant’s foot). what proved to be more valuable older printings for the newer, more “modern” painted-cover-replacement reprints. Some 35 years later, I was browsing through a large antique The most devoted Classics Illustrated readers in the late shop in Los Angeles. On a book shelf I spotted a stack of Clas1950s lived on a bimonthly schedule, eagerly awaiting the sics, maybe a hundred or so. It’s hard to explain the feelings that arrival of the newest issue—or reissue—at their neighborhood came over me as I glanced through the books. Several covers invariety, grocery, or drug stores. Among the ranks of the faithful stantly summoned memories of times past, and I recalled the circumstances of when I originally got the books. When I was was John Haufe of Kettering, Ohio, a future assistant editor 11, I had pneumonia and was in the hospital with an oxygen tent of The Classics Collector and editorial advisor to Jack Lake Proaround me. Mom and Dad came in and slipped a brown paper ductions. Writing about the pleasures of collecting the series bag under the tent. In it were The Jungle Book and Paul Bunyan. in its heyday, Haufe recalled the most exciting moments: And now, these were there, right in front of me after all these years. As I read through them, another emotion came over me as I picked up on the “smell” coming from the pages. I got shivers, became somewhat emotional (good thing no one was with me), and knew what I had to do. The hundred books cost me $150, and that night I spent hours looking through them all. Many

1. Anticipating the Original issues as they came out between November 1953 and August 1962 — it was very exciting to see the new covers. My S.S. Kresge CI spinner usually had two or three pockets of the current issue at the top of the rack. Also equally exciting for me was the thrill of discovering what was

XXXI. CLASSICS COLLECTED forthcoming in the series through the “Coming Next” ads. This feature was rather unique with CI as the other comic series were more predictable with their themes and characters. 2. Ordering hard-to-find numbers directly from Gilberton in New York and then receiving the copies in a large manila envelope. These “scarce” Classics not found at my local Kresge’s outlet included such issues as Nos. 40 [Mysteries], 44 [Mysteries of Paris], 53 [A Christmas Carol], 66 [The Cloister and the Hearth], 73 [The Black Tulip], 74 [Mr. Midshipman Easy], 113 [TheF ortyFiveG uardsmen], 114 [The Red Rover], 116 [The Bottle Imp], 120 [The Hurricane], and 129 [Davy Crockett]. 3. Seeing Classics away from my home town while vacationing every summer in the east. They could be found in the Howard Johnson gift shops along the Pennsylvania/New Jersey turnpikes and prominently displayed on the newsstands of New York City.4

301

where a secretary greeted us. There were very few people about. The atmosphere was low key. I explained the reason for our visit and was surprised at how helpful and friendly the secretary was. She directed us to a room that had one entire wall completely covered with vertical rows of square receptacles or trays. Each tray held a stack of pristine mint Classics Illustrated comics of the same title. The secretary told us to take our time and pick out as many comics as we wanted. I vividly remember my first pick. It was a mint original of #56 Toilers of the Sea. This was a title I had never seen before. A lot of the comics had “10¢” on the covers, which really puzzled me. Up to that time every Classic I had

Multiply variations of those experiences by tens of thousands, and a composite picture of the hardcore baby-boomer Classics Illustrated fan begins to emerge.

IN QUEST

OF THE

GRAIL

As children, fledgling collectors mastered the reorder lists on back or inside covers and engaged in their own shorthand, calling issues by numbers rather than titles (“118” instead of Rob Roy) and thus getting the jump on later collectors by several decades. The numbers recited above by John Haufe were among the magical signifiers — along with numbers 8, 14, 20, 21, 33, 35, 38, 43, and 56 — that quickened the pulses of young fans. By the early 1960s, the search for original printings of those and other issues had become for Classics collectors their very own exercise in knight errantry. Jim McLoughlin, a native New Yorker, was better situated than most to undertake the quest. In June 1962, he and a friend from Queens took a trip to the fabled “Department S” of the Gilberton Company at 101 Fifth Avenue. “At first, we couldn’t find the building,” he wrote later. Suddenly, we both spotted the familiar yellow and black Classics Illustrated logo on the wall at the entrance. It was made of a glossy plastic and mounted just above our heads.... We took the elevator to the third floor as the lobby directory indicated.... The elevator doors opened directly into a hallway

Alex A. Blum, An Illustrated Library of Great Indian Stories (October 1949). A lucky break for young New York collector Jim McLoughlin.

302

CLASSICS Illustrated

ever seen had a “15¢” price. ... I purchased as many 10¢ titles as I could at face value.... As we paid up and got ready to leave I casually mentioned to the secretary that I had not found some of the titles I really wanted. She said, “Why don’t you visit the Gilberton warehouse on Ralph Avenue in Brooklyn?” She wrote down the address while I silently asked myself, “What warehouse in Brooklyn?” ... Being from Queens, Brooklyn was like a foreign country to us. We studied the subway map and found a Ralph Avenue stop but had not the slightest idea how far from the warehouse this stop would be. ... I remember it was quite a long walk but we found it. The warehouse was a low building of one story with a large tarmac area for trucks, and there were plenty of them, too! The place was really buzzing. We explained to the security guard why we were there, and he let us right in. The inside of the building was immense. We were ushered into a room where about twenty Puerto Rican ladies were busy sorting huge piles of Classics. Was I happy to see another wall covered with the same type of vertical trays as the 101 Fifth Avenue office had. These trays were a goldmine. ... I immediately found a reprint of #21 [3 Famous Mysteries] and a 10¢ LDC [line-drawing cover] of #65 Ben Franklin.... All of a sudden I spotted a tray full of #38 Adventures of Cellini. I picked out a few copies for trading material. Then I saw a reprint of #8 [Arabian Nights] that was in just beautiful shape. It was HRN 78 [a discontinued 1950 edition]. This room was full of surprises, and the next one was a beaut! There was a tray #11 Don Quixote, but this HRN 28 [i.e., 1946] reprint had Classic Comics on the cover. The tray next to it had originals of #23 Oliver Twist with the same Classic Comics logo. The place was a madhouse of noise and activity. We left, full of wonder and happiness with what we had seen and went back home pretty much satisfied and content. A few months later we planned what would be our final trip to the Ralph Avenue warehouse. Summer was over and school had started up again. We returned to the warehouse on October 12, 1962. It was Columbus Day, and we got quite a rude shock as we approached the warehouse. There were no trucks and no people! It hadn’t occurred to us that everybody would be off because of the holiday. We rapped on the door and a security guard answered. At first, he wouldn’t let us enter but felt sorry for us after we told him how far and how long we had traveled. This time I came prepared with a list of Classics I wanted to replace with 10¢ copies. Without all the racket and noise, my friend and I took our time and went through every tray. This time I found a reprint of #43 Great Expectations [the rarest of the rare]. After about an hour, the guard came by and asked if we were interested in buying some of the big comics he called “Giants” [an extremely rare series]. For 25¢ each I purchased an Adventure and an Indian Giant. The guard could not find any Mysteries Giants. I took one last look at the piles of Classics laying around but found only an original of #71 [The Man Who Laughs]. We had picked the place clean as far as we were concerned. As we left this time, even more contented, neither of us suspected that we would never return again. ... Shortly thereafter our interests turned to girls and other sports. A year later, JFK was killed in Dallas. I was in college with all my Classics up in the attic forgotten and unprotected.5

McLoughlin’s experience was exceptional — and perhaps unique. Few young readers had the opportunity to visit both

the Gilberton business offices and warehouse. Most had to make do with direct-to-publisher coupons or variety-store spinner racks. And few young collectors (in the U.S., at least) were aware that thousands across the country shared their passion for the yellow rectangle. Matters were different in Europe, where the European operation fostered Classics Clubs.

THE BIRTH

OF A

HOBBY

When Frawley brought the business to an end, unsold copies of Classics Illustrated made their way to warehouses in 1972, where young adults raced to buy as many stiff-cover copies of Ivanhoe, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and other titles as they could afford at the 25¢ cover price. Those with greater foresight and more disposable income went for bigger prizes. One man in particular, Raymond S. True of Libertyville, Illinois, did more than anyone to systematize the available information about Classics Illustrated and make possible a rational, intelligent approach to adult collecting of the “World’s Greatest Juvenile Publication.” Comic books in general came to be regarded as collectible items in the mid-to-late 1960s. In 1970, Robert M. Overstreet issued his first Comic Book Price Guide, a publication that over the years has come to be considered the collector’s bible. In that first edition, little information was offered on Classics Illustrated, and what was given was incomplete or obsolete. Only 130 issues were shown as having been printed, and only the original publisher, Elliott, was identified; both Gilberton and Frawley were ignored. In the following year, the last of nearly 1,400 Classics Illustrated reprint editions rolled off the presses. The sheer complexity of such a figure had been completely ignored in the Overstreet catalogue. In November 1971, collector and dealer True wrote to Bob Overstreet, offering to provide assistance in clarifying the listings for Classics Illustrated in the 1972 Price Guide by preparing a “sample insertion.”6 Within a week, Overstreet responded, stating that “it would be very helpful if you could lay out a draft to use on Classic Comics”7 and asking for a breakdown according to groups of issue numbers. Soon after this exchange, in January 1972, True, assisted by his wife Doreen, published the first issue of The Classics Collectors Club Newsletter (CCCN). In July 1972 he printed the third number in the fanzine series, which contained the first “Reprint Trail,” an ongoing study of the various editions of Classic Comics and Classics Illustrated titles.8 It was True who devised the means of identifying the dates of particular editions, pegging each to the highest reorder number (HRN) on the back-cover or interior-cover list. Now the HRN is the universally recognized means of establishing the age of an issue, whether in the Comic Book Price Guide or

XXXI. CLASSICS COLLECTED

303

on eBay. The identification of artwork was another problematic area in the early 1970s, but Arkansasbased comics-art authority Hames Ware, with assistance from Oklahoman E. Nelson Bridwell, identified most of the Classics artists for CCCN. True’s early efforts at maintaining a forum for Classics collectors were continued by Jim Sands of Enid, Oklahoma, in 1975 with a new fanzine, The Classics Reader. Sands was succeeded as editor in 1977 by Bill Briggs, who continued producing the publication until 1980. During this period, Charles Heffelfinger’s The Classics Handbook (1978) appeared; it was a substantial work that brought together the results of the multiple strands of research in the now-growing field. In 1981, Jim Sands reentered the fanzine lists with the shortlived Classics Critique. Another publication, The Classics Journal, appeared in 1983 under the joint auspices of publisher Mike Strauss, editor Bob Dane, associate editor Mike Sawyer, and production manager Charles Heffelfinger. Meanwhile, in 1974 Raymond True began corresponding with Mike Kanter, the brother of Albert Kanter and the former Gilberton warehouse manager. In lieu of a pension, Kanter had received Classics Illustrated stock and original artwork. True purchased a lot of 100 rarities at $2.50 each, includThe Classics Reader, No. 9 (April 1977). By the 1970s the hobby had already developed its ing fourteen copies of the scarce own standards of scholarship (courtesy Bill Briggs). No. 14, Westward Ho! These books, nearly 100 original cover paintings in a 1974 issue of the Comics in turn, would form the core of True’s successful rare-edition Buyer’s Guide “a major catalyst of early Classics fandom.”9 catalogue. In a letter dated 14 May 1974, Kanter offered for sale a substantial number of original-art covers and interiors. In 1986, the Rev. George Thomas Fisher, an Episcopal By December, True had acquired the complete interior art for priest in Nottingham, New Hampshire, produced one of the Crime and Punishment and painted covers and interiors for most valuable tools in the history of Classics collecting. His The Master of Ballantrae, David Balfour, and Daniel Boone. In well-researched, self-published Classic Comics Index was a comthe following year, True acquired more sets. At the same time, prehensive fifty-three-page listing of subjects and persons covKanter was selling artwork to Dean Blatt of New Rochelle, ered in the filler items in the Classics Illustrated series. Topics New York. John Haufe has called Blatt’s advertisement for from “Jousting” to “Radioactive isotopes” were included. As

304

CLASSICS Illustrated

the Rev. Mr. Fisher explained, the “main purpose” of his monograph was “to ‘open up’ and make available all the hidden articles, stories, historical facts and personalities that go beyond the regular book titles and content” of the 169 titles in the Classics Illustrated series. But the author went further and also catalogued topics referenced in the Classics Illustrated Junior, Classics Illustrated Special Issue, and World Around Us series. Fisher expressed his admiration for the filler articles, which were, he wrote, “examples of fine research and composition.” The Classic Comics Index remains an unsurpassed reference tool for both the collector and the serious student of the educational mission of the Gilberton Company.

Another major stride forward in fan-based research was librarian Michael Sawyer’s groundbreaking article “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics: The Man Behind the Gilberton Company,” published, as the author tells it, “almost by fluke” in the Journal of Popular Culture in 1987.10 The article had been shelved by one editor, but, in a changing of the guard, a new editor responded positively when Sawyer phoned to inquire about the status of the piece, and it became the first substantial study of Classics Illustrated to appear under a university’s imprint. Sawyer’s contribution was significant in placing Albert Kanter’s enterprise on the pop-culture map, at a time when comic books and comics art were becoming legitimate areas of academic interest. Later writers on the subject of Classics Illustrated used Sawyer’s article as a foundation on which to build their own edifices.

THE MALAN YEARS

The Classics Collector, No. 15 (November 1992). Dan Malan’s fanzine and assorted “classical enterprises” brought collectors in the 1990s to a deeper understanding of the place of Classics Illustrated within the larger context of the history of illustration art (Bottle Imp Archives).

AND

AFTER

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Dan Malan of St. Louis, Missouri, reached more than 2,000 CI aficionados in the United States, Canada, and abroad with The Classics Collector, a fanzine that continued the tradition of serious study established by Raymond True. As in the earlier publications, Malan featured interviews with Gilberton-Frawley (and later First Publishing) personnel, spotlighted research on the foreign as well as domestic series, and encouraged new converts to the cause. In 1991, Malan self-published the most significant and comprehensive work on Classics Illustrated yet produced, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, revised and reissued in 1996 as The Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated, Vol. One. Also in 1996, Malan self-published a second volume, dealing in detail with the multitude of foreign series. The level of scholarship in The Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated, Vol. Two, remains unsurpassed. Shortly afterward, Malan turned his attention to the art of Gustave Doré, while Raymond True and Mike Nicastre briefly attempted to keep The Classics Collector afloat. A sign that Classics Illustrated was gaining institutional respectability came in the form of lectures and exhibits focusing on the series. Dan Malan curated a 50th-anniversary display at San Francisco State University in

XXXI. CLASSICS COLLECTED 1991 and for the Main County Library in St. Louis in 1992. Collector and dealer Bill Novick organized an anniversary celebration at Cedar Hills School in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in 1991.11 The author presented items from his collection for the Central Arkansas Library System in 1983, 1991, and 1992. In 2002, he spoke on Classics Illustrated at the Library of Congress, which sponsored a one-night exhibit of issues in its collection. From April to June 2004, the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock hosted an exhibit of vintage comics and original art from the author’s collection. In April 2011, the Memphis Public Library staged the largest exhibit of original Classics art to date, drawn from the collection of Dr. William D. Falvey. By the late 1990s, the appeal of Classics Illustrated had broadened beyond the original “band of brothers,” as evidenced by the growing presence of the series on eBay and the increased respect accorded the series in the comics and academic realms. In the first decade of the 21st century, a group of serious international collectors, including Lars Teglbjaerg of Sweden, Øystein Sørenson of Norway, and Larry Chalif of New York, kept the prices of original art rising in auctions through Heritage Galleries and elsewhere. And perhaps most significantly, the Overstreet Price Guide listings for Classics Illustrated–related series extended to almost 20 pages, a far cry from the brief and incorrect notice that appeared on a single page in the first edition four decades before.

Unidentified artist, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (September 1957). Original cover painting from the collection of Dr. Lawrence Chalif.

305

XXXII

Classical Coda N

ostalgia is a seductive yet sterile trap, as I have frequently reminded myself while working on this book. I trust that on the whole, excepting the Introduction and this passage, I have maintained a reasonable distance from its snares and have avoided mistaking the personal dimension of remembered enjoyment for intimations of universal significance. Sentiment is one thing, the record another. Evidence of the cultural role of Classics Illustrated is plentiful: the 1,343 printings in the United States of 169 Classics Illustrated titles and 432 editions of seventy-seven Juniors; the millions of copies distributed worldwide; the adoption or approval of the series by thousands of schools; the imitations by other comics publishers; the continuing efforts to revive the line; and the current success of those ventures at home and abroad. Equally important, however, is the controversial position

of Classics Illustrated in the mid-century culture wars, which, unlike those at the turn of the 21st century, were largely fought on terrain selected by an intellectual elite promoting a modernist literary canon and sensibility. As Bart Beaty has indicated, this mandarin class, including critic Leslie Fiedler and poet Delmore Schwartz, insisted on a particular way to read and disparaged perceived “middlebrow” attempts at diluting the proper response to Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Melville, and Dostoevsky.1 In the end, though, it comes back to the individual’s experience, and it’s futile to deny the appeal of anything that connects one to the fading Wordsworthian “visionary gleam” of childhood discovery — to that moment of revelation in the spring of 1959, that epiphany in the summer of 1960. So adults roam the eBay categories searching for some connecting thread, whether in the form of a Marx “Battle of the Blue and Gray” playset or a vintage Barbie doll or a 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers baseball card. It’s a sad phenomenon, perhaps, the consequence of two centuries of post–Romantic idealization of the child or, as some might say today, the Inner Child. Classics authority Jim McLoughlin offers a knowing corrective in his account of an evening spent with Mike Kanter, Albert Kanter’s brother and Gilberton’s warehouse manager. Unable to comprehend the strange promptings that drive collectors, Kanter and his wife “sat and shook their heads and laughed at the idea of grown men running around the country buying comic books, stationery, display racks, and anything else associated with Classics Illustrated.”2 Yet the power of the yellow rectangle extends beyond the rarefied subculture of Classics collectors. Over the years, I’ve spoken to many adults who recall with animated affection parMarie Jones and son, Washington, D.C., June 1958 (photograph by William B. Jones, Sr.).

306

XXXII. CLASSICAL CODA

307

ticular titles — and the artwork — that continue to carry special meaning: for a journalist, it was Lou Cameron’s War of the Worlds; for a university professor, August M. Froehlich’s Toilers of the Sea; for a lawyer, Don Rico’s Moonstone; for an interior designer, Matt Baker’s Lorna Doone; for a doctor, Robert Hayward Webb’s Mysterious Island; for a novelist, Rudy Palais’s Crime and Punishment; for a U.S. Air Force colonel, Norman Nodel’s Ivanhoe; for a voice-over artist, Lou Cameron’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For this writer, several forty-eight-page wonders still echo. George Evans’s Three Musketeers, Joe Orlando’s Tale of Two Cities, Norman Nodel’s Les Miserables, Louis Zansky’s Don Quixote and Rudy Palais’s David Balfour taught unforgettable lessons about courage, loyalty, sacrifice, humor, and holding fast to one’s ideals. As children, we create our own mythologies as we reinvent the world. Although I was born a Presbyterian and confirmed an Episcopalian, the religion of my boyhood was Classics Illustrated; the creed of my young adulthood was the literature that the series had prepared me to embrace. I know better now, I suppose — irony is an inescapable element of the postmodern human condition, and our culture has been deconstructed nearly to death. My frame of reference is, I hope, broader, but then the range of publications that juxtaposed Goethe and G.A. Henty, the Brothers Grimm and Native American myth, the sport of fishing and the lives of “famous teens” was broad enough. “[W]hat we have been makes us what we are,” wrote George Eliot,3 whose pseudonym and real name I first encountered in Classics Illustrated No. 55 at the age of eight. This book had a decidedly muted ending when the first edition was published. It appeared Joe Orlando, A Tale of Two Cities (May 1956). An enduring lesson in friendship then that the time for treating literary master- and self-sacrifice. pieces in a comic-book format had irretrievably slipped away. But the recent efforts of Jaak Jarve, A decade has made a difference. It may be true, as Nick Jeff and Jon Brooks, and Jim Salicrup, who seek to revive an Carraway insisted to Jay Gatsby, that “You can’t repeat the art form, have coincided with the dawning of a broader unpast.”4 Still, neither can you entirely escape it. Sometimes it derstanding of the cultural and educational role of graphic ficcatches you and bears you along in unexpected directions. As tion. Moreover, cultural critics and art historians have begun the man said, “So we beat on, boats against the current....”5 to evaluate Classics Illustrated as a part of the larger tradition Thank you, Messrs. Kanter. Thank you, Mrs. Feuerlicht. of 20th-century illustration art encompassing the works of Thank you all. N.C. Wyeth, Rockwell Kent, and Lynd Ward.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter Notes Introduction 1. Donna Richardson, “Classics Illustrated,” American Heritage ( June 1993), p. 78. 2. Anne Rice, “Giving 100%” (interview), Comics Buyers Guide # 1340 (23 July 1999), p. 40. 3. Pete Hamill, A Drinking Life: A Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994), p. 101. 4. Ibid. 5. Mike Benton, The Comic Book in America: An Illustrated History (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1993), pp. 46,48. 6. Nancy Mahler, Interview with author, 15 June 2000. 7. Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2007), p. 13.

Chapter I 1. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated, Volume Two: Foreign Series and Related Collectibles (St. Louis: Malan Classical Enterprises, 1993, rev. 1996), pp. 8, 10. 2. Michael Sawyer, “The Classics: The Forgotten Comic,” Pittsburgh Fan Forum, No. 35( February-March 1978), p. 5. 3. Hal Kanter, So Far, So Funny: My Life in Show Business ( Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1999), p. 1. 4. Michael Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics: The Man Behind the Gilberton Company,” Journal of Popular Culture, 20:4 (Spring 1987), p. 1. 5. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Volume One: The U.S. Series of Classics Illustrated and Related Collectibles (St. Louis: Malan Classical Enterprises, 1991), p. 16. 6. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 2. 7. Roger Sabin, Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1996), pp. 12, 15. 8. Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (Northampton: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993), p. 17. 9. David Kunzle, Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), p. 143.

10. Robert L. Beerbohm and Richard D. Olson, Ph.D., “In the Beginning: New Discoveries Beyond the Platinum Age,” in Robert M. Overstreet, The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, 30th Edition (New York: Gemstone Publishing, Inc./HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2000). 11. Les Daniels, Comix: A History of Comic Books in America (New York: Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, 1971), pp. 2–3. 12. Daniels, p. 6. 13. Robert C. Harvey, The Art of the Comic Book: An Aesthetic History ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996), p. 275. 14. Harvey, p. 16. 15. Mike Benton, The Comic Book in America: An Illustrated History (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1993), p. 14. 16. Ibid. 17. See Ron Goulart, Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1986), Chapters 1–2, 5–7; see also Benton, pp. 16–27. 18. Harvey, p. 23; see Jerry Bails and Hames Ware, Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Volume Four (Detroit: Jerry Bails, 1976), pp. 335–340. 19. Goulart, Great History, pp. 199–200. 20. Goulart, Great History, pp. 200–201. 21. Sawyer, “The Classics,” p. 5. 22. Ron Goulart, “Bobby Thatcher,” The Encyclopedia of American Comics, ed. R. Goulart (New York, Oxford: Facts on File, 1990), pp. 40–41. 23. Goulart, Great History of Comic Books, pp. 56, 58, 66. 24. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 2. 25. Malan, Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol I, p. 18. 26. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 2. 27. Malan, Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 22. 28. Raymond True, Interview with author, 23 December 2009. 29. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 3; Malan, Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 18. 30. Certificate of Amendment of Certificate of Incorporation of Gilberton Corporation Respecting Purposes, Powers and Number of Directors (Pursuant to Section 35 of the Stock

309

Corporation Law), File No. 6020, NY 409560 (filed 13 May 1942). 31. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 3. 32. Certificate of Incorporation of Gilberton Company, Inc. (Pursuant to Article II of the Stock Corporation Law), File No. 6869, NY 6869-98 (filed 25 November 1946). 33. Malan, Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 22. 34. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” pp. 3, 6. 35. Ibid., pp. 3–4. 36. Ibid., p. 4. 37. Malan, Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 22. 38. Raymond True, Interview with author, 23 December 2009. 39. Harvey, The Art of the Comic Book, p. 16. 40. A Tale of Two Cities would figure prominently in the 1982 film Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, for which Harve Bennett developed the story. One can’t help wondering whether Classic Comics might have provided the initial impetus for the inclusion of that thematic element. 41. Malan, Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 22. 42. Malan, Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated, Vol. II, p. 8.

Chapter II 1. Ron Goulart, Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books, pp. 100, 207. 2. Jeanette Zansky, Letter to author, 16 June 1997. 3. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 4. See Robert C. Harvey, The Art of the Comic Book, p. 25. 5. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 21 July 1994. 6. Ibid. 7. Edd Ashe, Letter to Raymond S. True, 17 February 1972. 8. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 21 July 1994. 9. Bill Briggs, Letter to author (including reproduced paired panels), 30 June 2000. 10. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000.

310 11. Martin Barker and Roger Sabin, The Lasting of the Mohicans: History of an American Myth (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), p. 151.

Chapter III 1. Jeanette Zansky, Interview with author, 25 July 1994. 2. Jeanette Zansky, Letter to author, 16 June 1997. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Louis Zansky, Resume for art show, 1976. 7. Jeanette Zansky, Letter to author, 16 June 1997. 8. Ibid. 9. Jeanette Zansky, Interview with author, 25 July 1994. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Mike Benton, Crime Comics: The Illustrated History (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1993), p. 103. 13. Jeanette Zansky, Interview with author, 25 July 1994.

Chapter IV 1. Michael Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics,” p. 8. 2. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 20. 3. “Classic Comics Success Based on Al Kanter’s Sound, Original Idea,” The Publishers’ Distributor, Vol. I, No. 11 (May 1944), p. 3. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Who’s Who in American Art: 1999–2000 (New Providence, NJ.: Marquis/Reed Elsevier Inc., 1999), p. 1365. 8. AskART artist biography (Stanley M. Zuckerberg), http://www.askart.com/askart/ artist.aspx?artist=103237, accessed 15 November 2010. 9. Trina Robbins and Catherine Yronwode, Women and the Comics (Eclipse Books, 1985), p. 55. 10. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 21 July 1994. 11. “Lillian Chestney,” New York Times obituary notice, 13 August 2000. 12. Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle,” The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., in History, Tales and Sketches (New York: The Library of America, 1983), p. 770. 13. The adaptation of Stowe’s novel tied with Rip Van Winkle and Frankenstein for tenth place; the other nine Classics Illustrated leaders, in order of sales ranking, were Ivanhoe, Moby Dick, The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, A Tale of Two Cities, Robinson Crusoe, and Huckleberry Finn.

CHAPTER NOTES 14. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Hollis Robbins, eds., “Introduction,” The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007), p. xvi. 15. Gates and Robbins, “Harriet Beecher Stowe and ‘The Man That Was a Thing,’” The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin, p. xlvi.

Chapter V 1. Mike Benton, Horror Comics: The Illustrated History (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1991), p. 10. 2. Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Norton Critical Edition), ed. Katherine Linehan (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2003), p. 51. 3. Ibid., p. 17. 4. Ron Prager, “My Friend — Jerry Iger,” The Classics Collector, No. 14 (December 1991), p. 18. 5. Michelle Harm, Director of Exhibits, Hollingworth Fine Arts, E-mail to author, 13 May 2008.

Chapter VI 1. Mike Benton, The Comic Book in America, p. 119. 2. Ron Goulart, “Jerry Iger,” in The Encyclopedia of American Comics: From 1897 to the Present, ed. R. Goulart (New York, Oxford: Facts on File, 1993), p. 193. 3. Stanley Wiater and Stephen R. Bissette, Comic Book Rebels (New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1993), p. 269. 4. Steve Duin and Mike Richardson, Comics Between the Panels (Milwaukie, Ore.: Dark Horse Comics, Inc., 1998), p. 233. 5. Ron Goulart, Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books, p. 210. 6. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 22. 7. Michael Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics,” p. 4. 8. Robert C. Harvey, The Art of the Comic Book, p. 25. 9. Trina Robbins and Catherine Yronwode, Women and the Comics, p. 52. 10. Ron Prager, Interview with author, 31 May 2000. 11. Goulart, Great History of Comic Books, p. 210. 12. Alex Toth, Letter to The Classics Collector, No. 14 (December 1991), p. 6. 13. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 14. Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 15. Ibid. 16. Robbins and Yronwode, p. 56. 17. Mike Benton, Horror Comics, p. 10. 18. Donald F. Glut, Frankenstein Meets the Comics,” in The Comic-Book Book, ed. Don Thompson and Dick Lupoff (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1973), p. 110.

19. Ibid. 20. Ware, Interview with author, 23 February 1997. 21. Goulart, Great History of Comic Books, p. 64. 22. Ware, Interview with author, 23 February 1997. 23. Duin and Richardson, Comics Between the Panels, p. 371. 24. Ibid., at p. 370. 25. Ware, Interview with author, 23 February 1997. 26. Duin and Richardson, p. 38. 27. Jerry Iger, “Jerry Iger Talks About Matt Baker,” in Jerry Iger’s Famous Features, Vol. I, No. 1 (San Diego: Pacific Comics, July 1984), p. 9. 28. Goulart, Great History of Comic Books, p. 246. 29. Lou Cameron, Letter to author, 4 November 1993; Ware, Interview with author, 23 February 1997. 30. Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., E-mail to author, 21 March 2000. 31. Cameron, Letter to author, 4 November 1993. 32. Ware, Interview with author, 23 February 1997. 33. Ibid.

Chapter VII 1. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 107; Hubert H. Crawford, Crawford’s Encyclopedia of Comic Books (Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David Publishers, Inc., 1978), p. 145. 2. Eleanor Lidofsky, Interview with author, 1 February 2009. 3. Ibid. 4. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 27 January 1997. 5. Jerry Bails and Hames Ware, The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Volume Two (Detroit: Jerry Bails, 1974), p. 121. 6. Malan, p. 22. 7. The Last Days of Pompeii had a curious history with Gilberton. The title chosen to introduce the Classics Illustrated name was withdrawn in 1949 after only a single printing because of controversy over its explicitly religious content; the title reappeared 12 years later in a more successful “secularized” adaptation by Alfred Sundel with art by comics legend Jack Kirby. 8. Raymond True, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 9. Lidofsky, Interview with author, 1 February 2009. 10. Ron Goulart, Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books, p. 210. 11. Crawford, p. 145. 12. Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 13. Donna Richardson, “Classics Illustrated,” American Heritage ( June 1993), p. 83.

CHAPTER NOTES 14. See M. Thomas Inge, “Edgar Allan Poe and the Comics Connection,” Comic Book Marketplace (March 2000), p. 24. 15. Lars Teglbjaerg, E-mail to author, 7 June 2008. 16. A somewhat different version was originally published as an Illustrated Classics newspaper serial from 28 December 1947 to 18 January 1948. 17. Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 18. Ware, Interview with author, 27 January 1997.

Chapter VIII 1. Jerry Bails and Hames Ware, The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Volume One (Detroit: Jerry Bails, 1973), p. 15. 2. Ron Goulart, Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books, p. 64. 3. Trina Robbins and Catherine Yronwode, Women and the Comics, p. 52. 4. Goulart, p. 127. 5. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 20 February 1996. 6. Bill Briggs, Letter to author, 30 June 2000. 7. William Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (New York: Alfred A. Knopf/Everyman’s Library, 1991), p. 193. 8. Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, N.C. Wyeth edition (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), p. 60. 9. See, for a discussion of the Tourneur film and a photograph of Mason as Hawkins, Scott Allen Nollen, Robert Louis Stevenson: Life, Literature and the Silver Screen (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1994), pp. 93–94, 96. 10. Donna Richardson, “Classics Illustrated,” American Heritage, 44:3 ( June 1993), p. 84. 11. Ware, Interview with author, 20 February 1996. 12. Rocco Versaci, This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature (New York, London: Continuum, 2007), p. 191. 13. Michael P. Jensen, “The Comic Book Shakespeare,” The Shakespeare Newsletter, 56:3, No. 270, Winter 2006-07. 14. Gregory Cwiklik, “A Classic Case,” The Comics Journal No. 139 (December 1990), p. 30. 15. Ware, Interview with author, 20 February 1996. 16. George Evans, Letter to author, 17 February 1996. 17. Norman Nodel, Interview with author, 22 November 1993.

Chapter IX 1. Michael Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics,” p. 5. 2. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 93.

3. Ron Prager, Interview with author, 31 May 2000. 4. Michael Sawyer, “The Classics: The Forgotten Comic,” p. 8. 5. Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1954), p 311. 6. Jerry Bails and Hames Ware, The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Vol. I, p. 66. 7. Malan, Complete Guide, Vol. I, p. 26. 8. Harley M. Griffiths, Jr., Letter to author, 30 May 1995. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. “Classics Illustrated Artists (Who are they, and who did what!),” http://www.ttbwrr. com/ClassicsIllustrated/Classics-IllustratedArtists-contributions.htm, accessed 19 November 2010. 13. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 12 March 1997. 14. Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, p. 37. 15. Madeleine Robins, Interview with author, 4 April 1997. 16. Malan, Complete Guide, Vol. I, p. 102.

Chapter X 1. The artist signed most of his work for Classics Illustrated “Rudolph Palais,” but he used the nickname “Rudy” on three title pages; in later years, he preferred the variant spelling “Rudi.” In this book, the use of “Rudy” reflects the artist’s choice during the period of his association with the Gilberton Company. 2. Jim Amash, “‘I Was So Busy, I Never Read the Stories’: Unique Artist Rudy Palais on Living and Drawing Comics,” Alter Ego, Vol. 3, No. 62 (October 2006), p. 42. 3. Rudolph Palais, Letter to author, 30 December 1993. 4. Ibid. 5. Amash, Alter Ego interview, p. 43. 6. Ibid., p. 44. 7. Palais, Letter to author. 8. Ibid. 9. Mike Benton, Crime Comics, p. 32. 10. Rudolph Palais, Interview with author, 1 November 1993. 11. Amash, Alter Ego interview, p. 52. 12. Ibid. 13. Palais, Letter to author. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Mike Benton, Horror Comics, p. 26. 17. Palais, Interview with author. 18. Palais, Letter to author. 19. Palais, Interview with author.

Chapter XI 1. Eleanor Lidofsky, Interview with author, 1 February 2009. 2. “Shakespeare Bows to ‘Comics’ Public:

311 Play Texts Will Be Produced in Picture Form to Interest World’s Popular Audience,” New York Times (9 March 1950), p. 24. 3. Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, pp. 36–37. 4. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 2, scene i, in The Complete Works, eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 682. 5. Hubert H. Crawford, Crawford’s Encyclopedia of Comic Books, p. 205. 6. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 28. 7. Eleanor Lidofsky, Interview with author, 1 February 2009. 8. Michael Sawyer, E-mail to author, 31 December 2010 (citing Mike Kanter). 9. Michael Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics: The Man Behind the Gilberton Company,” Journal of Popular Culture, 20:4 (Spring 1987), p. 9. 10. Ibid., p. 10. 11. Michael Sawyer, “The Classics: The Forgotten Comic,” Pittsburgh Fan Forum, No. 35 (February-March 1978), p. 9. 12. For further discussion of Fitch’s adaptation of Stevenson’s novel, see William B. Jones, Jr., “‘Hello, Mackellar’: Classics Illustrated meets The Master of Ballantrae,” Journal of Stevenson Studies, Vol. 4 (Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Stirling, 2007), pp. 247– 269. 13. Bob Lamme, Letter to Michael Sawyer, 17 August 1977. 14. Bob Lamme, Letter to Michael Sawyer, 12 August 1977. 15. Bob Lamme, Letter to Charles Heffelfinger, 11 October 1977. 16. Bob Lamme, Letter to Michael Sawyer, 12 August 1977. 17. Bob Lamme, Letter to Michael Sawyer, 17 August 1977. 18. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 19. Hames Ware, Letter to Mike Nicastre, March 1997. 20. Ware, Interview with author, 20 March 1997. 21. Ware, Interview with author, 20 March 1997. 22. Benton, The Comic Book in America, p. 119. 23. Ron Goulart, Great History of Comic Books, p. 165. 24. Marc Swayze, Interview with author, 1 June 2000. 25. Les Daniels, DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1995), p. 118. 26. Mort Künstler, Interview with author, 25 March 2008. 27. Biography, The Official Mort Künstler Website, http://www.mortkunstler.com/biog raphy.asp; accessed 10 August 2010. 28. Künstler, Interview with author, 25 March 2008.

312 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Biography, Mort Künstler Website. 34. Jo Polseno biography, AskART website, http://www.askart.com/askart/artist.aspx?artist =127991, accessed 10 August 2010. 35. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 31 March 1997. 36. Ron Goulart, “Sergeant Stony Craig,” Encyclopedia of American Comics, p. 328. 37. Ware, Interview with author, 20 March 1997. 38. Eleanor Lidofsky, Interview with author, 1 February 2009. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Eleanor Lidofsky, interview with author, 20 July 2010. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Eleanor Lidofsky, interview with author, 1 February 2009.

Chapter XII 1. Ibid. 2. Bill Briggs, Letter to author, 30 June 2000. 3. Ibid. 4. Maurice del Bourgo, Interview with Jim Sands, “M.D.B.,” in The Classics Reader, No. 5 (October 1975), p. 11. 5. Ibid., pp. 11, 12. 6. Ibid., p. 12. 7. Ibid., p. 10. 8. See Mike Benton, The Comic Book in America, pp. 49–50. 9. Del Bourgo, The Classics Reader, No. 5, p. 10. 10. Maurice del Bourgo, Interview with Jim Sands, “Maurice del Bourgo,” in The Classics Reader, No. 4 (August 1975), p. 8. 11. Ibid. Del Bourgo’s assertion that Kiefer and Blum were in the “traditional comic-book mold” is certainly a minority point of view. Whether they love or hate the two artists so identified with Classics Illustrated, few critics would argue that they were typical of the industry. 12. Del Bourgo, The Classics Reader, No. 5, p. 10. 13. Del Bourgo, The Classics Reader, No. 4, p. 8.

Chapter XIII 1. Henry A. Carter, “Chemistry in the Comics: Part 2. Classic Chemistry,” Journal of Chemical Education, 66:2 (February 1989), p. 119. 2. Raymond True, Interview with author, 23 December 2009.

CHAPTER NOTES Chapter XIV 1. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 22 July 1994. 2. Ann Evory, ed., Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Vol. 4 (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1981), p. 107. 3. Ibid. 4. Lou Cameron, Letter to author, 4 November 1993. 5. Lou Cameron, Letter to author, 20 November 1993. 6. Cameron, Letter to author, 4 November 1993. 7. Cameron, Letter to author, 20 November 1993. 8. Ibid. 9. Mike Benton, Horror Comics, p. 37. 10. Cameron, Letter to author, 4 November 1993. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Cameron, Letter to author, 20 November 1993. 14. Dan Malan, “CI#124, War of the Worlds Model,” The Classics Collector, No. 17 ( January 1996), p. 13. 15. For an excellent account of the 1955 Crockett mania, see Paul F. Anderson, The Davy Crockett Craze (Hillside, Ill.: R & G Productions, 1996), pp. 49–60. 16. Cameron, Letter to author, 4 November 1993. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Cameron, Letter to author, 20 November 1993. 23. Lou Cameron, Letter to author, 3 May 2010. This explicit disavowal was in direct response to the assertions made by George Hagenauer in “Cameron and the Count,” The Classics Reader, No. 10 (February 1978), p. 30, and recounted in the first edition of this book. The artist wished to set the record straight, and the author is pleased that the opportunity to do so is now available. 24. Cameron, Letter to author, 4 November 1993.

Chapter XV 1. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 17 September 1994. 2. Norman Nodel, Letter to author, 25 July 1997. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Nodel, Interview with author, 22 November 1993. 7. Nodel, Interview with author, 12 May 1997.

8. Nodel, Interview with author, 22 November 1993. 9. Nodel, Letter to author, 25 July 1997. 10. Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art (Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985), p. 46. 11. [Washington Irving], The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, retold by Cherney Berg; illustrated by Norman Nodel (Mahwah, N.J.: Educational Reading Service, 1970). 12. Nodel, Interview with author, 22 November 1993. 13. Nodel, Interview with author, 12 May 1997. 14. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 21 August 1994. 15. Norman Nodel, Interview with author, 12 May 1997. 16. Nodel, Interview with author, 22 November 1993. 17. Nodel, Interview with author, 12 May 1997. 18. Nodel, Interview with author, 22 November 1993. 19. Nodel, Letter to author, 25 July 1997. 20. Nodel, Interview with author, 22 November 1993. 21. Nodel, Interview with author, 3 August 1997.

Chapter XVI 1. Amy Kiste Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), p. 86. 2. Nyberg, p. 87. 3. Ibid., pp. 88–89; Ron Goulart, The Encyclopedia of American Comics, p. 382. 4. Goulart, Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books, p. 263. 5. Mike Benton, The Comic Book in America, p. 45. 6. Les Daniels, Comix: A History of Comic Books in America (New York: Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, 1971), p. 86; Goulart, Great History of Comic Books, p. 266. 7. Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (New York: Rhinehart & Company, Inc., 1954), illustrated insert, p. viii. 8. Wertham, p. 36 (emphasis in original). 9. Ibid., p. 389. 10. Robert Warshow, “Paul, the Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham,” Commentary, 17:596–604, at 601 ( June 1954). 11. Warshow, p. 600. 12. Mike Benton, Horror Comics, p. 41. 13. Minutes, State of New York Joint Legislative Committee to Study the Publication of Comics (December 3–4, 1951), pp. 857–858. 14. Minutes, pp. 860–862. The central section of this quoted portion of Kaplan’s testimony appears in Mike Sawyer’s “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics,” p. 8; the author is indebted to Mr. Sawyer for making available a copy of a transcript of Kaplan’s remarks in their entirety.

CHAPTER NOTES 15. Report of the New York State Joint Legislative Committee to Study the Publication of Comic Books (1955), quoted in Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics,” p. 9. 16. Les Daniels, Comix, p. 86. 17. Goulart, Great History of Comic Books, p. 272. 18. David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), p. 286. 19. Hajdu, p. 291–292. 20. Les Daniels, DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (Boston, New York: A Bulfinch Press Book/Little, Brown and Company, 1995), pp. 150, 158, 160, 208. 21. Steve Duin, Mike Richardson, Comics Between the Panels (Milwaukie, Ore.: Dark Horse Comics, Inc., 1998), p. 339. 22. Duin, Richardson, p. 340. 23. Ron Goulart, Encyclopedia of American Comics, p. 280. 24. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 25. George Evans, Interview with author, 31 May 1997. 26. For a reproduction and analysis of Orlando’s “Landscape,” see Daniels, Comix, pp. 102–103, 111–114. 27. Duin, Richardson, Comics Between the Panels, p. 238. 28. Mike Benton, Horror Comics, p. 16. 29. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, June 1997. 30. Duin, Richardson, p. 239. 31. George Evans, Interview with author, 30 January 2000. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Duin, Richardson, p. 239. 35. Ron Goulart, Encyclopedia of American Comics, p. 187. 36. Les Daniels, Comix, p. 66. 37. Goulart, Encyclopedia of American Comics, p. 325. 38. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 17 September 1994. 39. George Evans, Interview with author, 31 May 1997. 40. Ibid. 41. Jerry DeFuccio, Letter to author, 10 November 1993. 42. Comics writer and scholar Paul Buhle, who interviewed Rubinstein for Radical America, makes a persuasive case for the latter title as one of her projects. 43. Mary Boger, “The Annette T. Rubinstein Reading Room,” Brecht Forum, http:// brechtforum.org/annette, accessed 30 October 2010. 44. Annette T. Rubinstein, Letter to Roberta Strauss, 3 February 1955 (courtesy of John Haufe).

Chapter XVII 1. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 17 September 1994. 2. George Evans, Letter to author, 17 February 1997. 3. Bhob Stewart, “George Evans” in The Encyclopedia of American Comics, ed. Goulart, p. 122. 4. Ibid. 5. Evans, Letter to author, 17 February 1997. 6. George Evans, Letter to Michael Sawyer, 26 April 1978. 7. Ibid. 8. George Evans, Letter to author, 17 February 1997. 9. Ibid. 10. George Evans, Interview with author, 31 May 1997. During that interview, I told the artist about my high-school experience with Lord Jim, which was required reading in our Senior English Literature course. Our teacher was well aware that a number of students relied on the Classics Illustrated version rather than Conrad’s actual novel. Her exam on the book consisted of a single essay question designed to catch the Classics cribbers: “Describe the ending of Lord Jim.” Those who had finished the book were able to summarize Marlow’s conclusion. But those of us who had read the Classics Illustrated edition simply wrote, “And Jim fell forward, dead.” After receiving our grades, we might as well have been, too. When George Evans heard the tale, he laughed and said, “Well, it serves ’em right! They should have read the book! I had to!” 11. Evans, Letter to author, 17 February 1997. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Evans, Interview with author, 31 May 1997. 15. Evans, Letter to author, 17 February 1997. 16. Stewart, “George Evans,” p. 122. 17. Evans, Letter to author, 17 February 1997. 18. George Evans, Letter to Michael Sawyer, 26 April 1978. 19. Evans, Letter to author, 27 May 1997. 20. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 1 September 2010. 21. Ibid. 22. George Evans, Letter to author, 27 May 1997. 23. Stewart, “George Evans,” p. 122. 24. Goulart, Encyclopedia of American Comics, p. 84; Duin, Richardson, p. 104. 25. George Evans, Letter to author, 17 February 1997. 26. Ibid. 27. Goulart, Great History of Comic Books, p. 300. 28. For a reproduction and analysis of Crandall’s “The Squaw,” see Les Daniels, Comix, pp. 102, 107–110.

313 29. Duin, Richardson, p. 106; George Evans, Interview with author, 14 May 1997; Goulart, Encyclopedia of American Comics, p. 84.

Chapter XVIII 1. John Leonard, Review of Justice Crucified by Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht and The Never-Ending Wrong by Katharine Anne Porter, New York Times (25 August 1977). 2. Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews: A People Torn Between Israeli Power and Jewish Ethics (New York: Times Books, 1983), p. 287. 3. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, 25 March 1996. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Dan Malan, “Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht,” The Classics Collector, No. 14 (December 1991), p. 19. 8. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, 25 March 1996. 9. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 10. E. Nelson Bridwell, Letter to Charles Heffelfinger, 30 September 1980. 11. George Evans, Letter to author, 17 February 1997. 12. Norman Nodel, Interview with author, 20 April 1997. 13. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, 29 July 1997. 14. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 18, 19, 23, 24, 35, 38, 39, 42, 45, 50, 52, 54, 56, 60, 63, 68, 71. No. 13 had been assigned before Feuerlicht’s association with Classics Illustrated. 15. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 90, 93, 103. Nos. 11 and 13 had been commissioned before Feuerlicht’s arrival at Gilberton. 16. Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, Letter to E. Nelson Bridwell, 25 July 1960. A copy of the letter is reproduced in Appendix T. 17. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 23 July 2010. 18. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 23 November 2010. 19. Malan, “Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht,” p. 19. 20. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, 29 July 1997. 21. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 30 July 2010. 22. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, 29 July 1997. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 23 November 2010.

314 26. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, 25 March 1996. 27. Ibid. 28. Malan, “Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, p. 19. 29. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, 25 March 1996. 30. “Roberta Feuerlicht, 59 Historian and Author,” New York Times Obituary (5 October 1991), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage. html?res=9D0CE4D81E30F936A35753C1A96 7958260, accessed 25 November 2010.

Chapter XIX 1. See Les Daniels, DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes, p. 126; Steve Duin and Mike Richardson, Comics Between the Panels, p. 393. 2. Les Daniels, DC Comics, p. 102. 3. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 4. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, 25 March 1996. 5. Ron Goulart, Encyclopedia of American Comics, p. 341. 6. Ibid. 7. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 7 July 2000. 8. The strong plate impressions in firstprinting copies created a striking tactile experience for young readers in 1961. 9. Scotty Moore, “Artist, Author, & Publisher! L.B. Cole,” Interview in Comic Book Marketplace (December 1995), p. 32. 10. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 21 August 1994. 11. John Benson, “Romance Comics,” in The Encyclopedia of American Comics, ed. Ron Goulart, p. 313. 12. Scotty Moore, “Artist, Author, & Publisher! L.B. Cole,” p. 32. 13. Ibid. 14. Duin and Richardson, Comics: Between the Panels, p. 90. 15. Herb Feuerlicht, Interview with author, 25 March 1996. The episode greatly upset Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, according to her husband, and also “deeply disappointed” Norman Nodel, Cole’s close friend (Nodel, Interview with author, 12 May 1997). 16. Scotty Moore, “Artist, Author, & Publisher! L.B. Cole,” p. 32. 17. John Haufe, Interview with author, 5 February 2000. 18. Duin and Richardson, “Norm Saunders,” in Comics: Between the Panels, p. 386. 19. Stephanie Biggs, Biographical sketch of Geoffrey Briggs, AskART website, http://www. askart.com/AskART/artist.aspx?artist=28860& redir. Accessed 30 July 2010. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Joel Whitburn, Joel Whitburn’s Pop Memories 1890 –1954: The History of American Popular Music (Menomonee Falls, Wis.: Record Research Inc. 1986), p. 271.

CHAPTER NOTES Chapter XX 1. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 17 September 1994. 2. George Evans, Interview with author, 31 May 1997.

Chapter XXI 1. Gray Morrow, Letter to author, 22 July 1994. 2. Sundel, Letter to author, 17 September 1994. 3. Morrow, Letter to author, 22 July 1994. 4. Ibid. 5. Frank Norris, The Octopus, in Novels and Essays (New York: The Library of America, 1986), pp. 596, 629. 6. Sundel, Letter to author, 17 September 1994. 7. Morrow, Letter to author, 22 July 1994. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid.

Chapter XXII 1. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 17 September 1994. 2. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 23 July 2010. 3. Ibid. 4. In Re: Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc., Amended Departmental Decision, Raymond J. Kelly, Judicial Officer, P.O.D. Docket No. 1/58 (19 April 1960). 5. In Re: Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc., Initial Decision of Hearing Examiner, William A. Duvall, P.O.D. Docket No. 1/58 (2 November 1959). 6. In Re: Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc., Departmental Decision, Charles D. Ablard, Judicial Officer, P.O.D. Docket No. 1/58 (26 February 1960). 7. In Re: Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc., Amended Departmental Decision, Raymond J. Kelly, Judicial Officer, P.O.D. Docket No. 1/58 (19 April 1960), p. 4. 8. Ibid., p. 5. 9. Ibid., p. 6. 10. “Bruno Premiani,” Lambiek Comiclopedia at Lambiek.net, http://lambiek.net/artists/ p/premiani_bruno.htm. Accessed 26 November 2010. 11. Gerard Jones, “Doom Patrol,” in The Encyclopedia of American Comics, ed. R. Goulart, p. 108. 12. Jerry Bails and Hames Ware, The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Vol. IV (Detroit: Jerry Bails, 1976), p. 262. 13. Steve Duin and Mike Richardson, Comics: Between the Panels, p. 261. 14. Ron Goulart, “Jack Kirby,” in The Encyclopedia of American Comics, ed. R. Goulart, p. 219. 15. Ibid. 16. Les Daniels, DC Comics: Sixty Years of

the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes, pp. 46, 64, 206. 17. Ibid, p. 106; Mike Benton, The Comic Book in America, p. 43. 18. Daniels, DC Comics, p. 131. 19. Mark Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2008), pp. 103–106. 20. The artist’s subtle visual representation of Union resolve at Fort Sumter has been analyzed at length in Joseph Witek, Comics as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989), pp. 20–26. 21. Ron Prager, “My Friend — Jerry Iger,” The Classics Collector, No. 14 (December 1991), p. 18. 22. Prager, Interview with author, 25 May 2000. 23. Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics, p. 109. 24. Les Daniels, Marvel: Five Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Publishers, 1991), p. 84. 25. Daniels, DC Comics, p. 164. 26. Jerry Bails and Hames Ware, The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Vol. III (Detroit: Jerry Bails, 1975), p. 206. 27. Hames Ware, Interview with author, 15 April 1997. 28. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 21 August 1994. 29. “Charles J. Berger, American,” Wind River Studios, http://www.artworkoriginals. com/JAAAAAKS.htm. Accessed 27 November 2010. 30. Norman Nodel, Interview with author, 22 November 1993. 31. Alex Toth, Letter to The Classics Collector, No. 14 (December 1991), p. 6. 32. Paul Gravett, Review of Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, Paul Gravett website, http://www.paulgravett.com/index.php/articles/article/classics_illustrated/ (posted 30 April 2006). Accessed 27 November 2010. 33. “Dino Battaglia,” Lambiek Comiclopedia, Lambiek.net, http://lambiek.net/artists/b/ battaglia_dino.htm. Accessed 27 November 2010. See also “Dino Battaglia,” DanDare.Info, http://www.dandare.info/artists/battaglia.htm. Accessed 27 November 2010. 34. In an early draft of the first edition of this book, I had written that the Hungarianborn British illustrator Victor Ambrus seemed a possibility. The artist was engaged in freelance work in 1961, but I wasn’t satisfied at the time that the British connection could be defended, so I struck the passage before submitting the manuscript to the publisher. Battaglia seems a much closer stylistic match. 35. For a useful comparative analysis of the 1948, 1961, and 1990 Classics Illustrated treatments of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, see Derek Parker Royal, “Meddling with ‘hifalut’n foolishness’: Capturing Mark Twain in Recent Comics,” The Mark Twain Annual, 7:1 (Wiley Online Library, first published online 22 Oc-

CHAPTER NOTES tober 2009), pp. 22–51, http://onlinelibrary. wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1756-2597.2009.00016. x/pdf. Accessed 27 November 2010. 36. Norbert Bachleitner, “Jane Eyre for Young Readers: Three Illustrated Adaptations,” in A Breath of Fresh Eyre: Intertextual and Intermedial Reworkings of Jane Eyre, ed. Margarete Rubik and Elke Mettinger-Schartmann (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), p. 280. 37. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 10 November 2010. 38. Ibid. 39. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 30 July 2010. 40. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 23 July 2010. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 1 September 2010. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 28 June 2010. 49. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 5 December 2010. 50. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 23 July 2010. 51. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 10 November 2010. 52. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 21 August 1994. 53. The following are titles and copyright dates for randomly selected mass-market paperback editions of works that had appeared in Classics Illustrated: The Last of the Mohicans (Washington Square Press, 1957); Macbeth (Dell, 1959); Gulliver’s Travels (Signet, 1960); The Red Badge of Courage (Airmont, 1962). 54. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to ClassicsC ollectibles, Vol. I, p. 34. 55. Ibid. 56. Michael Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics: The Man Behind the Gilberton Company,” Journal of Popular Culture, 20:4 (Spring 1987), p. 14. 57. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 17 September 1994. 58. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 31 July 2010.

Chapter XXIII 1. John (Buzz) Kanter, E-mail to author, 15 August 2010. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 19 August 2010. 6. Buzz Kanter, E-mail to author, 15 August 2010. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid.

9. Thorpe & Porter Holdings Limited was incorporated in Britain on 20 October 1959 and was dissolved in 1972. See certification pursuant to the Companies Acts 1948 to 1981 by Assistant Registrar of Companies E.D. Blundell (22 November 1982). 10. Buzz Kanter, E-mail to author, 15 August 2010. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid.

Chapter XXIV 1. Eleanor Lidofsky, Interview with author, 1 February 2009. 2. Advertisement (“Introducing ... Picture Parade”), The Instructor (October 1953), p. 99. 3. Lidofsky, Interview with author, 1 February 2009. 4. William W. Savage, Jr., Comic Books and America, 1945 –1954 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), pp. 16–17. 5. Eleanor Lidofsky, Interview with author, 1 February 2009. 6. Ibid. 7. Helen Heffernan, “The RIGHT Comics Can Be Classroom Tools,” The Instructor (November 1955), p. 91. 8. Ibid. 9. Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, Letter to Rich Rostel, 3 September 1981. (Courtesy of John Haufe.) 10. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 81. 11. The identity of the Aladdin artist has been debated vigorously over the years, but a careful comparison of stylistic indicators in Aladdin and Soldiers of Fortune, No. 119 (May 1954), has led this writer to conclude, as he almost did before the publication of the previous edition of this work, that Schaffenberger drew both books. 12. Hubert H. Crawford, Crawford’s Encyclopedia of Comic Books, p. 229. 13. Malan, Complete Guide, Vol. I, p. 73. 14. Keith Scott, The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 64. 15. Charlotte Stafford, “The Deaf Can Get Concepts from Comics,” The Instructor (December 1967), p. 40. 16. Ibid. 17. Ron Goulart, “M.C. Gaines,” The Encyclopedia of American Comics, ed. Goulart, p. 147. 18. Øystein Sørensen, E-mail to author, 21 November 2010. 19. See, however, Dan Malan, Complete Guide, Vol. I, p. 77, for an argument in favor of a 1966 publication date. See also the United Nations entry in Appendix G for a response. 20. Ibid., p. 79. 21. Ibid.

315 22. Alfred Sundel, Letter to author, 17 September 1994. 23. In Re: Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc., Amended Departmental Decision, Raymond J. Kelly, Judicial Officer, P.O.D. Docket No. 1/58 (19 April 1960).

Chapter XXV 1. Robert McG. Thomas, Jr., “Patrick Frawley, Jr., 75, Ex-Owner of Schick,” New York Times (Monday, 9 November 1998), p. 8B. 2. Ibid. 3. Michael Sawyer, “Albert Lewis and the Classics,” p. 15. 4. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 36. 5. Frank Walston, Classics Illustrated Field Manual (Philadelphia: Curtis Circulation Co., 1968). 6. O.B. Stiskin, Interview with author, 8 August 2002. 7. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 15; Malan, Complete Guide, Vol. I, p. 36. 8. Malan, Complete Guide, p. 36. 9. Dan Malan, The Classics Collector, No. 17 ( January 1996); Michael Sawyer, Interview with author, 25 October 2010. 10. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 16. 11. Malan, Complete Guide, Vol. I, p. 38. 12. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 16. 13. Malan, Complete Guide, Vol. I, p. 93. 14. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 16. 15. A number of original alternate covers exist—several, for instance, by Norman Nodel. These were studies that explored different scenes and subject matter for editorial approval and were not finished paintings. 16. Stiskin, Interview with author, 8 August 2002. 17. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 16. 18. Michael Sawyer, Interview with author, 25 October 2010. 19. Albert L. Kanter, quoted in Malan, Complete Guide, Vol. I, p. 38. 20. Hal Kanter, Note to author, 3 January 2003. 21. Sawyer, “Albert Lewis Kanter,” p. 16.

Chapter XXVI 1. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to ClassicsI llustrated, Vol. II, p. 11. 2. Ibid., p. 12. 3. Ibid., p. 42. 4. Ibid., p. 81. 5. Ibid., p. 83. 6. Helene Lecar, E-mail to author, 30 July 2010.

Chapter XXVII 1. Robert M. Overstreet, Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, No. 39 (York, Pa.: Gemstone Publishing, Inc., 2009), p. 689.

316 2. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. I, p. 83.

Chapter XXVIII 1. Dan Malan, “Interview: David Batt [Chief Financial Officer, Frawley Group],” The Classics Collector, No. 10 (February-March 1990), pp. 27–28. 2. Mike Benton, The Comic Book in America, p. 120. 3. Rick Obadiah, Interview with author; quoted in Bill Jones, “A Tale of Two Classics,” Spectrum, No. 126 (6–19 June 1990), p. 22. 4. Obadiah, in Jones, p. 22. 5. Ibid. 6. See Scott McCloud’s discussion of the universalizing impulse of sequential art in Understanding Comics, pp. 42–54. 7. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to ClassicsC ollectibles, Vol. I, p. 40. 8. Dan Malan, “CIE Drops NCI,” The Classics Collector, No. 17 ( January 1996), p. 11. 9. Michael Petránek, E-mail, to author, 1 September 2010. 10. Malan, “CIE Drops NCI,” p. 11.

Chapter XXIX 1. Madeleine Robins, Interview with author, 4 April 1997. 2. Ibid. 3. Robins, Interview with author, 23 July 1997. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Michael Tierney, Interview with author, 24 December 1998.

Chapter XXX 1. Jaak Jarve, E-mail to author, 23 August 2010.

CHAPTER NOTES 2. Ibid. 3. Jarve, Phone interview with author, 1 June 2010. 4. Jarve, E-mail, 23 August 2010. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Jack Lake Productions website, http:// www.jacklakeproductions.com/file1.asp, accessed 12 September 2010. 9. Jarve, E-mail, 23 August 2010. 10. Paul Buhle, “Political Education, Illustrated,” ZEEK: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture (2010), http://zeek.forward.com/arti cles/116478/, accessed 16 September 2010. 11. Jim Salicrup, Newsarama interview, 26 October 2007, http://forum.newsarama.com/ showthread.php?t=134346, accessed 18 September 2010. 12. Malcolm Jones, “Everything is Illuminated,” Newsweek (22 March 2008), http:// www.newsweek.com/2008/03/22/everythingis-illuminated.html, accessed 25 September 2010. 13. Excerpt from Library Media Connection review, http://www.papercutz.com/about2. html, accessed 29 September 2010. 14. Michael Petránek, E-mail to author, 1 September 2010. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid.

Chapter XXXI 1. Bill Briggs, Letter to author, 30 June 2000. 2. Wayne Munson, Letter to author, 10 November 2010. 3. Dan Malan, The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. One (St. Louis: Malan Classical Enterprises, Inc., 1991), p. 11. 4. John Haufe, Letter to author, 6 June 2000.

5. Jim McLoughlin, “A Trip to Dept. S, or Taking the Shoe-leather Express Down Ralph Ave.” (typed manuscript, circa 1987). 6. Raymond S. True, Letter to Robert M. Overstreet, 11 November 1971. 7. Robert M. Overstreet, Letter to Raymond S. True, 17 November 1971. 8. John Haufe, “Raiders of the Lost Art ... Raymond True and the Class of Classics” (typed manuscript). 9. Ibid. 10. Michael Sawyer, Interview with author, 18 September 2010. 11. Dan Malan, “Classics Displays,” The Classics Collector, No. 14 (December 1991), p. 10.

Chapter XXXII 1. See Bart Beaty, “Featuring Stories by the World’s Greatest Authors: Classics Illustrated and the ‘Middlebrow Problem’ in the Postwar Era,” International Journal of Comic Art, 1:1 (Spring/Summer 1999), 122–139. Notwithstanding a few factual errors (dates, number of issues, and the confusing of the 1950 Famous Authors adaptation of Macbeth with the 1955 Gilberton edition), Beaty’s article is a profoundly perceptive analysis of the cultural context in which Classics Illustrated contended and thrived. 2. Jim McLoughlin, Interview with author, 31 May 2000. 3. George Eliot, Middlemarch, ed. W.J. Harvey (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), Epigraph, Chapter 70, p. 756. 4. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli (New York: Scribner, 2003), Chapter VI, p. 116. 5. Ibid., Chapter IX, p. 189.

Appendices Containing A. Classic Comics and Classics Illustrated; B. Classics Illustrated Giant Editions; C. Fast Fiction/Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated; D. Classics Illlustrated Educational Series; E. Picture Parade/Picture Progress; F. Classics Illustrated Junior; G. Classics Illustrated Special Issues; H. The Best from Boys’ Life Comics; I. The World Around Us; J. British Classics Illustrated, First and Second Series; K. Classics Illustrated, Second Series (Berkley/First); L. Classics Illustrated, Fourth Series ( Jack Lake); M. Classics Illustrated, Fourth Series ( Jack Lake); N. Classics Illustrated Junior, Second Series ( Jack Lake); O. Classics Illustrated Special Issues, Second Series ( Jack Lake); P. British Classics Illustrated, Third Series; Q. Papercutz Classics Illustrated DeLuxe Editions; R. Papercutz Classics Illustrated Editions; S. Correspondence Between Roberta Strauss and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, re: The Dark Frigate; T. Letter from Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht to E. Nelson Bridwell.

A. Classic Comics (Gilberton, 1941–1947) and Classics Illustrated (Gilberton, 1947–1967; Frawley, 1967–1971) Classic Comics Nos. 1–12 (including reprints of first interior art) contained 64 pages (covers not included); Classic Comics and Classics Illustrated Nos. 13 –25 and 27–44 contained 56 pages (covers not included; most reduced to 48 pages in 1948 –1950 reprints); Classic Comics No. 26 contained 48 pages (covers not included); Classics Illustrated Nos. 45 –169 and new editions of earlier titles contained 48 pages (covers not included). LDC = line-drawing cover; PC = Painted cover; A1 = first interior art; A2 = second interior art; HRN = Highest Reorder Number (last number on backcover or inside-cover title list; a term of art devised by Raymond S. True and universally adopted for purposes of dating issues). All Classic Comics editions had line-drawing covers. Number of printings stated at end of each entry reflects total for indicated title, with different editions reflected in parentheses. Note that certain HRN 149 reprints were actually printed in 1961 and that no evidence exists of HRN 167 reprints issued in 1962.

1. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Line-drawing cover, first interior art, and first adaptation by Malcolm Kildale; Dumas biography; back-cover “Coming Next” illo by Malcolm Kildale. First CC LDC A1 printing October 1941 [no HRN, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC A1 printings April 1943 [HRN 10], November 1943 [HRN 15], April-May 1944 [HRN 18/20], July 1944 [HRN 21], June 1946 [HRN 28, left-margin matter trimmed]. First CI LDC A1 printing April 1947 [HRN 36]; subsequent CI LDC A1 printings AprilJune 1949 [HRN 60], October 1949 [HRN 64], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], March 1952 [HRN 93], December 1953 [HRN 114]. Painted cover unattributed, first interior art. First CI PC A1 printing September 1956 [HRN 134, 64 pages, 15¢]; second PC A1 printing March 1958 [HRN 143]. Painted cover with second interior art by George Evans; new Dumas biography. First PC A2 printing May 1950 [HRN 150, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC A2 printings Summer-Fall 1961 [HRN 149, an anomaly in which the new titlelist format was used, showing Off on a Comet and The Time Machine as icons against a white background, while the title list itself largely reverted to the 1959 CI catalogue], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], April 1964 [HRN 167], January 1965 [HRN 167], March 1966 [HRN

167], November 1967 [HRN 166], Spring 1969 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢], Spring 1971 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Twenty-three printings (six CC, six CI LDC, two PC A1, nine PC A2); one Double Comics promotional edition (1942). 2. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Line-drawing cover by Malcolm Kildale, first interior art by Edd Ashe, Ray Ramsey (title-page splash), and others; Scott biography; back-cover “Coming Next” illo by Vivian Lipman. First CC LDC A1 printing December 1941 [no HRN, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC A1 printings April 1943 [HRN 10, word “Presents” deleted after “Classic Comics”]; November 1943 [HRN 15], April-May 1944 [HRN 18/20]; July 1944 [HRN 21]; June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC A1 printing April 1947 [HRN 36]; subsequent CI LDC A1 printings April-June 1949 [HRN 60], October 1949 [HRN 64], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], November 1951 [HRN 89], April 1953 [HRN 106], July 1954 [HRN 121]. Painted cover unattributed, second interior art by Norman Nodel; Scott biography. First CI PC A2 printing January 1957 [HRN 136, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC A2 printings January 1958 [HRN 142], November 1959 [HRN 153], Summer-Fall 1961 [anomalous whitebackground HRN 149], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], May 1964 [HRN 167], January 1965 [HRN 167], March 1966 [HRN 167], September 1967 [HRN 166], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover], Winter 1971 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Twenty-five printings (six CC, seven CI LDC, twelve PC A2); one Walter Theatre Enterprises promotional giveaway (December 1941); one Twin Circle edition (1968). 3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Line-drawing cover by Ray Ramsey, first interior art by Ray Ramsey, Allen Simon, and Vivian Lipman; “Important Milestones in the Life of Napoleon”; Dumas biography; back-cover “Coming Next” illo by Ray Ramsey. First CC LDC A1 printing March 1942 [no HRN, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings April 1943 [HRN 10], November 1943 [HRN 15], April-May 1944 [HRN 18/20], June 1944 [HRN 20], July 1944 [HRN 21], June 1946 [HRN 28, yellow banner substituted]. First CI LDC A1 printing April 1947 [HRN 36]; subsequent CI LDC A1 printings April-June 1949 [HRN 60], August 1949 [HRN 62], May 1950 [HRN 71], September 1951 [HRN 87, 15¢], November 1953 [HRN 113]. Painted cover unattributed, second interior art by Lou Cameron; Dumas biography. First CI PC A2 printing November 1956 [HRN 135, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC A2 printings

317

318

APPENDIX A

March 1958 [HRN 143], November 1959 [HRN 153], March 1961 [HRN 161], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167], July 1965 [HRN 167], July 1966 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Twenty-three printings (seven CC, six CI LDC A1, ten PC A2). 4. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Linedrawing cover and first interior art by Ray Ramsey; Cooper biography; “SACO [Sino-American Cooperative Organization] Is Socko!” by Georgina Campbell [added 1946]; back-cover “Coming Next” illo by Louis Zansky. First CC LDC printing August 1942 [no HRN, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings June 1943 [HRN 12], November 1943 [HRN 15], June 1944 [HRN 20, yellow banner substituted], July 1944 [HRN 21], June 1946 [HRN 28]; first CI LDC printing April 1947 [HRN 36], subsequent CI LDC printings AprilJune 1949 [HRN 60], October 1949 [HRN 64], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], November 1951 [HRN 89], March 1954 [HRN 117]). Painted cover unattributed, first interior art. First PC A1 printing November 1956 [HRN 135, 64 pages, 15¢]; second PC A1 printing November 1957 [HRN 141]). Painted cover with second interior art by John P. Severin, Leonard B. Cole, and Stephen L. Addeo; Cooper biography. First PC A2 printing May 1959 [HRN 150, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC A2 printings March 1961 [HRN 161], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], August 1965 [HRN 167], August 1966 [HRN 167], 1967 [HRN 166, 25¢], Spring 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Twenty-two printings six CC LDC A1, six CI LDC A1, two PC A1, eight PC A2); one Sealtest promotional giveaway (November 1956); one Twin Circle edition (1967). 5. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Louis Zansky, assisted by Harvey Kurtzman, lettering by Fred Eng, first adaptation by Louis Zansky; Melville biography; “Concord Hymn” by Ralph Waldo Emerson [added 1943]; backcover “Coming Next” illo unattributed. First CC LDC printing September 1942 (two variants) [no HRN, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings April 1943 [HRN 10], November 1943 [HRN 15], April-May 1944 [HRN 18/20], June 1944 [HRN 20], July 1944 [HRN 21], June 1946 [HRN 28, yellow banner substituted]. First CI LDC printing April 1947 [HRN 36], subsequent CI LDC printings April-June 1949 [HRN 60], August 1949 [HRN 62], May 1950 [HRN 71], September 1951 [HRN 87, 15¢], April 1954 [HRN 118]. First painted cover (Ahab in profile, foreground) unattributed, second interior art by Norman Nodel; Melville biography; first printing March 1956 [HRN 131, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC1 A2 printings May 1957 [HRN 138], January 1959 [HRN 148], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], July 1965 [HRN 167], March 1966 [HRN 167], September 1967 [HRN 166]). Second painted cover (Moby Dick attacking) by Norman Nodel, second interior art. First printing Winter 1969 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢]; second PC2 A2 printing Winter 1971 [HRN 169]. Twenty-four printings (seven CC LDC A1, six CI LDC A1, nine PC1 A2, two PC2 A2). 6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Stanley Maxwell Zuckerberg, lettering by Fred Eng, first adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; Dickens biography; open-book device introduced on front cover; back-cover “Coming Next” illo by Louis Zansky. First CC LDC printing October 1942 [no HRN, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings September 1943 [HRN 14], March 1944 [HRN 18], June 1944 [HRN 20], June 1946 [HRN 28, yellow banner substituted]. First CI LDC printing September 1948 [HRN 51]; subsequent CI LDC printings October 1949 [HRN 64], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], November 1951 [HRN 89], March 1954 [HRN 117]. First painted cover (Carton at the guillotine) unattributed, second interior art by Joe Orlando, assisted by George Evans; second adaptation by Annette T. Rubinstein;

Dickens biography. First printing May 1956 [HRN 132, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC1 A2 printings September 1957 [HRN 140], November 1958 [HRN 147], September 1959 [HRN 152], November 1959 [HRN 153], Summer-Fall 1961 [anomalous white-background HRN 149, see note in listing for No. 1], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], August 1965 [HRN 167], May 1967 [HRN 166]. Second painted cover (mob storming the Bastille) by Norman Nodel, second interior art. First PC2 A2 printing Fall 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]; second PC2 A2 printing Summer 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Twenty-two printings (seven CC LDC A1, six CI LDC A1, nine PC1 A2, two PC2 A2). 7. Robin Hood (medieval ballads and folk tales). Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Louis Zansky, inking and lettering by Fred Eng, first adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; back-cover Gift Box ad. First CC LDC printing December 1942 [no HRN, 64 pages, 10¢]; Saks-34th Christmas giveaway with Zansky wraparound cover simultaneously issued; subsequent CC LDC printings June 1943 [HRN 12]; March 1944 [HRN 18]; June 1944 [HRN 20]; October 1944 [HRN 22]; June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC printing September 1948 [HRN 51]; subsequent CI LDC printings October 1949 [HRN 64], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], July 1952 [HRN 97], April 1953 [HRN 106], July 1954 [HRN 121]. Painted cover by Victor Prezio, first interior art; one PC A1 printing November 1955 [HRN 129]. Painted cover, second interior art by Jack Sparling, second adaptation (possibly by Annette T. Rubinstein), based in part on Howard Pyle’s Merry Adventures of Robin Hood; first PC A2 printing January 1957 [HRN 136, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC A2 printings March 1958 [HRN 143], November 1959 [HRN 153], October 1961 [HRN 164], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], May 1965 [HRN 167], July 1966 [HRN 167], December 1967 [HRN 166], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Twentythree printings (six CC LDC A1, six CI LDC A1, one PC A1, ten PC A2); one Saks-34th promotional giveaway (December 1942); one Robin Hood Flour promotional giveaway (December 1944). 8. Arabian Nights (anonymous; based on The Thousand and One Nights): “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”; “The Story of the Magic Horse”; “The Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor”; “Aladdin and His Magic Lamp.” Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Lillian Chestney (Zuckerberg), lettering by Fred Eng, first adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; “The Tyrant of Etreus” by Evelyn Goodman; “Some Wonders of the Ancient World”; “Letter from a British Medical Worker,” added January 1944, replaced June 1944 by “Three Men Named Smith”; back-cover “Coming Next” illo (for Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) by Louis Zansky. First CC LDC printing February 1943 [no HRN, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings January 1944 [HRN 17], June 1944 [HRN 20]; June 1946 [HRN 28, yellow banner substituted]. First CI LDC printing September 1948 [HRN 51]; subsequent CI LDC printings October 1949 [HRN 64], December 1950 [HRN 78, printed in Canada, 15¢]. Arabian Nights: “Aladdin”; “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”; “Sinbad the Sailor.” Painted cover unattributed, second interior art by Charles Berger, second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; “Arabian Nights [Antoine Galland]”; “The Splendid East [Friar Odoric]”; “A Japanese Legend [The Boy Who Drew Cats].” One CI PC A2 printing October 1961 [HRN 164, 48 pages, 15¢]. Eight printings (four CC LDC A1, three CI LDC A1, one PC A2); one American Comics/Liberty Theatre promotional giveaway (February 1943). 9. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Rolland H. Livingstone, lettering by Fred Eng, first adaptation by Evelyn Goodman, yellow Classic Comics rectangle introduced; Hugo biography; “The Bill of Rights: Our Charter of Democracy” [added 1944]; “La Marseillaise”; “The Statue of Liberty: A Gift from France”; back-cover notice advertising Adventures of

APPENDIX A Sherlock Holmes, Robinson Crusoe, and Don Quixote. First CC LDC printing March 1943 (two variants) [no HRN, first appearance of yellow banner, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings September 1943 [HRN 14], March 1944 [HRN 18], June 1944 [HRN 20], June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC printing September 1948 [HRN 51]; subsequent CI LDC printings May 1950 [HRN 71], September 1951 [HRN 87, 15¢]. First painted cover ( Jean Valjean and Cosette on rooftop) by Gerald McCann, second interior art by Norman Nodel, second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Hugo biography; “Crime and Punishment [18th-century French criminal procedure]”; “The Boy Who Hated Washing [Peter Cooper].” First printing March 1961 [HRN 161, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC1 A2 printings September 1963 [HRN 167], December 1965 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover ( Jean Valjean lifting cart) by Norman Nodel, second interior art. First and only PC2 A2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Twelve printings (five CC LDC A1, three CI LDC A1, three PC1 A2, one PC2 A2). 10. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Stanley Maxwell (Zuckerberg), adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; Defoe biography; Poems of the Sea: “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold “Break, Break, Break” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Three Fishers” by Charles Kingsley; “Joan Fernandez ... Desert Explorer”; “The Bill of Rights: Our Charter of Democracy” [added 1944; replaced 1946 by “With Leg Shot Away — Mans Gun for 8 Hours”]; back-cover “Coming Next” illo by Louis Zansky. First CC LDC printing April 1943 (two front-cover color variations showing violet or blue-gray frames) [no HRN, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings September 1943 (two front-cover color variations showing violet or blue-gray frames) [HRN 14], March 1944 [HRN 18], June 1944 [HRN 20], June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC printing September 1948 [HRN 51]; subsequent CI LDC printings October 1949 [HRN 64], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], July 1952 [HRN 97], December 1953 [HRN 114]. Painted cover unattributed, first interior art. First and only printing January 1956 [HRN 130, 64 pages, 15¢]. Painted cover, second interior art by Sam Citron and/or Charles Sultan; Defoe biography. First printing September 1957 [HRN 140, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC A2 printings November 1953 [HRN 153], Fall 1961 [HRN 164], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167], May 1965 [HRN 167], June 1966 [HRN 167], Fall 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢], Winter 1968 [HRN 166], Summer 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Twenty-one printings (five CC LDC A1, five CI LDC A1, one PC A2, ten PC A2); one Twin Circle edition (1968). 11. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Louis Zansky, adaptation by Samuel H. Abramson; Cervantes biography; “Captain Arthur Wermuth ... Hero of Bataan” by Evelyn Goodman; Poems from the American Indian: “Ojibwa War Songs,” “Lament of a Man for His Son (Paiute),” “Song of the Rain Chant (Navaho),” “The Bear’s Song (From the Haida)”; backcover “Coming Next” illo by Rolland H. Livingstone. First CC LDC printing May 1943 [HRN 10, first issue to list titles, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings March 1944 [HRN 18], July 1944 [HRN 21], June 1946 [HRN 28]. First painted cover (Don Quixote charging smiling windmill) by Mort Künstler, original interior art. First CI PC1 printing August 1953 [HRN 110, 64 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC1 printings May 1960 [HRN 156, 48 pages, 15¢], 1962 [HRN 165], January 1964 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (Don Quixote in foreground) by Taylor Oughton, original interior art. First and only printing 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Ten printings (four CC LDC, five PC1, one PC2); one Canadian CI LDC edition (1947). 12. Rip Van Winkle and The Headless Horseman by Washington Irving. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Rolland H. Livingstone, first adaptation by Dan Levin; Irving biography; “...And

319

One Came Back: The true story of a lone survivor of a bomber crew” by Evelyn Goodman; “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson; back-cover “Coming Next” illo by Arnold L. Hicks. First CC LDC printing June 1943 [HRN 11, 64 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings November 1943 [HRN 15], June 1944 [HRN 20], October 1944 [HRN 22], June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC A1 printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60]; subsequent CI LDC A1 printings August 1949 [HRN 62], May 1950 [HRN 71], November 1951 [HRN 89], April 1954 [HRN 118]. First painted cover (old Rip waking) unattributed (“and The Headless Horseman” dropped from title), first interior art. First and only printing May 1956 [HRN 132]. First painted cover, second interior art by Norman Nodel; Irving biography. First CI PC1 A2 printing May 1959 [HRN 150, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 A2 printings Fall 1960 [HRN 158], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 167], December 1963 [HRN 167], April 1965 [HRN 167], April 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (young Rip looking over shoulder) by Taylor Oughton, second interior art; first PC2 A2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 48 pages, 25¢]; second PC2 A2 printing Summer 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Nineteen printings (five CC LDC A1, five CI LDC A1, one PC1 A1, six PC1 A2, two PC2 A2). 13. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. First linedrawing cover (“horror” cover) and first interior art by Arnold L. Hicks, first adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; Stevenson biography; “Secret Under the Sea” by Dan Kushner; back-cover “Coming Next” illo by Allen Simon. First CC LDC1 printing August 1943 [HRN 12, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC1 printings November-December 1943 [HRN 15], June1944 [HRN 20], June 1946 [HRN 28]. Second line-drawing cover by Henry C. Kiefer, original interior art; first CI LDC2 printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60]; subsequent CI LDC2 printings August 1949 [HRN 62], May 1950 [HRN 71], September 1951 [HRN 87]. Painted cover by Mort Künstler ( Jekyll was artist’s self-portrait), second interior art by Lou Cameron; Stevenson biography. First CI PC printing October 1953 [HRN 112, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC printings November 1959 [HRN 153], March 1961 [HRN 161], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], August 1964 [HRN 167], November 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 [HRN 169]. Sixteen printings (four CC LDC1 A1, four CI LDC2 A1, eight PC A2); one Twin Circle edition (1968). 14. Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Allen Simon, adaptation by Dan Kushner; Kingsley biography; “The Railway Train [I like to see it lap the miles]” by Emily Dickinson, illustrated by Lillian Chestney; “Victory March” by Evelyn Goodman; “The Cost of Carelessness” by David Butler, Jr.; “Three Men Named Smith” [added July 1944, replaced June 1946 by “Speaking for America (Truman, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nimitz)”]; back-cover “Coming Next” illo by Rolland H. Livingstone. First CC LDC printing September 1943 [HRN 13]; subsequent CC LDC printings November-December 1943 [HRN 15], July 1944 [HRN 21], June 1946 [HRN 28]. One CI LDC printing November 1948 [HRN 53]. Five printings (four CC LDC, one CI LDC; no PC edition in U.S. series). 15. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Rolland H. Livingstone, adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; “Flight Over Tokyo” by Michael Sullivan; “The Children’s Hour” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, illustrated by Vivian Lipman; Stowe biography; “Coming Next” illo by Lillian Chestney. First CC LDC printing November 1943(two front-cover color variations showing green or brown root) [HRN 14]; subsequent CC LDC printings November-December 1943 (two front-cover color variations showing green or brown root) [HRN 15], July 1944 [HRN 21], June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC printing November 1948 [HRN 53]; subsequent CI LDC printings May 1950 [HRN 71], No-

320

APPENDIX A

vember 1951 [HRN 89]. First painted cover (pursuit of slave) unattributed, new interior lettering; first CI PC 1 A2 printing March 1954 [HRN 117, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC1 printings September 1955[HRN 128], March 1957 [HRN 137], September 1958 [HRN 146], January 1960 [HRN 154], March 1961 [HRN 161], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], May 1965 [HRN 167], May 1967 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First CI PC2 printing Winter 1969; second CI PC2 printing Summer 1970 [HRN 169]. Nineteen printings (four CC LDC, three CI LDC, ten PC1, two PC2); one Get-Well (Pressman Pharmacy) promotional giveaway (1958). 16. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Lillian Chestney (Zuckerberg), adaptation (from Part I, “A Voyage to Lilliput”) by Dan Kushner; “The Purple Heart” by Technical Sergeant Hal Kanter; “I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman; Swift biography; “Coming Next” illo by Louis Zansky. First CC LDC printing December 1943 [HRN 15, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings May 1944 [HRN 18/20]; October 1944 [HRN 22]; June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC printing AprilJune 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC printings August 1949 [HRN 62], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], November 1951 [HRN 89]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First CI PC printing March 1960 [HRN 155, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC printings 1962 [HRN 165], May 1964 [HRN 167], November 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Fourteen printings (four CC LDC, four CI LDC, six PC); one Twin Circle edition (1968). 17. The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Louis Zansky, adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; Cooper biography; “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe; “Bombs ... and ... Sand” by Michael Sullivan; “The Lost Chutists” by Edward Gordon; “Medals for Heroes”; “Coming Next” illo by Allen Simon. First CC LDC printing January 1944 [HRN 16, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings March 1944 (two variants) [HRN 18], October 1944 [HRN 22], June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC printings October 1949 [HRN 64], July 1951 [HRN 85], April 1954 [HRN 118], May 1956 [HRN 132]. Painted cover by Stephen L. Addeo, original interior art. First CI PC printing 1968 [HRN 166, 48 pages, 25¢]; second CI PC printing Spring 1971 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Twelve printings (four CC LDC, six CI LDC, two PC). 18. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. First linedrawing cover (“horror” cover) and first interior art by Allen Simon, first adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; Hugo biography; “The Story of Staff Sergeant Schiller Cohen and His Fortress ‘Stinky!’” by Dan Levin; “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Louis Zansky; “Coming Next” illo by Louis Zansky. First CC LDC1 printing March 1944 (two variants) [HRN 17, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC1 printings April-May 1944 [HRN 18/20], October 1944 [HRN 22], June 1946 [HRN 28]. Second line-drawing cover (Esmeralda and Djali) by Henry C. Kiefer, original interior art. First CI LDC2 printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC2 printings August 1949 [HRN 62], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], November 1951 (two variants) [HRN 89], April 1954 [HRN 118]. First painted cover (Esmeralda and Quasimodo on scaffold) unattributed, original interior art; first CI PC1 A1 printing September 1957 [HRN 140, 48 pages, 15¢]; second CI PC1 A1 printing September 1958 [HRN 146]. Second painted cover (Quasimodo and gargoyles) by Gerald McCann, second interior art by Reed Crandall and George Evans, second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Hugo biography; “The Wanderers [Gypsies]”; “From Osiris to O’Neill” [history of theatre]. First CI PC2 printing Fall 1960 [HRN 158, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC2 printings Spring 1962 [HRN 165], September

1963 [HRN 167], October 1964 [HRN 167], April 1966 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Eighteen printings (four CC LDC1 A1, five CI LDC2 A1, two PC1 A1, seven PC2 A2); one Canadian CI LDC1 A1 edition (1947). 19. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). Linedrawing cover and first interior art by Louis Zansky, first adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; Twain biography; “Air Spies, Their Missions— Their Accomplishments” by June Slater; “Old Ironsides” by Oliver Wendell Holmes; “A Day’s Work — Heroes All” by Steve Dale; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Allen Simon. First CC LDC A1 printing April 1944 (two variants) [HRN 18, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings April-May 1944 [HRN 18], October 1944 [HRN 22], June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC A1 printing AprilJune 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC A1 printings August 1949 [HRN 62], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], November 1951 [HRN 89], March 1954 [HRN 117]. Painted cover unattributed; second interior art by Mike Sekowsky (pencils) and Frank Giacoia (inking); Twain biography; first CI PC A2 printing March 1956 [HRN 131, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC A2 printings May 1959 [HRN 150], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], Spring 1962 [HRN 165], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], June 1965 [HRN 167], October 1965 [HRN 167], September 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢], Summer 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Twenty-one printings (four CC LDC A1, five CI LDC A1, twelve PC A2). 20. The Corsican Brothers by Alexandre Dumas. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Allen Simon, adaptation by Stephen Burrows; Dumas biography; “Modern Twins in Service” by Hal Kane [Hal Kanter]; “Things for Which We Fight” by Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell; “The American’s Creed” by William Tyler Page; “The Emblem of Invasion.” First CC LDC printing June 1944 (five variants) [HRN 20, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC printings October 1944 (white logo banner substituted) [HRN 22], June 1946 [HRN 28]. First CI LDC printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC printings August 1949 (two variants) [HRN 62], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], July 1952 [HRN 97]. Seven printings (three CC LDC, four CI LDC; no PC edition in U.S. series). 21. 3 Famous Mysteries. Composite line-drawing cover by Louis Zansky, Allen Simon, and Arnold L. Hicks; three stories, adaptations by Dan Levin: The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; art by Louis Zansky; The Flayed Hand by Guy de Maupassant; art by Allen Simon; The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe; art by Arnold L. Hicks; Conan Doyle, Maupassant, Poe biographies; “From ‘The Kid’ to a Fighting Man” by Hal Kane [Hal Kanter]; “Coming Next” illo by Louis Zansky. First CC LDC printing; July 1944 (three variants) [HRN 21, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CC LDC printings October 1944 [HRN 22], September 1946 [HRN 30]. First CI LDC printing August 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC printings April 1950 [HRN 70], July 1951 [HRN 85, 15¢]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art; first and only CI PC printing December 1953 [HRN 114, 15¢]. Seven printings (three CC LDC, three CI LDC, one PC). 22. The Pathfinder by James Fenimore Cooper. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Louis Zansky, adaptation by Evelyn Goodman; Cooper biography; “Unsung Heroes of the Armed Forces” by Henry Irving; “20-Year-Old Paratrooper Helps Eliminate 500 Germans in Normandy”; “More Ways Than One to Kill Japs”; “Coming Next” illo by Arnold L. Hicks. First CC LDC printing October 1944 (three variants) [HRN 22, 56 pages, 10¢]; second CC LDC printing September 1946 [HRN 30]. First CI LDC printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60]; subsequent CI LDC printings April 1950 [HRN 70], July 1951 [HRN 85], April 1954 [HRN 118], May 1956 [HRN 132], September 1958 [HRN 146]. Painted cover by Norman

APPENDIX A Nodel; first CI PC printing November 1963 [HRN 167, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC printings December 1965 [HRN 167], August 1967 [HRN 166]. Eleven printings (two CC LDC, six CI LDC, three PC). Unpublished, unfinished second interior art by Norman Nodel, unpublished adaptation by Alfred Sundel (1962). 23. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Arnold L. Hicks, lettering by Louis L. Goldklang, first adaptation by Georgina Campbell (first Iger Shop issue); Dickens biography; “The Case of the Little Duck” by Georgina Campbell; “Intrepid Medal Winner”; “Coming Next” illo by Jack Hearne. First CC LDC A1 printing July 1945 [HRN 23, 56 pages, 10¢]; second CC LDC A1 printing September 1946 (two variants, with or without printers’ union cover mark) [HRN 30]. First CI LDC A1 printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60]; subsequent CI LDC printings August 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages], May 1950 [HRN 71], July 1951 [HRN 85], April 1952 [HRN 94], April 1954 [HRN 118]. Painted cover unattributed, first interior art; January 1957 [HRN 136, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC A1 printings May 1959 [HRN 150], Fall 1961 [HRN 164]. Painted cover with second interior art by Reed Crandall and George Evans, second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Dickens biography; “The Pearl Robbery”; “A Leader of His People [Chaim Weizmann]”; first CI PCA2 printing Fall 1961 [HRN 164, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC A2 printings Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167]; August 1964 [HRN 167], December 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Seventeen printings (two CC LDC A1, six CI LDC A1, three PC A1, six PC A2). 24. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Jack Hearne, first adaptation by Ruth A. Roche and Tom Scott; lettering by Louis L. Goldklang; Twain biography; “Three Pals: 55, 65 and 75”; “Coming Next” illo by Robert H. Webb. First CC LDC printing September 1945 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]; second CC LDC printing September 1946 [HRN 30]. First CI LDC printing AprilJune 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC printings August 1949 [HRN 62], May 1950 [HRN 71], September 1951 [HRN 87], July 1954 [HRN 121]. Painted cover unattributed, second interior art by Jack Sparling; Twain biography; first CI PC A2 printing September 1957 [HRN 140, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC A2 printings November 1959 [HRN 153], Fall 1961 [HRN 164], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167], June 1966 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢], Spring 1971 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Fifteen printings (two CC LDC A1, five CI LDC A1, eight PC A2). 25. Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Linedrawing cover and interior art by Robert H. Webb and David Heames, lettering by Louis L. Goldklang, adaptation by Ruth A. Roche; Dana biography (page one); “The Yarn of the ‘Nancy Bell’” by W.S. Gilbert; “Wild Bill’s Cloak and Dagger Outfit” by Georgina Campbell; American Rivers: “The Historic Ohio”; “Coming Next” illo by Robert H. Webb. First CC LDC A1 printing October 1945 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]; second CC LDC A1 printing September 1946 [HRN 30]. First CI LDC A1 printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC A1 printings August 1949 [HRN 62], May 1950 [HRN 71], July 1951 [HRN 85], December 1953 [HRN 114]. Painted cover unattributed, recolored original art; Dana biography; “Dugout to Diesel”; “Buried Treasure”; first CI PC A2 printing May 1960 [HRN 156, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC A2 printings December 1963 [HRN 167], December 1965 [HRN 167], September 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Twelve printings (two CC LDC A1, five CI LDC A1, five PC A2). 26. Frankenstein by Mary W. Shelley. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Robert H. Webb and Ann Brewster, lettering by Louis L. Goldklang, adaptation by Ruth A. Roche and Tom Law (pseudo-

321

nym of Walt Anderson); Shelley biography; “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; “The ‘Ghost of Corregidor’” by Georgina Campbell; “Coming Next” illo by Homer Fleming. First CC LDC printing December 1945 [HRN 26, 48 pages, 10¢]; second CC LDC printing September 1946 (two variants, price indicated or not) [HRN 30]. First CI LDC printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60]; subsequent CI LDC printings August 1949 [HRN 62], May 1950 [HRN 71], March 1951 (two variants) [HRN 82, soft or stiff covers, 15¢], March 1954 [HRN 117]. Painted cover by Norman B. Saunders, original interior art; first CI PC printing September 1958 [HRN 146, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC printings September 1959 [HRN 152], November 1959 [HRN 153], January 1961 [HRN 160], Spring 1962 [HRN 165], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], June 1965 [HRN 167], October 1965 [HRN 167], September 1967 [HRN 166], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢], Spring 1971 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Nineteen printings (two CC LDC, five CI LDC, twelve PC). 27. The Adventures of Marco Polo (based on The Travels of Marco Polo and Donn Byrne’s Messer Marco Polo [per manuscript]). Linedrawing cover and interior art by Homer Fleming, lettering by Louis L. Goldklang, adaptation by Emanuel Demby; biography of John Greenleaf Whittier; “Barbara Frietchie” by John Greenleaf Whittier; “Iroquois: People of the Long House”; “This Is No Joke: A plainspoken letter from Red Skelton, one of America’s greatest comedy stars”; “Coming Next” illo by Arnold L. Hicks. First CC LDC printing April 1946 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]; second CC LDC printing September 1946 [HRN 30]. First CI LDC printing April 1950 [HRN 70, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC printings September 1951 [HRN 87, 15¢], March 1954 [HRN 117]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art; first CI PC printing January 1960 [HRN 154, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC printings Spring 1962 [HRN 165], April 1964 [HRN 167], June 1966 [HRN 167], Spring 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Ten printings (two CC LDC, three CI LDC, five PC). 28. Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Arnold L. Hicks, adaptation by Pat Adam; Verne biography; “Chaplains Courageous”; “Come On, Balto! Come On, Good Dog!” “Coming Next” illo by Arnold L. Hicks. First and only CC LDC printing June 1946 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]. One CI LDC printing September 1948 [HRN 51, 48 pages]. First painted cover (Michael facing bear) unattributed, original interior art; first CI PC1 printing January 1954 [HRN 115, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC1 printings March 1960 [HRN 155], November 1963 [HRN 167], July 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (flogging of Marfa Strogoff ) by Norman Nodel, original interior art. First and only CI PC2 printing Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings (one CC LDC, one CI LDC, four PC1, one PC2). 29. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). First line-drawing cover (“horror” cover) and interior art by Arnold L. Hicks, adaptation by Scott Feldman and Jack Bass; Twain biography; The American Indian: “The Pequot”; “Coming Next” illo by Don Rico. First and only CC LDC1 printing July 1946 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]. Second line-drawing cover (Henry VIII, Edward, Tom) by Henry C. Kiefer, original interior art; first CI LDC2 printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC2 printings August 1949 [HRN 62], May 1950 [HRN 71], March 1952 [HRN 93], December 1953 [HRN 114]. Painted cover by George Wilson, original interior art; first CI PC printing September 1955 [HRN 128, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC printings May 1957 [HRN 138], May 1959 [HRN 150], Fall 1961 [HRN 164], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167], November 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢], Summer 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Fifteen printings (one CC LDC1, five CI LDC2, nine PC). 30. The Moonstone by William Wilkie Collins. Line-drawing cover

322

APPENDIX A

and interior art by Don Rico (replaced Allen Simon [per manuscript]), adaptation by Dan Levin; Collins biography; American Rivers: “The Delaware”; “The Fighting Cheyennes”; Dog Heroes: “Queenie — German Shepherd”; “Coming Next” illo by Arnold L. Hicks. First and only CC LDC printing September 1946 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]. First CI LDC printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; second CI LDC printing April 1950 [HRN 70]. Painted cover by Leonard B. Cole, original interior art; first CI PC printing March 1960 [HRN 155, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC printings Spring 1962 [HRN 165], January 1964 [HRN 167], September 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Eight printings (one CC LDC, two CI LDC, five CI PC). 31. The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Arnold L. Hicks, lettering by Louis L. Goldklang, adaptation by Ruth A. Roche and Tom Scott; Stevenson biography; Dog Heroes: “‘Blackie’: Belgian Shepherd”; Pioneers of Science: “Joseph Priestley, the Father of Soda Water and Discoverer of Oxygen” (later reprinted in No. 138A); “Coming Next” illo by Matt Baker. First and only CC LDC printing October 1946 [HRN 30, 56 pages, 10¢]. First CI LDC printing September 1948 [HRN 51, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC printings October 1949 [HRN 64], September 1951 [HRN 87], June 1953 [HRN 108], March 1955 [HRN 125]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art; first CI PC printing March 1956 [HRN 131, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC printings September 1957 [HRN 140], January 1959 [HRN 148], March 1961 [HRN 161], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167], November 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Fourteen printings (one CC LDC, five CI LDC, eight CI PC). 32. Lorna Doone by Richard Doddridge Blackmore. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Matt Baker, adaptation by Ruth A. Roche; Blackmore biography; Pioneers of Science: “Charles Martin Hall, the Schoolboy Scientist”; American Indians: “The Seminole” by John O’Rourke; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First and only CC LDC A1 printing December 1946 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]. First CI LDC A1 printing November 1948 [HRN 53, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC A1 printings October 1949 [HRN 64], July 1951 [HRN 85, 15¢], April 1954 [HRN 118]. First painted cover unattributed, recolored original Matt Baker art with reversed line-drawing cover illustration replacing original first-page splash. First CI PC1 A2 May 1957 [HRN 138, 15¢]; subsequent CI PC1 A2 printings May 1959 [HRN 150], Spring 1962 [HRN 165], January 1964 [HRN 167], November 1965 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover unattributed; 1957 recolored original art. First and only CI PC2 A2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Eleven printings (one CC LDC, four CI LDC, five CI PC1 A2, one CI PC2 A2). 33. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Line-drawing cover by Henry C. Kiefer (first Kiefer art in series); two stories in first edition: A Study in Scarlet; page-1 splash by Henry C. Kiefer, remainder of interior art by Louis Zansky (deleted after first printing); The Hound of the Baskervilles; page-20 splash by Henry C. Kiefer, remainder of interior art by Louis Zansky; Conan Doyle biography; Pioneers of Science: “William Murdock, Father of Gaslight”; “Still Echoing ... The Heartbeat of Lincoln”; “Ties Across the Sea”; “Coming Next” illo by Robert H. Webb. Delayed publication; originally scheduled for March 1943; First and only CC LDC printing January 1947 [HRN 33, 64 pages, 10¢]. First CI LDC printing November 1948 [HRN 53, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC printings May 1950 [HRN 71], November 1951 (two variants: one with, one without Kiefer’s front-cover signature) [HRN 89, 15¢]. No painted cover in U.S. series. Four printings (one CC LDC, three CI LDC). Note: Even before the deletion of A Study in Scarlet, Gilberton’s use of the title The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was misleading. A book of twelve stories by Conan Doyle had been published under that title

in 1892; it included neither A Study in Scarlet (1887) nor The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). A Study in Scarlet would later appear under the Classics Illustrated logo with new script and art as CI No. 110 (August 1953). 34. Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Robert H. Webb and David Heames, adaptation by Manning Stokes; Verne biography; American Indians: “The Siouan (Sioux) Family”; Pioneers of Science: “Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the Wizard of Electricity”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. Last Classic Comics issue. First and only CC LDC printing February 1947 [HRN 35, 56 pages, 10¢]; First CI LDC printing April-June 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages]; subsequent CI LDC printings August 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages], May 1950 [HRN 71], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], February 1952 [HRN 92], March 1954 [HRN 117]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art; first CI PC printing September 1957 [HRN 140, 15¢]; subsequent CI LDC printings May 1960 [HRN 156], October 1963 [HRN 167], May 1964 [HRN 167], June 1966 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Thirteen printings (one CC LDC, six CI LDC, six CI PC). 35. The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Linedrawing cover and first interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, first adaptation by I. Thomas; Bulwer-Lytton biography; “That Others Might Live”; “Ol’ Sea Dog Sinbad”; “Coming Next” illo by Ezra Whiteman. First Classics Illustrated issue; open-book device reintroduced. First and only LDC printing March 1947 [HRN 35, 56 pages, 10¢]. Painted cover unattributed, second interior art by Jack Kirby (pencils) and Dick Ayers (inking); adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Bulwer-Lytton biography; “Pyramus and Thisbe” (from The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch); “A Mound of Ruins [Lisbon Earthquake of 1755].” First PC printing March 1961 [HRN 161, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1964 [HRN 167], July 1966 [HRN 167], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings (one LDC A1, four PC A2). 36. Typee by Herman Melville. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Ezra Whiteman, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (pseudonym of Harry Glickman); Melville biography; American Indians: “The Tlingit”; Pioneers of Science: “Marie Sklodowska Curie, Discoverer of Radium”; “Coming Next” illo by Rudolph Palais. First LDC printing April 1947 [HRN 36, 56 pages, 10¢]; second LDC printing October 1949 [HRN 64, 48 pages]. Painted cover by Gerald McCann, original interior art. First PC printing March 1960 [HRN 155, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings September 1963 [HRN 167], July 1965 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169]. Six printings (two LDC, four PC). Second interior art by Luis Dominguez, commissioned for but not issued in U.S. series (1962); published in U.K. and international series. 37. The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Rudolph Palais, adaptation by Samuel Willinsky; Cooper biography; “Jungle Promise” by John Ladd; “What’s New About the U.N.?”; Pioneers of Science: “Thomas Alva Edison, Wizard of Menlo Park.” First LDC printing May 1947 [HRN 37, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings August 1949 (two variants, price indicated or not) [HRN 62, 48 pages]; April 1950 [HRN 70], February 1952 [HRN 92, 15¢], April 1954 [HRN 118], March 1956 [HRN 131], May-June 1956 [HRN 132], November 1959 [HRN 153], May 1964 [HRN 167], June 1966 [HRN 167]. Painted cover by Taylor Oughton, original interior art; one PC printing 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Eleven printings (ten LDC, one PC). 38. Adventures of Cellini (based on the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini). Line-drawing cover and first interior art by August M. Froehlich, first adaptation by Leslie Katz [per manuscript]; Pioneers of Science: “Eli Whitney, Inventor of the Cotton Gin”; American Rivers: “The Kennebec”; Dog Heroes: “Shorty the Spaniel”; “Coming

APPENDIX A Next” illo by Harley M. Griffiths. First and only LDC printing June 1947 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]. Painted cover unattributed, second interior art by Dino Battaglia(?), second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Cellini biography; “Waking the Dead [Renaissance]”; “Michelangelo.” First PC printing Fall 1961 [HRN 164, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings December 1963 [HRN 167], July 1966 [HRN 167], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings (one LDC A1, four PC A2). 39. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Harley M. Griffiths, first adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Brontë biography; The American Indians: “The Muskohegan Family, the Creek Confederacy”; “Great Heroes of the U.S. Navy.” First LDC printing July 1947 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent CI LDC printings April-June 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages], August 1949 [HRN 62], May 1950 [HRN 71], February 1952 [HRN 92, 15¢], April 1954 [HRN 118]. First painted cover (Rochester and fire) unattributed, first interior art. First PC1 A1 printing January 1958 [HRN 142, 15¢]; second PC1 A1 printing January 1960 [HRN 154]. First painted cover, second interior art by H.J. Kihl, second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Brontë biography; “The London Fire”; “Suffering Humanity [Dorothea Dix].” First PC1 A2 printing Spring 1962 [HRN 165, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 A2 printings December 1963 [HRN 167], April 1965 [HRN 167], August 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (Rochester and Jane) by Norman Nodel, second interior art; one PC2 A2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Thirteen printings (six LDC A1, two PC1 A1, four PC1 A2, one PC2 A2). 40. Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe. Line-drawing cover (“horror” cover) by Henry C. Kiefer; three stories: The Pit and the Pendulum; interior art by August M. Froehlich; The Adventures of Hans Pfall; interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; The Fall of the House of Usher; interior art by Harley M. Griffiths; adaptations by Samuel Willinsky; Poe biography; Pioneers of Science: “Robert Fulton, Inventor of the Steamboat”; Great Lives: “Ludwig Van Beethoven”; American Indians: “The Cherokee Nation” by John H. O’Rourke; “[Excerpt] from a Letter Written by George Washington in 1790”; “Coming Next” illo by Robert C. Burns. First LDC printing August 1947 [HRN 40, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings August 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages], September 1950 [HRN 75], February 1952 [HRN 92, 15¢]. Four printings (no PC edition). 41. Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas. First line-drawing cover (“horror” cover) and interior art by Robert C. Burns, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Dumas biography; Pioneers of Science: “Alexis Carrel”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First and only LDC1 printing September 1947 [no HRN, 56 pages, 10¢]. Second line-drawing cover (Queen Anne and musketeers) by Henry C. Kiefer, original interior art. First LDC2 printing August 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages]; second LDC2 printing December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢]. Painted cover by Doug Roea, original interior art; first PC printing May 1960 [HRN 156]; subsequent PC printings December 1963 [HRN 167], November 1966 [HRN 167], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings (one LDC1, two LDC2, four PC). 42. Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by Elspeth Campbell; Wyss biography; American Rivers: “The Saint Lawrence”; Pioneers of Science: “Charles Robert Darwin”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First LDC A1 printing October 1947 [HRN 42, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC A1 printings August 1949 (two variants) [HRN 62, 48 pages], September 1950 [HRN 75], March 1952 [HRN 93, 15¢], March 1954 [HRN 117]. Painted cover unattributed, first interior art. First PC A1 printing March 1956 [HRN 131, 15¢]; subsequent PC A1 printings March 1957 [HRN 137], November 1957 [HRN 141]. Second interior art by Norman Nodel; Wyss biography;

323

first PC A2 printing September 1959 [HRN 152]; subsequent PC A2 printings Fall 1960 [HRN 158], Spring-Summer 1962 [HRN 165], December 1963 [HRN 167], April 1965 [HRN 167], May 1966 [HRN 167], November 1967 [HRN 166], Spring 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Sixteen printings (five LDC A1, three PC A1, eight PC A2). 43. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; Dickens biography; American Indians: “The Navajo”; Pioneers of Science: “Albert Einstein”; “Coming Next” illo by Homer Fleming (anomaly). First LDC printing November 1947 [HRN 43, 56 pages, 10¢]; second LDC printing August 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages]. Two printings (no PC edition). 44. Mysteries of Paris by Eugene Sue. Line-drawing cover (last “horror” cover) and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by Albert Avitabile; Sue biography; Pioneers of Science: “Michael Faraday”; Dog Heroes: “Just a Bag of Skin and Bones”; “Coming Next” illo by Homer Fleming. First LDC printing December 1947 (two variants) [HRN 44, 56 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings August 1949 (two variants, Gift Box ad or reorder list) [HRN 62, 48 pages]; December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢]. Three printings (no PC edition). 45. Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Homer Fleming; American Indians: “The Chippewa”; Hughes biography; Great Lives: “Florence Nightingale, ‘The Lady of the Lamp’”; Pioneers of Science: “Sir Isaac Newton, Discoverer of ‘The Law of Gravitation’”; “Coming Next” illo by Robert H. Webb. First 48-page issue. First LDC A1 printing January 1948 [HRN 44, 48 pages, 10¢]; second LDC A1 printing October 1949 [HRN 64]. Painted cover by Gerald McCann, second interior art by John Tartaglione, second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Hughes biography; “The Learned Monks [Columba and Clement]”; “Children of the Slums [Victorian England].” First PC A2 printing March 1961 [HRN 161, 15¢]; subsequent PC A2 printings January 1964 [HRN 167], August 1966 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Six printings (two LDC A1, four PC A2). 46. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Robert H. Webb, adaptation by John O’Rourke; Stevenson biography; Pioneers of Science: “The Wright Brothers”; Dog Heroes: “Toots, the Collie”; Great Lives: “Joan of Arc”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 30 March–20 April 1947. First LDC printing April 1948 [HRN 47, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings August 1949 (two variants, price indicated or not) [HRN 62], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], September 1951 [HRN 87], April 1954 [HRN 118]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art; first PC printing March 1956 [HRN 131, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings September 1957 [HRN 140], May 1959 [HRN 150], Fall 1961 [HRN 164], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], March 1964 [HRN 167], June 1965 [HRN 167], December 1965 [HRN 167], September 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢], Summer 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Sixteen printings (five LDC, eleven PC). 47. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. Linedrawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; Verne biography; Dog Heroes: “Hero Rex”; American Indians: “The Hurons”; Pioneers of Science: “Luther Burbank, ‘The World’s Greatest Naturalist’”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 27 April–18 May 1947. First LDC printing May 1948 [HRN 47, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings October 1949 [HRN 64], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], April 1952 [HRN 94], April 1954 [HRN 118]. First painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC1 printing September 1955 [HRN 128, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings June 1956 [HRN 133], September 1957 [HRN 140], January 1959 [HRN 148], May 1960 [HRN 156], 1962 [HRN 165], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], March 1964 [HRN 167], August 1965 [HRN 167], October 1966 [HRN 167].

324

APPENDIX A

Second painted cover by Norman Nodel, original interior art; first PC2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]; second PC2 printing Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Seventeen printings (five LDC, ten PC1, two PC2). 48. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; adaptation by George D. Lipscomb; Dickens biography; Great Lives: “Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D.”; American Rivers: “The Hudson”; “Harvard’s Marshal Plan” by Nat Shane; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 25 May–15 June 1947. First LDC printing June 1948 [HRN 47, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings October 1949 [HRN 64], September 1951 [HRN 87, 15¢]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art; first PC printing July 1954 [HRN 121, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1956 [HRN 130], September 1957 [HRN 140], January 1959 [HRN 148], May 1960 [HRN 156], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], April 1964 [HRN 167], June 1965 [HRN 167], May 1967 [HRN 166], 1967 [HRN 166], Spring 1969 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Fifteen printings (three LDC, twelve PC); one Twin Circle edition (1967). 49. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Line-drawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum (first Blum art in series); Carroll biography; [Dog Heroes:] “Tippy, the Terrier” (different from No. 68); Pioneers of Science: “Galileo Galilei”; Famous Operas: “Carmen” by Georges Bizet; “Coming Next” illo by Aldo Rubano. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 22 June–13 July 1947. First LDC printing July 1948 [HRN 47, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings October 1949 [HRN 64], July 1951 (two variants) [HRN 85, soft and stiff covers, 15¢]. First painted cover (Alice surrounded by characters) unattributed, original interior art. First PC1 printing March 1960 [HRN 155, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings 1962 [HRN 165], March 1964 [HRN 167], June 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (Mad Hatter’s tea party) by Taylor Oughton, original interior art. First and only PC2 printing (two variants) Fall 1968 [HRN 166, soft and stiff covers, 25¢]. Eight printings (three LDC, four PC1, one PC 2). 50. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Aldo Rubano; first adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Twain biography; [Dog Heroes:] “Bulldog Courage”; Pioneers of Science: “George Westinghouse”; Famous Operas: “Madame Butterfly” by Giacomo Puccini; “Coming Next” illo by Arnold L. Hicks. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 17 August–6 September 1947. First LDC A1 printing August-September 1948 (three variants) [HRN 51, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC A1 printings October 1949 [HRN 64], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], April 1952 [HRN 94], March 1954 [HRN 117], May 1956 [HRN 132]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art; first PC A1 printing September 1957 [HRN 140, 15¢]; second PC A1 printing May 1959 [HRN 150]. Second interior art unattributed; Twain biography; “A Lightning Pilot” (adapted from Life on the Mississippi by Samuel L. Clemens); “The Seminole Chief [Osceola].” First PC A2 printing October 1961 [HRN 164, 15¢]; subsequent PC A2 printings Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], January 1965 [HRN 167], May 1966 [HRN 167], December 1967 [HRN 166], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢], Winter 1971 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Fifteen printings (six LDC A1, two PC A1, seven PC A2). 51. The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Arnold L. Hicks; Cooper biography; Pioneers of Science: “Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen”; Dog Heroes: “Irma, the Rare Rottweiler Breed”; Famous Operas: “Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swan” by Richard Wagner; “Coming Next” illo by Harley M. Griffiths. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 20 July–10 August 1947. First LDC printing (four variants) August-

September 1948 [HRN 51, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings November 1951 [HRN 89, 15¢], July 1954 [HRN 121]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing July 1957 [HRN 139, 15¢], May 1960 [HRN 156], November 1963 [HRN 167], July 1966 [HRN 167], Winter 1969 (two variants) [HRN 169, soft and stiff covers, 25¢]. Eight printings (three LDC, five PC). 52. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Linedrawing cover and first interior art by Harley M. Griffiths, adapted by John O’Rourke; Hawthorne biography; Pioneers of Science: “William Crawford Gorgas”; Dog Heroes: “The Spots — One to Four”; Famous Operas: “Rigoletto” by Giuseppe Verdi; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 13 September–4 October 1947. First LDC A1 printing October 1948 [HRN 53, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC A1 printings November 1951 [HRN 89, 15¢], July 1954 [HRN 121]. Painted cover unattributed, second interior art by George Woodbridge; Hawthorne biography. First PC A2 printing January 1958 [HRN 142, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC A2 printings May 1960 [HRN 156], 1962 [HRN 165], May 1964 [HRN 167], March 1966 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Ten printings (three LDC A1, seven PC A2). 53. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; adaptation by George D. Lipscomb [per title page]; unpublished adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman) [per manuscript]; Dickens biography; Pioneers of Science: “Sir Henry Bessemer”; Dog Heroes: “The Hero of Niagara Falls”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 6–20 December 1947. First and only LDC printing November 1948 [HRN 53, 48 pages, 10¢]. One printing (no PC edition). 54. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas. Line-drawing cover by Henry C. Kiefer, first interior art by August M. Froehlich, adaptation by John O’Rourke; Dumas biography; Pioneers of Science: “Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, the Father of Chemistry”; Famous Operas: “Thais” by Jules Massenet; Dog Heroes: “Brave”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 24 January–14 February 1948. First LDC A1 printing December 1948 [HRN 55, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC A1 printings March 1952 [HRN 93, 15¢], September 1953 (two variants, old and new logo) [HRN 111]. Painted cover unattributed, second interior art by Ken Battefield; Dumas biography. First PC A2 printing January 1958 [HRN 142, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC A2 printings January 1960 [HRN 154], 1962 [HRN 165], May 1964 [HRN 167], April 1966 [HRN 167], Winter 1969 (two variants) [HRN 166, soft and stiff covers, 25¢]. Nine printings (three LDC A1, six PC). 55. Silas Marner by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). Line-drawing cover by Henry C. Kiefer, interior art by Arnold L. Hicks, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman) [per manuscript]; Eliot biography; Dog Heroes: “‘Buddy,’ the First Seeing-Eye Dog”; [Pioneers of Science:] “Joseph, Lord Lister, the Father of Antiseptic Surgery”; Famous Operas: “The Barber of Seville” by Gioacchino Antonio Rossini; “Coming Next” illo by August M. Froehlich. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 8–29 November 1947. First LDC printing January 1949 [HRN 55, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings September 1950 [HRN 75, “Coming Next” ad erroneously included], July 1952 [HRN 97, 15¢]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing July 1954 [HRN 121, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1956 [HRN 130], September 1957 [HRN 140], January 1960 [HRN 154], 1962 [HRN 165], February 1964 [HRN 167], June 1965 [HRN 167], May 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 (two variants) [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢]. Twelve printings (three LDC, nine PC).

APPENDIX A 56. The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by August M. Froehlich, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Hugo biography; Dog Heroes: “No Greater Love”; Pioneers of Science: “William Harvey, Discoverer of Blood Circulation”; Famous Operas: “Tristan und Isolde” by Richard Wagner; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 21 February–13 March 1948. First and only LDC A1 printing February 1949 [HRN 55, 48 pages, 10¢]. Painted cover unattributed, second interior art by Angelo Torres, second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Hugo biography; “The Flood”; “Sea Monsters.” First PC A2 printing Spring 1962 [HRN 165, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC A2 printings March 1964 [HRN 167], October 1966 [HRN 167]. Four printings (one LDC A1, three PC A2). 57. The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Linedrawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum; Longfellow biography; Great Lives: “John Flamsteed, Father of Modern Astronomy”; Famous Operas: “Aida” by Giuseppe Verdi; Dog Heroes: “‘Amigo,’ Hero of the Andes”; “Coming Next” illo by Rudolph Palais. First LDC printing March 1949 [HRN 55, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings September 1950 [HRN 75], April 1952 [HRN 94, 15¢], April 1954 [HRN 118]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing September 1956 [HRN 134, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings July 1957 [HRN 139], January 1960 [HRN 154], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], September 1964 [HRN 167], October 1965 [HRN 167], Fall 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Eleven printings (four LDC, seven PC). 58. The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Rudolph Palais; Cooper biography; Pioneer of Science: “Hippocrates, Father of Medicine”; Dog Heroes: “Tunney, the Champ”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First LDC printing April 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings August 1949 (two variants) [HRN 62], December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢], December 1953 [HRN 114], March 1956 [HRN 131], MayJune 1956 [HRN 132]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing September 1958 [HRN 146, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings March 1960 [HRN 155], May 1964 [HRN 167], April 1966 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eleven printings (six LDC, five PC). 59. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, lettering by Howard Ferguson and Harvey McClelland [per manuscript], adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Brontë biography; Pioneers of Science: “Dmitri I. Mendeleyev”; Dog Heroes: “‘Pete,’ the Peke”; Famous Operas: “The Valkyrie” by Richard Wagner; “Coming Next” illo by August M. Froehlich. First LDC printing May 1949 [HRN 60, 48 pages, 10¢]; second LDC printing July 1951 [HRN 85, 15¢]. Painted cover by Geoffrey Biggs, original interior art. First PC printing May 1960 [HRN 156, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1964 [HRN 167], October 1966 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Six printings (two LDC, four PC). 60. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by August M. Froehlich; Sewell biography; Pioneers of Science: “Archimedes, First Teacher of Mathematics”; Famous Operas: “The Girl of the Golden West” by Giacomo Puccini; Dog Heroes: Jeep —‘Just a Plain Dog’”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First LDC A1 printing June 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC A1 printings August-September 1949 [HRN 62], July 1951 [HRN 85, 15¢]. First painted cover (horse and red sky) by Leonard B. Cole, second interior art by Leonard B. Cole, Norman Nodel, and Stephen Addeo; second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Sewell biography; “The Sacred Pet [cats]”; “Child Labor.” First PC1 A2 printing Fall 1960 [HRN 158, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 A2

325

printings February 1964 [HRN 167], March 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (horse rearing, with rider) by Albert Micale, second interior art. First and only PC2 A2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, soft cpver, 25¢]. Seven printings (three LDC A1, three PC1 A2, one PC2 A2). 61. The Woman in White by William Wilkie Collins. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by John O’Rourke; Collins biography; Pioneers of Science: “Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of the Telephone”; Famous Operas: “Lucia di Lammermoor” by Gaetano Donizetti; Dog Heroes: “‘Duke’— Police Dog”; Great Lives: “Mary Baker Eddy”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First and only LDC printing (two variants) July 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages, 10¢]. Painted cover by Doug Roea, original interior art. First PC printing May 1960 [HRN 156, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1964 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, soft cover, 25¢]. Four printings (one LDC, three PC). 62. Western Stories by Bret Harte; two stories: The Luck of Roaring Camp and The Outcasts of Poker Flat. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; Harte biography; Famous Operas: “Pagliacci” by Ruggiero Leoncavallo; Pioneers of Science: “Sir Edgeworth David, Discover[er] of the South Magnetic Pole”; Dog Heroes: “The Breed That Knows No Fear”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First LDC printing August 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings November 1951 [HRN 89, 15¢], July 1954 [HRN 121]. First painted cover unattributed (author’s name misspelled “Hart”), original interior art. First PC1 printing March 1957 [HRN 137, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings September 1959 [HRN 152], October 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], November 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover by Taylor Oughton, original interior art. First and only PC2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, soft cover, 25¢]. Nine printings (three LDC, five PC1, one PC2). 63. The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale. Linedrawing cover and first interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by John O’Rourke; Hale biography; Famous Operas: “Tannhauser” by Richard Wagner; Pioneers of Science: “Simon Lake, Inventor of the First Submarine”; Dog Heroes: “‘Spot,’ the Crippled Hero”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First LDC A1 printing September 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages, 10¢]; second LDC A1 printing December 1950 [HRN 78, 15¢]. Painted cover by Gerald McCann; first interior art. First and only PC A1 printing May 1960 [HRN 156, 15¢]. Second interior art by Angelo Torres and Stephen L. Addeo; adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Hale biography; “Burning the Philadelphia”; “A Small Case of Forgery.” First PC A2 printing 1962 [HRN 165, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC A2 printings March 1964 [HRN 167]; August 1966 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings (two LDC A1, one PC A1, four PC A2). 64. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum; Stevenson biography; Pioneers of Science: “John A. Roebling, Master of Modern Bridge Building”; Dog Heroes: “‘Major,’ the Faithful Collie”; Famous Operas: “The Magic Flute” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [synopsis by Kenneth W. Fitch]; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First LDC printing October 1949 [HRN 62, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings April 1951 (two variants) [HRN 82, soft and stiff covers, 15¢], March 1954 [HRN 117]. Painted cover by George Wilson, original interior art. First PC printing March 1956 [HRN 131, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings May 1957 [HRN 138], September 1958 [HRN 146], September 1960 [HRN 158], 1962 [HRN 165], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], December 1965 [HRN 167], October 1967 (two variants) [HRN 166], Spring 1969 [HRN 169, 25¢]. Thirteen printings (three LDC, ten PC). Long John Silver’s Seafood Shoppe promotional painted-cover reissue; one printing 1989.

326

APPENDIX A

65. Benjamin Franklin (based on The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, with additional material from other sources). Line-drawing cover by Henry C. Kiefer; interior art by Iger shop (Robert Hebberd, Gustav Schrotter, and Alex A. Blum); Pioneers of Science: “Carolus Linnaeus, Father of Botany”; Famous Operas: “Lakme” by Leo Delibes; Dog Heroes: “‘Howdy Doody’ Saves Family of Four”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First and only LDC printing November 1949 [HRN 64, 48 pages, 10¢]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing March 1956 [HRN 131, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1960 [HRN 154], February 1964 [HRN 167], April 1966 [HRN 167], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Six printings (one LDC, five PC); one Ben Franklin 5-10 Store promotional giveaway (1956); one Ben Franklin Insurance Company promotional giveaway (1956). 66. The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by Leslie Katz; Reade biography; Pioneers of Science: “Marchese Guglielmo Marconi, Inventor of Wireless Telegraphy”; Dog Heroes: “The Mongrel and the Puma”; Famous Operas: “Parsifal” by Richard Wagner; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First and only LDC printing December 1949 [HRN 67, 48 pages, 10¢]. One printing (no PC edition). 67. The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by John O’Rourke; Porter biography; Pioneers of Science: “Richard Jordan Gatling, Inventor of the Machine Gun”; Dog Heroes: “Skippy, the Funny Looking Dog”; Famous Operas: “Othello” by Giuseppe Verdi; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First LDC printing January 1950 [HRN 67, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings July 1951 [HRN 85, 15¢], April 1954 [HRN 118]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing January 1957 [HRN 136, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1960 [HRN 154], November 1963 [HRN 167], August 1965 [HRN 167]. Seven printings (three LDC, four PC). 68. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; Shakespeare biography; Pioneers of Science: “Blaise Pascal, the Mathematical Genius”; Dog Heroes: “Tippy, the Terrier” (different from No. 49); Famous Operas: “Manon” by Jules Massenet [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 11 October–1 November 1947. First LDC A1 printing February 1950 [HRN 70, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC A1 printings July 1951 [HRN 85], June 1953 [HRN 108]. Painted cover by Leonard B. Cole, first interior art. First and only PC A1 printing May 1960 [HRN 156, 15¢]. Second interior art by Reed Crandall and George Evans, second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Shakespeare biography; “The First Roman Emperor [Augustus]”; “Death of a Dictator [Mussolini].” First PC A2 printing 1962 [HRN 165, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC A2 printings February 1964 [HRN 167], October 1965 [HRN 167, inside-front-cover Ballantine Tarzan promo], 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings (three LDC A1, one PC A1, five PC A2); one Twin Circle edition. 69. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; Verne biography; Famous Operas: “Der Meistersinger” by Richard Wagner [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; Dog Heroes: “Smoky, the Quick Thinking Dog”; Pioneers of Science: “Thomas Wedgwood, Inventor of the Camera”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First LDC printing March 1950 [HRN 70, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings September 1951 [HRN 87, 15¢], March 1955 [HRN 125]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing January 1957 [HRN 136, 15¢], September 1958 [HRN 146], September 1959 [HRN 152], Fall 1961 [HRN 164], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167],

November 1965 [HRN 167], July 1967 [HRN 166], Spring 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Twelve printings (three LDC, nine PC printings). 70. The Pilot by James Fenimore Cooper. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum; Cooper biography; Famous Operas: “The Merry Wives of Windsor” by Otto Nicolai [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; Dog Heroes: “Tatters, the Gentle Protector”; Pioneers of Science: “Phidias, the World’s Greatest Sculptor”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First LDC printing April 1950 [HRN 71, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings February 1952 [HRN 92, 15¢], March 1955 [HRN 125]. Painted cover by Gerald McCann, original interior art; first PC printing May 1960 [HRN 156, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings February 1964 [HRN 167], May 1966 [HRN 167]. Six printings (three LDC, three PC). 71. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Line-drawing cover and first interior art by Alex A. Blum; Hugo biography; Dog Heroes: “‘Pepper,’ the ‘Heart’ Dog”; Famous Operas: “Der Rosenkavalier (The Rose-Bearer)” by Richard Strauss [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; Pioneers of Science: “Johann Gutenberg, Inventor of Movable Type Printing”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First and only LDC A1 printing May 1950 [HRN 71, 48 pages, 10¢]. Painted cover and second interior art by Norman Nodel, second adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Hugo biography; “The Kickapoo Cough Cure”; “Feasts and Fairs”; first PC A2 printing Spring 1962 [HRN 165, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC A2 printing April 1964 [HRN 167]. Three printings (one LDC A1, two PC A2). 72. The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by John O’Rourke; Parkman biography; Famous Operas: “La Boheme” by Giacomo Puccini [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; Pioneers of Science: “Edward Livingstone Trudeau, Isolator of the Tuberculosis Germ”; Dog Heroes: “‘Duke,’ the Seeing-Eye Cop”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First LDC printing June 1950 [HRN 73, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings November 1951 [HRN 89, 15¢], July 1954 [HRN 121]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing March 1956 [HRN 131, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings September 1957 [HRN 140], May 1959 [HRN 150], Fall 1961 [HRN 164], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], August 1964 [HRN 167], October 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Eleven printings (three LDC, eight PC). 73. The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Dumas biography; Pioneers of Science: “Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Inventor of Dynamite”; Dog Heroes: “Tara, the Life Saver”; Famous Operas: “Boris Gudenof ” by Modeste Moussorgsky; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First and only LDC printing July 1950 [HRN 75, 48 pages, 10¢]. One printing (no PC edition). 74. Mr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marryat. Line-drawing cover by Alex A. Blum, interior art by Bob Lamme, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Marryat biography; Pioneers of Science: “Baron Gottfried Leibnitz, Inventor of the Calculating Machine”; Dog Heroes: “Trixie, the Tough Shepherd”; Famous Operas: “Faust” by Charles Gounod; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First and only LDC printing August 1950 [HRN 75, 48 pages, 10¢]. One printing (no PC edition). 75. The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by George D. Lipscomb; Scott biography; Famous Operas: “The Flying Dutchman” by Richard Wagner [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; Pioneers of Science: “Pythagoras, Discoverer of the Solar System”; Dog Heroes: “‘Chubby,’ a Mongrel”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. Originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 27 December 1947–17 January 1948. First LDC printing September 1950 [HRN

APPENDIX A 75, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings July 1951 [HRN 85, 15¢], April 1954 [HRN 118]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing July 1957 [HRN 139, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1960 [HRN 154], 1962 [HRN 165], April 1964 [HRN 167], May 1966 [HRN 167], Spring 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings (three LDC, six PC). 76. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope (Hawkins). Linedrawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Hope biography; Famous Operas: “Pelleas and Melisande” by Claude Debussy; Pioneers of Science: “Roald Amundsen, Discoverer of the South Pole”; “Dog Heroes: “‘Lady,’ a Beagle Hound”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First LDC printing October 1950 [HRN 75, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings July 1951 [HRN 85, 15¢], September 1953 [HRN 111]. Painted cover by George Wilson, original interior art. First PC printing September 1955 [HRN 128, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings September 1959 [HRN 152], 1962 [HRN 165], April 1964 [HRN 167], September 1966 [HRN 167], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings (three LDC, six PC). 77. The Iliad of Homer. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum; Homer biography; Pioneers of Science: “Samuel Pierpont Langley, American Astronomer and Physicist”; Famous Operas: “La Gioconda” by Amilcare Ponchielli [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; Dog Heroes: “‘Deacon,’ a St. Bernard”; “Coming Next” illo by Henry C. Kiefer. First LDC printing November 1950 [HRN 78, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings September 1951 [HRN 87, 15¢], July 1954 [HRN 121]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing July 1957 [HRN 139, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings May 1959 [HRN 150], 1962 [HRN 165], October 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167], May 1966 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Ten printings (three LDC, seven PC). 78. Joan of Arc (biography). Line-drawing cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by Samuel Willinsky; Dog Heroes: “Skeeter — a Sleeper”; Pioneers of Science: Friedrich, Baron von Humboldt, Discovery of the Science of Geography”; Famous Operas: “The King’s Henchman” by Deems Taylor [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First LDC printing December 1950 [HRN 78, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings September 1951 [HRN 87, 15¢], July 1954 [HRN 121]. First painted cover ( Joan in armor on horse, bearing standard) unattributed, original interior art. First PC1 printing September 1955 [HRN 128, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings September 1957 [HRN 140], May 1959 [HRN 150], November 1960 [HRN 159], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], December 1963 [HRN 167], June 1965 [HRN 167], June 1967 [HRN 166]. Second painted cover ( Joan and St. Michael) by Taylor Oughton, original interior art. First and only PC2 printing Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Twelve printings (three LDC, eight PC1, one PC2). 79. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (movie tie-in). Linedrawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum; adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Rostand biography; Famous Operas: “Don Carlos” by Giuseppe Verdi; Dog Heroes: “‘Foxy,’ Hero of the Underground”; Pioneers of Science: “Friedrich Froebel, Father of the Modern Kindergarten”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First LDC printing January 1951 [HRN 78, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings July 1951 [HRN 85, 15¢], April 1954 [HRN 118]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing 1957 [HRN 133, 15¢, see following note]; subsequent PC printings May 1960 [HRN 156], August 1964 [HRN 167]. Six printings (three LDC, three PC). Note: Although the first painted-cover edition’s HRN is 133, which would suggest a 1956 publication date, the column arrangement, in which the first three vertical rows end with Nos. 32, 76, and 122, corresponds to lists ending in HRNs 138 to 143,

327

published between May 1957 and March 1958; the cover’s paper stock resembles the grade used by Gilberton for reprints in 1957 and early 1958. 80. White Fang by Jack London. Line-drawing cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum; adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; London biography; “History of U.S. Coins: How the phrase ‘In God We Trust’ came to be on the coins of the United States” (photograph); Famous Operas: “Die Fledermaus (The Bat)” by Johann Strauss; Pioneers of Science: “Johannes Kepler, Discoverer of the Laws of the Motions of Planets”; last CI line-drawing cover; last 10-cent issue; line-drawing “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First LDC printing February 1951 [HRN 79, 48 pages, 10¢]; subsequent LDC printings September 1951 [HRN 87, 15¢], March 1955 [HRN 125]. Painted cover unattributed, original interior art. First PC printing May 1956 [HRN 132, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings September 1957 [HRN 140], November 1959 [HRN 153], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], September 1964 [HRN 167], July 1965 [HRN 167], June 1967 [HRN 166], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eleven printings (three LDC, eight PC). 81. The Odyssey of Homer. First painted cover (Cyclops with boulder) by Alex A. Blum; interior art by Harley M. Griffiths (completed in 1947); Homer biography; Justinian, Creator of the Roman Code of Laws”; Dog Heroes: “Bosco, a ‘Disobedient’ Dog”; Famous Operas: “Il Trovatore (The Troubaour)” by Giuseppe Verdi [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; line-drawing “Coming Next” illo by Lawrence Dresser. First CI painted-cover issue; first 15-cent issue. First PC1 printing March 1951 [HRN 82, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings August 1964 [HRN 167], October 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (Odysseus lashed to mast) by Tony Tallarico, original interior art. One PC2 printing Spring 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Four printings (three PC1, one PC2). 82. The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson. First painted cover (the Master unearthed) by Alex A. Blum, interior art by Lawrence Dresser, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Stevenson biography; Pioneers of Science: “Gottlieb Daimler, Father of the Modern Automobile”; Dog Heroes: “Windy”; Famous Operas: “Das Rheingold (The Gold of the Rhine) by Richard Wagner; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 printing April 1951 [HRN 82, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC1 printing August 1964 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (smiling Scotsman) by Siryk, original interior art. One PC2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢]. Three printings (two PC1, one PC2). 83. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling; three stories: Mowgli’s Brothers; The King’s Ankus; Red Dog. First painted cover (confrontation between wolves and Shere Khan) by Alex A. Blum (vertical tablet with issue number and price replaces open-book device); first interior art by Alex A. Blum and William Bossert; Kipling biography; Pioneers of Science: “Charles Goodyear, the Luckless Inventor of Vulcanized Rubber”; Dog Heroes: “‘Chief ’: A Fire Dog”; Famous Operas: “Siegfried” by Richard Wagner [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 A1 printing May 1951 [HRN 85, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 A1 printings August 1953 [HRN 110], March 1955 [HRN 125], September 1956 [HRN 134], January 1958 [HRN 142], May 1959 [HRN 150], November 1960 [HRN 159], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], March 1965 [HRN 167], November 1965 [HRN 167], May 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (close-up of Shere Khan on right, Mowgli running on left) and second interior art by Norman Nodel, same script as original edition; white cobra in The King’s Ankus mistakenly colored green. First and only PC2 A2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, 48 pages, stiff cover, 25¢]. Twelve printings (eleven PC1 A1, one PC2 A2). 84. The Gold Bug and Other Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. (Gilberton manuscript files indicate issue was originally to be titled 3 Adventure

328

APPENDIX A

Thrillers; two other scripts —“The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Black Cat”— were prepared but rejected as “too horrific.”) Painted cover by Alex A. Blum; three stories, adaptations by John O’Rourke: The Gold Bug, art by Alex A. Blum; The Tell-Tale Heart, art by Jim Wilcox; The Cask of Amontillado, art by Rudolph Palais; Poe biography; Famous Operas: “Martha” by Friedrich Von Flotow [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; Great Lives: “Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross”; Pioneers of Science: “Elias Howe, Inventor of the Sewing Machine”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing June 1951 [HRN 85, 48 pages, 15¢]; second printing July 1964 [HRN 167]. Two printings. 85. The Sea Wolf by Jack London. Painted cover (image reversed from original cover painting) and interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by John O’Rourke; London biography; Pioneers of Science: Nicholas Copernicus, Key Man in the Study of the Solar System”; Famous Operas: “The Tales of Hoffman” by Jacques Offenbach [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; Dog Heroes: “Pistol Head”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing July 1951 [HRN 85, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings July 1954 [HRN 121], May 1956 [HRN 132], November 1957 [HRN 141], March 1961 [HRN 161], February 1964 [HRN 167], November 1965 [HRN 167], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 86. Under Two Flags by Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramee). Painted cover by Alex A. Blum (open-book device restored); interior art by Maurice del Bourgo; adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Ouida biography; Pioneers of Science: “Edward Jenner, Discoverer of Small Pox Vaccination”; Dog Heroes: “‘Brownie’: Just a Faithful Dog”; Famous Operas: “Iolanthe” by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing August 1951 [HRN 87, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings March 1954 [HRN 117], July 1957 [HRN 139], September 1960 [HRN 158], February 1964 [HRN 167], August 1966 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 87. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. Painted cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by Samuel Willinsky; Shakespeare biography; Pioneers of Science: “Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, Inventor of the Bunsen Burner”; Dog Heroes: “The ‘M’ Dogs of the U.S. Army”; “The World of Books,” quotation from The Story of the Yale University Press Told by a Friend by Clarence Day; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing September 1951 [HRN 87, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings March 1961 [HRN 161], April 1964 [HRN 167], May 1966 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 88. Men of Iron by Howard Pyle. Painted cover by Alex A. Blum, interior art by Lawrence Dresser, Gustav Schrotter, and Harry Daugherty; adaptation by John O’Rourke; Pyle biography; “Courtship in Miniature”; Dog Heroes: “Just a Wandering Dog”; Pioneers of Science: “Euclid, Father of Geometry”; “Coming Next” photographic illo. First PC printing October 1951 [HRN 89, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1960 [HRN 154], January 1964 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Four printings. 89. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Interior art by Rudolph Palais; Dostoevsky biography; “So Proudly We Hailed...” [Star-Spangled Banner], art by Maurice del Bourgo; Famous Operas: “Mignon” by Ambroise Thomas [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing November 1951 [HRN 89, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings September 1959 [HRN 152], April 1964 [HRN 167], May 1966 [HRN 167], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 90. Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson. First painted cover (native with blow-dart) and interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by George D. Lipscomb; Hudson biography; Pioneers of Science: “Sir Richard Arkwright, Father of the Modern Factory”; “Bar-

num’s Buffalo Hunt”; Famous Operas: “Don Giovanni” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [synopsis by Eleanor Lidofsky]; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. One PC1 printing December 1951 [HRN 89, 48 pages, 15¢]. Second painted cover (native with bow-and-arrow) by Leonard B. Cole, original interior art; first PC2 printing January 1959 [HRN 148]; subsequent PC2 printings 1962 [HRN 165], April 1964 [HRN 167], September 1966 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Six printings (one PC1, five PC2). 91. The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Painted cover by Alex A. Blum; interior art by Maurice del Bourgo; adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; London biography; “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”; Stories of Early America: “Clippers to the West”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing January 1952 [HRN 92, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings October 1953 [HRN 112], March 1955 [HRN 125], September 1956 [HRN 134], March 1958 [HRN 143], 1962 [HRN 165], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], April 1965 [HRN 167], March 1966 [HRN 167], November 1967 [HRN 166], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eleven printings. 92. The Courtship of Miles Standish and Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Painted cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum; Longfellow biography; “The Jersey Tea Party” by Wendell Smith; American Indians: “The Apache”; Pioneers of Science: “Cyrus McCormick, Inventor of the Reaper”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. The Courtship of Miles Standish originally appeared as newspaper Illustrated Classic, 21 March 1948. First PC printing February 1952 [HRN 92, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings SpringSummer 1962 [HRN 165], March 1964 [HRN 167], May 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 93. Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). First painted cover (Roxy and Tom in foreground, Chambers in background) and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; Twain biography; Stories from the World of Sports: “With an Assist from Mother Nature”; Stories of Early America: “The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga”; American Presidents: “An Incident in the Life of George Washington”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. One PC1 printing March 1952 [HRN 94, 48 pages, 15¢]. Second painted cover ( Judge Driscoll, foreground, in duel) by Gerald McCann, original interior art. First PC2 printing Spring 1962 [HRN 165]; subsequent PC2 printings March 1964 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Four printings (one PC1, three PC2). 94. David Balfour (American title of Catriona, a sequel to Kidnapped) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Painted cover unattributed; interior art by Rudolph Palais; Stevenson biography; “Stories from the World of Sports: ‘Babe’ Ruth’s Great Moment”; “Bonnie Prince Charlie: The Rebellion of ’45”; Stories of Early America: “John Sutter and the Gold Rush”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing April 1952 [HRN 94, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings May 1964 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Three printings. 95. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Maurice del Bourgo, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Remarque biography; Stories of Early America: “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”; Stories from the World of Sports: “The Dean Brothers”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing May 1952 (two variants) [HRN 96, 99, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings October 1964 [HRN 167], November 1966 [HRN 167]. Three printings. 96. Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness by John Bakeless. First painted cover (Boone with rifle) unattributed, interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Bakeless biography (Alex A. Blum); Stories from the World of Sports: “Old Pete’s Greatest Moment” [Grover Cleveland Alexander] (Alex A. Blum); American Presidents: “How Abraham Lincoln Gained National Prominence” (Alex

APPENDIX A A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 printing June 1952 [HRN 97, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings March 1954 [HRN 117], September 1955 [HRN 128], May 1956 [HRN 132], September 1956 [HRN 134], September 1960 [HRN 158], January 1964 [HRN 167], May 1965 [HRN 167], November 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (Boone close-up) by Tony Tallarico, original interior art. One PC2 printing Winter 1969 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢]. Ten printings (nine PC1, one PC2). 97. King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard. Painted cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Rider Haggard biography; Great Lives: “Samuel Gompers”; Stories of Early America: “Wings of Salvation”; Stories from the World of Sports: “The ‘Iron Horse’ of Baseball”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing July 1952 [HRN 96, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings April 1954 [HRN 118], March 1956 [HRN 131], November 1957 [HRN 141], September 1960 [HRN 158], February 1964 [HRN 167], September 1965 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 98. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. First painted cover (Fleming fleeing battle) unattributed, art by Gustav Schrotter (originally scheduled for publication in Famous Authors Illustrated); Crane biography; 15-page illustrated filler story: An Outline History of the Civil War; art by Maurice del Bourgo; Stories of Early America: “Seward’s Folly”; Stories from the World of Sports: “The Wild Horse of the Osage”; Great Lives: “George Jones, the Crusading Publisher”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 printing August 1952 [HRN 98, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings April 1954 [HRN 118], May 1956 [HRN 132], January 1958 [HRN 142], September 1959 [HRN 152], March 1961 [HRN 161], Spring 1963 [HRN 167], September 1964 [HRN 167], October 1965 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (Fleming with flag) by Taylor Oughton, original interior art. One PC2 printing 1968 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢]. Ten printings (nine PC1, one PC2). 99. Hamlet by William Shakespeare. First painted cover (Hamlet and Father’s Ghost) and interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by Samuel Willinsky; Shakespeare biography (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “Remember the Alamo!” (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Damon and Pythias”; (Alex A. Blum) Stories from the World of Sports: “Christy Mathewson’s Great Series” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 printing September 1952 [HRN 98, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings July 1954 [HRN 121], November 1957 [HRN 141], September 1960 [HRN 158], Spring 1963 [HRN 167], April 1965 [HRN 167], April 1967 [HRN 166]. Second painted cover (Ophelia in foreground) by Edward Moritz, original interior art. One PC2 printing Spring 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings (seven PC1, one PC2). 100. Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Painted cover by Henry C. Kiefer, interior art by Morris Waldinger, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Nordhoff and Hall biographies (Alex A. Blum); American Presidents: “An Incident in the Life of Franklin D. Roosevelt” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “Duel of Honor [Philip Hamilton and George Eaker]” (Alex A. Blum); Stories from the World of Sports: “Knute Rockne” (Alex A. Blum); Note from the Publishers marking 100th title (inside front cover); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing October 1952 [HRN 100, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings March 1954 [HRN 117], May 1956 [HRN 132], January 1958 [HRN 142], March 1960 [HRN 155], Spring 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167], March 1966 [HRN 167], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings. 101. William Tell by Frederick Schiller ( Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller). Painted cover by Henry C. Kiefer, interior art by Maurice del Bourgo, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Schiller

329

biography (Alex A. Blum); “Jean LaFitte and the Battle of New Orleans” (Henry C. Kiefer); Great Lives: “Henry Bergh, Founder of the A.S.P.C.A.” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing November 1952 [HRN 101, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings April 1954 [HRN 118], November 1957 [HRN 141], September 1960 [HRN 158], Spring 1963 [HRN 167], November 1964 [HRN 167], April 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 102. The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Conan Doyle biography ; “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” (Russian folk tale); Great Lives: “Nathan Hale”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing December 1952 [HRN 101, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings SpringSummer 1962 [HRN 165], April 1964 [HRN 167]. Three printings. 103. Men Against the Sea by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. First painted cover (Bligh shaking fist at Bounty) by Henry C. Kiefer, interior art by Rudolph Palais, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Nordhoff and Hall biographies (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “The Panama Canal [Colonel George Washington Goethals]” (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “The Great Houdini” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 printing January 1953 [HRN 104, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC1 printing December 1953 [HRN 114]. Second painted cover (crew member seizing bird) unattributed, original interior art; first PC2 printing March 1956 [HRN 131, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC2 printings September 1960 [HRN 158], Summer-Fall 1961 [anomalous white-background HRN 149], March 1964 [HRN 167]. Six printings (two PC1, four PC2). 104. Bring ’Em Back Alive by Frank Buck [with Edward Anthony]. Painted cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Buck biography (Henry C. Kiefer); Great Lives: “Mathew Brady, Photographer of the Civil War” (Alex A. Blum); American Presidents: “An Incident in the Life of Ulysses S. Grant” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “A Volcano Changes the Course of History (Alex A. Blum)”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing February 1953 [HRN 105, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings April 1954 [HRN 118], July 1956 [HRN 133], May 1959 [HRN 150], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], October 1963 [HRN 167], September 1965 [HRN 167], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 105. From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne. Painted cover and interior art by Alex A. Blum; Verne biography (Alex A. Blum); American Presidents: “An Incident in the Life of Andrew Johnson” (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “The Oklahoma Land Run” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing March 1953 [HRN 106, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings April 1954 [HRN 118], May 1956 [HRN 132], November 1957 [HRN 141], September 1958 [HRN 146], May 1960 [HRN 156], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], May 1964 [HRN 167], May 1965 [HRN 167], October 1967 (two variants, one with inserted Grit ad) [HRN 166], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢], Spring 1971 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Twelve printings. 106. Buffalo Bill (possibly based on An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill by Colonel William F. Cody). Painted cover by Mort Künstler, interior art by Maurice del Bourgo; Bad Men of the West: “William Quantrill” (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “Wreck Ashore!” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing April 1953 [HRN 107, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings April 1954 [HRN 118], May 1956 [HRN 132], January 1958 [HRN 142], March 1961 [HRN 161], March 1964 [HRN 167], July 1967 [HRN 166], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings.

330

APPENDIX A

107. King — of the Khyber Rifles by Talbot Mundy. Painted cover by Mort Künstler, interior art by Seymour Moskowitz, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Mundy biography (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Balboa, Discoverer of the Pacific Ocean” (Alex. A. Blum); Stories from the World of Sports: “The Miracle of 1951” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing May 1953 [HRN 108, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings April 1954 [HRN 118], September 1958 [HRN 146], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 167], October 1966 [HRN 167]. Six printings. 108. Knights of the Round Table (based on by Sidney Lanier’s The Boy’s King Arthur or Howard Pyle’s Arthurian books, in turn based on Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur). Painted cover by Mort Künstler, interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by John Cooney; Stories of Early America: “The Lost Colony [Sir Walter Raleigh]” (Alex A. Blum); Our American Heritage: “The Liberty Bell” (Alex A. Blum); Stories from the World of Sports: “Baseball Comes Back” [1920 World Series] (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing June 1953 (two variants) [HRN 108 or 109, 48 pages, 15¢], March 1954 [HRN 117], Spring-Summer 1962 [HRN 165], April 1964 [HRN 167], April 1967 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 109. Pitcairn’s Island by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Painted cover by Mort Künstler, interior art by Rudolph Palais, adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Nordhoff and Hall biographies (Alex A. Blum); American Presidents: “The Humor of Abraham Lincoln” (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Johnny Appleseed” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing July 1953 [HRN 110 (introduction of Huckleberry Finn reorder-list icon), 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings Spring-Summer 1962 [HRN 165], March 1964 [HRN 167], June 1967 [HRN 166]. Four printings. 110. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Painted cover by Mort Künstler; two stories: A Study in Scarlet and The Adventure of the Speckled Band, art by Seymour Moskowitz, adaptations by Kenneth W. Fitch; Conan Doyle biography; Our American Heritage: “The Story of ‘Yankee Doodle’” (Alex A. Blum); Stories from the World of Sports: “Short and Rough: The Dempsey-Firpo Fight” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing August 1953 [HRN 111, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC printing Spring-Summer 1962 [HRN 165]. Two printings. 111. The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott. Painted cover by Mort Künstler, interior art by Henry C. Kiefer (last Kiefer art in series), adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch; Scott biography; Stories of Early America: “Discovery of the Yellowstone” (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing September 1953 [HRN 112, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings Spring-Summer 1962 [HRN 165], May 1964 [HRN 167], Fall 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Four printings. 112. The Adventures of Kit Carson (biography). First painted cover (Carson and Indian on horseback) by Mort Künstler, interior art by Rudolph Palais, adaptation by Jerry Coleman [per manuscript]; Stories of Early America: “The Cardiff Giant (Alex A. Blum)”; Stories from the World of Sports: “Harold ‘Red’ Grange, the Galloping Ghost” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 printing October 1953 [HRN 113, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings November 1955 [HRN 129], November 1957 [HRN 141], September 1959 [HRN 152], March 1961 [HRN 161], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 167], February 1965 [HRN 167], May 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (Carson leading wagon train) by Edward Moritz, original interior art. One PC2 printing Winter 1969 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings. 113. The Forty-Five Guardsmen by Alexandre Dumas. Painted

cover unattributed, interior art by Maurice del Bourgo; Dumas biography (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Jeb Stuart” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “The Seminole War” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum; first PC printing November 1953 [HRN 114 (introduction of Don Quixote reorder-list icon), 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC printing July 1967 [HRN 166]. Two printings. 114. The Red Rover by James Fenimore Cooper. Painted cover by Jo Polseno, interior art by Peter Costanza; Cooper biography (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Frederick Remington, Illustrator of the Old West” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “The Prospector’s Decision: The Settlement of Alaska” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing December 1953 [HRN 115, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC printing July 1967 [HRN 166]. Two printings. 115. How I Found Livingstone by Henry Morton Stanley. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Salvatore A. (“Sal”) Trapani and Sal Finocchiaro; Stanley biography (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Clara Barton, Schools for All” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “Reindeer to the Rescue” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing January 1954 [HRN 116, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC printing January 1967 [HRN 167]. Two printings. 116. The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson; two stories from Island Nights’ Entertainments: The Bottle Imp, adaptation by Richard E. Davis; The Beach of Falesa, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman). Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Lou Cameron; Stevenson biography (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Sam Houston, ‘The Raven’” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “The Conquest of the Colorado” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing February 1954 [HRN 117, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC printing January 1967 [HRN 167]. Two printings. 117. Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Peter Costanza, adaptation by Ira Zweifach; Kipling biography (Alex A. Blum); “Ghosts of the Sea” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “Return with Valor” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing March 1954 [HRN 118, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings February 1967 [HRN 167], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Three printings. 118. Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Rudolph Palais and Walter Palais, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Scott biography; “Hero of the Highlands [Rob Roy]” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “Winning the Northwest Territory” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing April 1954 [HRN 119, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC printing February 1967 [HRN 167]. Two printings. 119. Soldiers of Fortune by Richard Harding Davis. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Kurt Schaffenberger, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Davis biography; Great Lives: “Lawrence of Arabia” (Alex A. Blum); Stories of Early America: “The Sinking of the Maine” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing May 1954 [HRN 120, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings March 1967 [HRN 166], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Three printings. 120. The Hurricane by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Painted cover and interior art by Lou Cameron, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Nordhoff and Hall biographies; “The Dreyfus Case”; Stories of Early America: “The Great Fire”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing June 1954 [HRN 121, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC printing March 1967 [HRN 166]. Two printings. 121. Wild Bill Hickok (biography). Painted cover unattributed,

APPENDIX A interior art by Salvatore A. (“Sal”) Trapani and Medio Iorio, adaptation by Ira Zweifach; Stories of Early America: “Gallant Retreat [Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces]” (Alex A. Blum); Bad Men of the West: “Jesse James”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing July 1954 [HRN 122, 48 pages, 15¢]; last monthly issue; subsequent PC printings May 1956 [HRN 132], November 1957 [HRN 141], January 1960 [HRN 154], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], August 1964 [HRN 167], April 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 122. The Mutineers by Charles Boardman Hawes. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Peter Costanza, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Hawes biography (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “John Paul Jones” (Alex A. Blum); “The Barbary Pirates” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing September 1954 [HRN 123, 48 pages, 15¢]; first bimonthly issue; subsequent PC printings January 1957 [HRN 136], September 1958 [HRN 146], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], November 1963 [HRN 167], March 1965 [HRN 167], August 1967 [HRN 166]. Seven printings. 123. Fang and Claw by Frank Buck. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Lin Streeter; Buck biography (Alex A. Blum); Great Lives: “Aesop, Teller of Animal Tales” (Alex A. Blum); “The Animal That Never Was: The Unicorn” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing November 1954 [HRN 124, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings July 1956 [HRN 133], March 1958 [HRN 143], January 1960 [HRN 154], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], September 1965 [HRN 167]. Six printings. 124. The War of the Worlds by H.G. (Herbert George) Wells. Painted cover and interior art by Lou Cameron, adaptation by Harry G. Miller (Harry Glickman); Wells biography (Alex A. Blum); “Nostradamus: Prophet or Impostor?” (Alex A. Blum); “The War That Never Was [Orson Welles’s 1938 CBS broadcast]” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing January 1955 [HRN 125, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings March 1956 [HRN 131], November 1957 [HRN 141], January 1959 [HRN 148], May 1960 [HRN 156], 1962 [HRN 165], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], November 1964 [HRN 167], November 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166], Summer 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eleven printings. 125. The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Norman Nodel (first Nodel art in series), adaptation by Lorenz Graham; Clark biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Colorado Gold Rush: ‘Pike’s Peak of Bust’” (Alex A. Blum); “Trial by Terror [William Lynch]” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing March 1955 [no HRN, back-cover “Picture Progress” ad, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings March 1958 [HRN 143], September 1959 [HRN 152], Summer-Fall 1961 [anomalous white-background HRN 149], SpringFall 1963 [HRN 167], November 1964 [HRN 167], April 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 126. The Downfall by Emile Zola. Painted cover and interior art by Lou Cameron; Zola biography; “Napoleon’s Return” (Alex A. Blum); “The Last Lesson” by Alphonse Daudet (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing May 1955 [no HRN, back-cover “Picture Progress” ad, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent printings August 1964 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Three printings. 127. The King of the Mountains by Edmond About. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Norman Nodel; About biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 1: The Celtic Invasion” (Lou Cameron); “The Death of Socrates” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing July 1955 [HRN 128, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings June 1964 [HRN 167], Fall 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Three printings.

331

128. Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Alex A. Blum (last Blum art in series), adaptation by Lorenz Graham; Shakespeare biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 2: The Roman Conquest” (Lou Cameron); “Banquo’s Descendant [James I]” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing September 1955 [HRN 128, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings March 1958 [HRN 143], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], April 1967 [HRN 166], 1968 [HRN 166], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings; one Twin Circle edition (1968). 129. Davy Crockett (based on A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee by David Crockett, with additional material from other sources). Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Lou Cameron; “The Story of Great Britain, Part 3: Saxon England” (Lou Cameron); “James Bowie” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing November 1955 [HRN 129, 48 pages, 15¢]; second PC printing September 1966 [HRN 167]. Two printings. 130. Caesar’s Conquests (based on Commentarii de bello Gallico) by Julius Caesar. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Joe Orlando and others, adaptation by Annette T. Rubinstein; Caesar biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 4: The Norman Conquest” (Lou Cameron); “The Roman Army” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing January 1956 [HRN 130, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1958 [HRN 142], September 1959 [HRN 152], SummerFall 1961 [anomalous white background HRN 149], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], October 1964 [HRN 167], April 1966 [HRN 167]. Seven printings. 131. The Covered Wagon by Emerson Hough. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Norman Nodel, adaptation by Annette T. Rubinstein; Hough biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 5: The Middle Ages” (Lou Cameron); “Jim Bridger” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing March 1956 [HRN 131 (introduction of Caesar’s Conquests reorder-list icon), 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings March 1958 [HRN 143], September 1959 [HRN 152], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], November 1964 [HRN 167], April 1966 [HRN 167], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 132. The Dark Frigate by Charles Boardman Hawes. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Robert H. Webb and Ed Waldman, adaptation by Annette T. Rubinstein; Hawes biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 6: The Tudor Kings” (Lou Cameron); “The Battle of Trafalgar” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing May 1956 [HRN 132, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings May 1959 [HRN 150], January 1964 [HRN 167], May 1967 [HRN 166]. Four printings. 133. The Time Machine by H.G. (Herbert George) Wells. Painted cover by George Wilson, interior art by Lou Cameron, adaptation by Lorenz Graham; Wells biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 7: The Elizabethan Age” (Lou Cameron); “Charles Darwin” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing July 1956 [HRN 132, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1958 [HRN 142], September 1959 [HRN 152], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], March 1966 [HRN 167], December 1967 [HRN 166], Winter 1971 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings. 134. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. First painted cover (Romeo-Tybalt duel) unattributed, interior art by George Evans; Shakespeare biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 8: The Puritan Revolution” (Lou Cameron); “A Penny a Play

332

APPENDIX A

[Elizabethan Theatre]” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 printing September 1956 [HRN 134, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings March 1961 [HRN 161], September 1963 [HRN 167], May 1965 [HRN 167], June 1967 [HRN 166]. Second painted cover (balcony scene) by Edward Moritz, original interior art. One PC2 printing Winter 1969 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢]. Six printings (five PC1, one PC2). 135. Waterloo by Erckmann-Chatrain (Emile Erckmann and Louis-Alexandre Chatrain). Painted cover by Alex A. Blum, interior art by Graham Ingels; Erckmann-Chatrain biographies (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 9: The Restoration” (Lou Cameron); “Retreat from Moscow” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing November 1956 [HRN 135, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings November 1959 [HRN 153], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], September 1964 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Five printings. 136. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by George Evans; Conrad biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 10: The Age of Revolution” (Lou Cameron); Great Lives: “Albert Schweitzer” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing January 1957 [HRN 136, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings 1962 [HRN 165], March 1964 [HRN 167], September 1966 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 137. The Little Savage by Frederick Marryat. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by George Evans; Marryat biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 11: The Victorian Era” (Lou Cameron); “High Diving Birds” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing March 1957 [HRN 136, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1959 [HRN 148], May 1956 [HRN 156], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], October 1964 [HRN 167], August 1967 [HRN 166], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 138. A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. Painted cover by Norman B. Saunders, interior art by Norman Nodel; Verne biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Story of Great Britain, Part 12: Great Britain Today” (Lou Cameron); “Cave Exploring [spelunking]” (no illo); “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing May 1957 [HRN 136, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings September 1958 [HRN 146], May 1960 [HRN 156], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], June 1964 [HRN 167], April 1966 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Eight printings. 139. In the Reign of Terror by G.A. (George Alfred) Henty. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by George Evans; Henty biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Revolutionist [Maximilien Robespierre]” (Alex A. Blum); “Fight for Freedom [Greek War of Independence]” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing July 1957 [HRN 139, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1960 [HRN 154], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Five printings. 140. On Jungle Trails by Frank Buck [with Ferrin Fraser]. Painted cover by George Wilson, interior art by Norman Nodel; Buck biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Wreck of the Essex” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing September 1957 [HRN 140, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings May 1959 [HRN 150], January 1961 [HRN 160], September 1963 [HRN 167], September 1965 [HRN 167]. Five printings. 141. Castle Dangerous by Sir Walter Scott. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Stan Campbell; Scott biography (Alex A. Blum); “The Rebellious Scots [William Wallace, Robert Bruce, and Lord James Douglas]” (Alex A. Blum); “Elves and Urisks” (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing November 1957 [HRN 141, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings September

1959 [HRN 152], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], July 1967 [HRN 166]. Four printings. 142. Abraham Lincoln (biography based on Abraham Lincoln by Benjamin P. Thomas [per 12 June 1957 letter to Roberta Strauss from Professor James Shenton, Department of History, Columbia University]). Painted cover by Gerald McCann (original painting contains added layer of painted foreground “grass”), interior art by Norman Nodel; “Soldier, Lawyer and Justice [Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.]”; “Conspiracy [Lewis Paine and David Herold]”; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing January 1958 [HRN 142, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1960 [HRN 154], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], October 1963 [HRN 167], July 1965 [HRN 167], November 1967 [HRN 166], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 143. Kim by Rudyard Kipling. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Joe Orlando; Kipling biography; “Buddha”; “The Abominable Snowman”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing March 1958 [HRN 143, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings 1962 [HRN 165], November 1963 [HRN 167], August 1965 [HRN 167], Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 144. The First Men in the Moon by H.G. (Herbert George) Wells. First painted cover (sphere and lunar surface) by Gerald McCann; interior art by George Woodbridge, Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, and Roy Krenkel; Wells biography; “The Mysterious Moon [lunar folklore]”; “Celestial Streaks [comets]”; “Coming Next” illo (for The Buccaneer) by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 printing May 1958 [HRN 143, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings September 1959 [HRN 152], November 1959 [HRN 153], March 1961 [HRN 161], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 167], December 1965 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (captives and Selenites) by Taylor Oughton, original interior art. First PC2 printing Fall 1968 [HRN 166, stiff cover, 25¢]; second PC2 printing Winter 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Eight printings (six PC1, two PC2). 145. The Crisis by Winston Churchill. Painted cover by Norman B. Saunders, interior art by George Evans; “Attack at Harpers Ferry”; Churchill biography; “Coming Next” illo unattributed. First PC printing July 1958 [HRN 143, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings May 1960 [HRN 156], October 1963 [HRN 167], March 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, soft cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 146. With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by George Woodbridge, adaptation by Betty Jacobson; Sienkiewicz biography; “Two Polish Masters [Chopin and Paderewski]”; “The Cossack Revolution”; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing September 1958 [HRN 143, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings May 1960 [HRN 156], November 1963 [HRN 167], March 1965 [HRN 167]. Four printings. 147. Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace. First painted cover (chariot race, full figure) by Gerald McCann, interior art by Joe Orlando, adaptation by Betty Jacobson; Wallace biography; “Fame or Death [Roman gladiators]”; “Emperor of Rome [Nero]”; “Coming Next” illo by Norman B. Saunders. First PC1 printing November 1958 [HRN 147, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings September 1959 [HRN 152], November 1959 [HRN 153], Fall 1960 [HRN 158], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], February 1965 [HRN 167], September 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (chariot race, closeup) by Taylor Oughton, original interior art; one PC2 printing Fall 1968 [HRN 166, soft- and stiff-cover variants, 25¢]. Eight printings (seven PC1, one PC2). 148. The Buccaneer (movie tie-in, based on Paramount screenplay # 11527 by Jessie L. Lasky, Jr., and Berenice Mosk; the 1958 film was a remake of a 1938 Cecil B. DeMille motion picture based on Lyle Saxon’s Lafitte the Pirate, as adapted by Jeanie Macpherson). Painted

APPENDIX A cover by Norman B. Saunders, interior art by George Evans and Robert L. Jenney; “Blood and Plunder [Henry Morgan and William Kidd]”; “Sunken Treasure”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC printing January 1959 (originally scheduled for release as No. 145) [HRN 148, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings October 1960 [CI JR HRN 568, the only instance in which a Junior backcover list was substituted in place of a regular CI HRN], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 167], September 1965 [HRN 167], Summer 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 149. Off On a Comet by Jules Verne. First painted cover (man gripping rocky surface, black background) unattributed, interior art by Gerald McCann; Verne biography; “The Dwarf and the Giant [Mercury and Jupiter]”; “Heavenly Heroes [Callisto, Orion, Pleiades, Ariadne]”; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. First PC1 printing March 1959 [HRN 149, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC1 printings March 1960 [HRN 155], Summer-Fall 1961 [anomalous whitebackground HRN 149], December 1963 [HRN 167], February 1965 [HRN 167], October 1966 [HRN 167]. Second painted cover (characters in balloon, yellow background) by Edward Moritz, original interior art. One PC2 printing Fall 1968 [HRN 166, soft cover, 25¢]. Seven printings (six PC1, one PC2). 150. The Virginian by Owen Wister. Painted cover by Doug Roea, interior art by Norman Nodel; Wister biography; “T.R. and the Thieves”; “The Capture of Geronimo”; “Coming Next” illo unattributed. First PC printing May 1959 [HRN 150, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings Fall 1961 [HRN 164], October 1963 [HRN 167], December 1965 [HRN 167]. Four printings. 151. Won by the Sword by G.A. (George Alfred) Henty. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by John Tartaglione; Henty biography; “Wallenstein”; “The Thirty Years’ War”; “Coming Next” illo by Leonard B. Cole. First PC printing July 1959 [HRN 150, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings Fall 1961 [HRN 164], October 1963 [HRN 167], July 1967 [HRN 166]. Four printings. 152. Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton. Painted cover and interior art by Leonard B. Cole; Seton biography; “Noah and His Ark”; “Bold Adventurers [Francisco Pizarro]”; “Coming Next” illo by Geoffrey Biggs. First PC printing September 1959 [HRN 152 (introduction of Off on a Comet reorder-list icon), 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings Summer-Fall 1961 (three variants) [anomalous white-background HRN 149], September 1963 [HRN 167], August 1965 [HRN 167], Fall 1969 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 153. The Invisible Man by H.G. (Herbert George) Wells. Painted cover by Geoffrey Biggs, interior art by Norman Nodel, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Wells biography; “The Vanished Race [Etruscans]”; “The Strange Visitor [Lincoln and the supernatural]”; “Coming Next” illo by Gerald McCann. First PC printing November 1959 [HRN 153, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings Summer-Fall 1961 (three variants) [anomalous white-background HRN 149], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167], February 1965 [HRN 167], September 1966 [HRN 167], Winter 1969 (title letters white rather than “invisible”) [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢], Spring 1971 (title letters white rather than “invisible”) [HRN 169, stiff cover]. Seven printings. 154. The Conspiracy of Pontiac by Francis Parkman. Painted cover and interior art by Gerald McCann, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Parkman biography; “Driven River [1836 battle between Cheyennes and Pawnees]”; “Sutter’s Dream [John Augustus Sutter]”; “Coming Next” illo by Gerald McCann. First PC printing January 1960 [HRN 154, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings November 1963 [HRN 167], July 1964 [HRN 167], December 1967 [HRN 166]. Four printings. 155. The Lion of the North by G.A. (George Alfred) Henty. Painted

333

cover by Gerald McCann, interior art by Norman Nodel; adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Henty biography; “Sweden on the Delaware [Peter Minuit]”; “A Storm of Stones [development of cannon]”; “Coming Next” illo by Bruno Premiani. First PC printing March 1960 [HRN 155, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent printings January 1964 [HRN 167], Fall 1967 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Three printings. 156. The Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Painted cover and interior art by Bruno Premiani, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Diaz biography; “Prophecy of Doom [return of Quetzalcoatl]”; “The Old World [16th-century Europe]”; “Coming Next” illo by Norman Nodel. First PC printing May 1960 [HRN 156, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1964 [HRN 167], August 1967 [HRN 166], Spring 1970 [HRN 169, stiff cover, 25¢]. 157. Lives of the Hunted by Ernest Thompson Seton. Painted cover by Leonard B. Cole, interior art by Norman Nodel, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Seton biography; “The Secret of the Cave [prehistoric paintings]”; “Escape to Freedom [slave narrative]”; “Coming Next” illo by Gerald McCann. First PC printing July 1960 [HRN 156, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings February 1964 [HRN 167], October 1967 [HRN 166]. Three printings. 158. The Conspirators (alternate English title for Le Chevalier d’Harmenthal) by Alexandre Dumas. Painted cover and interior art by Gerald McCann, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Dumas biography; “The Grand Monarch [Louis XIV]”; “The Fortress at Eagle’s Nest [The Old Man of the Mountains and the Assassins]”; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant showing additional rider) by Leonard B. Cole. First PC printing September 1960 [HRN 156, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings July 1964 [HRN 167], October 1967 [HRN 166]. Three printings. 159. The Octopus by Frank Norris. Painted cover by Leonard B. Cole, interior art by Gray Morrow, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Norris biography; “An Earthly Paradise [early history of California]”; “Food for the Hungry [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]”; “Coming Next” illo by Gerald McCann. First PC printing November 1960 [HRN 159, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings February 1964 [HRN 167], Fall 1967 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Three printings. 160. The Food of the Gods by H.G. (Herbert George) Wells. Painted cover by Gerald McCann, interior art by Tony Tallarico, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Wells biography; “Garden of Miracles [Brookhaven National Laboratories]”; “The War Against Machines [early Industrial Revolution mob violence]”; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Jack Kirby. First PC printing January 1960 (two variants) [HRN 159 or 160, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1964 [HRN 167], June 1967 [HRN 166]. Three printings. 161. Cleopatra by H. Rider Haggard. Painted cover by Poch, interior art by Norman Nodel, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Rider Haggard biography; “The Roman Power Struggle [Octavius and Antony]”; “The Realm of the Dead [Egyptian tombs]”; “Coming Next” illo by Casey Jones. First PC printing March 1961 [HRN 161, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings January 1964 [HRN 167], August 1967 [HRN 166]. Three printings. 162. Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne. Painted cover by Casey Jones (final issue with number and price in open-book device); interior art by Don Perlin, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Verne biography; “Who Knows?” (Part I) by Guy de Maupassant; “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (Part I) by Stephen Crane; Men of Action: “Joshua,” art by Sidney Miller (?); “Coming Next” illo (cover variant showing lower-right panel, p. 34, No. 162) by Don Perlin. First PC printing May 1961 [HRN 162, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings July 1964 [HRN 167], August 1967 [HRN 166]. Three printings. 163. Master of the World by Jules Verne. Painted cover unattributed

334

APPENDIX B, APPENDIX C

(first issue with number and price in yellow rectangle); interior art by Gray Morrow; adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Verne biography; “Who Knows?” (Part II) by Guy de Maupassant; “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (Part II) by Stephen Crane; Men of Action: “Socrates,” art by Sidney Miller (?); “Coming Next” illo unattributed. First PC printing July 1961 [HRN 163, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent printings January 1965 [HRN 167], 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Three printings. 164. The Cossack Chief (Taras Bulba) by Nikolai Gogol. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Sidney Miller, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Gogol biography; “Who Knows?” (Part III) by Guy de Maupassant; “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (Part III) by Stephen Crane; Men of Action: “Thutmosis III”; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant showing No. 165 title-page splash ) by Gray Morrow. First PC printing October 1961 [HRN 164, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1965 [HRN 167], Fall 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Three printings. 165. The Queen’s Necklace by Alexandre Dumas. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Gray Morrow, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Dumas biography; “Who Knows?” (Part IV) by Guy de Maupassant; “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (Part IV) by Stephen Crane; Men of Action: “Caupolican,” art by Bruno Premiani; “Coming Next” illo unattributed. First PC printing January 1962 [HRN 164, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings April 1965 [HRN 167], Fall 1968 [HRN 166, 25¢]. Three printings. 166. Tigers and Traitors (the second part of The Steam House, which also contains The Demon of Cawnpore) by Jules Verne. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Norman Nodel, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Verne biography; “Who Knows? (Part V) by Guy de Maupassant; “The Sepoy Revolt”; Men of Action: “Frederick Barbarossa,” art by Norman Nodel; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Norman Nodel. First PC printing May 1962 [HRN 165, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings February 1964 [HRN 167], November 1966 [HRN 167]. Three printings. 167. Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Cover penciled by Norman Nodel, colored by Sidney Miller; interior art by Norman Nodel, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Goethe biography; “Coming Next” illo unattributed. First PC printing August 1962 [HRN 165, 48 pages, 15¢]; subsequent PC printings February 1964 [HRN 167], June 1967 [HRN 166]. Three printings. 168. In Freedom’s Cause by G.A. (George Alfred) Henty. Painted cover unattributed, interior art by Reed Crandall and George Evans, adaptation by Alfred Sundel; Henty biography; no “Coming Next” ad. First and only PC printing Winter 1969 [HRN 169 (introduction of Last of the Mohicans reorder-list icon), stiff cover, 48 pages, 25¢]. Note: Scheduled for release in 1962; first issued in British series as No. 160 in 1963. One printing. 169. Negro Americans —The Early Years (biographical profiles and sketches of Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, Prince Hall, Prince Whipple, Oliver Cromwell, Spy James, Deborah Gannett, Benjamin Banneker, Phillis Wheatley, James Beckwourth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Robert Smalls, William Carney, Martin R. Delaney, Charles H. Davis, Henry Flipper, Isaiah Dorman, Nat Love, Daniel Hale Williams, Elijah McCoy, Garrett A. Morgan, Granville T. Woods, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Matthew Henson). Painted cover and interior art by Norman Nodel, script by Deena Weintraub; no “Coming Next” ad. First PC printing May 1969 [HRN 166 (Off on a Comet reorder-list icon), stiff cover, 48 pages, 25¢]; second PC printing Spring 1969 [HRN 169 (Last of the Mohicans reorder-list icon), stiff cover]. Two printings. Other titles planned but not published: Two Little Savages; The Aeneid; The Siege of Sevastopol; When the Sleeper Wakes; The Boy Captain.

Appendix B. Classics Illustrated Giant Editions (Gilberton, 1949) An Illustrated Library of Great Adventure Stories: reprints of A Tale of Two Cities (Stanley Maxwell Zuckerberg); Robin Hood (Louis Zansky); Arabian Nights (Lillian Chestney Zuckerberg); and Robinson Crusoe (Stanley Maxwell Zuckerberg); line-drawing cover by Henry C. Kiefer (1949). Robinson Crusoe replaced Les Miserables, and a front-cover paste-down illustration of Crusoe covered a drawing of Jean Valjean. An Illustrated Library of Great Indian Stories: reprints of The Pioneers (Rudolph Palais); The Last of the Mohicans (Ray Ramsey); The Deerslayer (Louis Zansky); and The Pathfinder (Louis Zansky); line-drawing cover by Alex A. Blum (1949). An Illustrated Library of Great Mystery Stories: reprints of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Arnold L. Hicks); 3 Famous Mysteries (Louis Zansky, Allen Simon, Arnold L. Hicks); The Moonstone (Don Rico); and Mysteries (August M. Froehlich, Henry C. Kiefer, Harley M. Griffiths); line-drawing cover by Alex A. Blum (1949). Two additional Giants were planned but never published; cover art is extant and indicates the contents: An Illustrated Library of Great Romances: reprints of Jane Eyre (Harley M. Griffiths); Wuthering Heights (Henry C. Kiefer); Ivanhoe (Edd Ashe); and The Woman in White (Alex A. Blum); line-drawing cover by Alex A. Blum (unpublished). An Illustrated Library of Great Sea Stories: reprints of Moby Dick (Louis Zansky); Mysterious Island (Robert H. Webb); Two Years Before the Mast (Robert H. Webb); and Kidnapped (Robert H. Webb); linedrawing cover by Alex. A. Blum (unpublished).

Appendix C. Fast Fiction/Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated (1949–1951) Seaboard Publishers, Inc., changed the name of this competing line of literary adaptations from Fast Fiction to Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated with No. 6. Issue length varied between 32 and 48 pages. The series was purchased and put out of business by Gilberton Co., Inc., in 1951. The Red Badge of Courage, scheduled to appear as Famous Authors No. 14, was issued as Classics Illustrated No. 98. The Famous Authors trademark was preserved by Gilberton as the nominal publisher of the Classics Illustrated Junior series. In October 2010, FA No. 9, Nicholas Nickleby, was reissued as No. 171 in the Jack Lake Classics Illustrated series.

Fast Fiction 1. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy; cover and interior art by Jim Lavery; adaptation by Dick Davis (October 1949); Famous Authors reprint with cover by Henry C. Kiefer (1950). 2. Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini; cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer (November 1949); Famous Authors reprint with new cover by Henry C. Kiefer (1950). 3. She by H. Rider Haggard; cover by Henry C. Kiefer; interior art by Vincent Napoli; adaptation by Dick Davis (December 1949); Famous Authors reprint (1950). 4. The 39 Steps by John Buchan, cover and interior art by Jim Lavery ( January 1950); Famous Authors reprint (1950). 5. Beau Geste by P.C. Wren; cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer (March 1950); Famous Authors reprint (1950).

Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated 6. Macbeth by William Shakespeare; cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; lettered by H.G. Ferguson; adapted by Dana E. Dutch (August 1950).

APPENDIX D, APPENDIX E 7. The Window by Cornell Woolrich; cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; lettered by H.G. Ferguson; adapted by Dana E. Dutch (September 1950). 8. Hamlet by William Shakespeare; cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; adapted by Dana E. Dutch (October 1950). 9. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens; cover and interior art by Gustav Schrotter; adapted by Dick Davis (November 1950). Added to Jack Lake Classics Illustrated series as No. 171 (October 2010). 10. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare; cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer (December 1950; N.B.— the November 1950 date in the publication indicia was a misprint); 32 pages. 11. Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace; cover and interior art by Gustav Schrotter ( January 1951); 48 pages. 12. La Svengali (Trilby) by George du Maurier; cover and interior art by Gustav Schrotter (February 1951). 13. Scaramouche: The Days Before the Terror by Rafael Sabatini; cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer (March 1951).

Appendix D. Classics Illustrated Educational Series (Gilberton, 1951–1953) Both Educational Series issues were 16 pages in length.

1. Shelter Through the Ages. Painted cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer; three variant back-cover illustrations (house, doll house, igloo) (1951). [No number] The Westinghouse Story: The Dreams of a Man. Painted cover and interior art by Henry C. Kiefer (1953). Note: Around 1952, the old Classic Comics logo appeared on a 64page giveaway comics-style biography and miscellany devoted to George Daynor (1860–1964), creator of the Palace of Depression in Vineland, New Jersey. The self-promoting Daynor most likely produced the book himself. There is no evidence to suggest that Albert Kanter would have considered approving the use of the defunct series’ name by a notoriously eccentric publicity hound at a time when legitimate commercial licensing of the Classics Illustrated trademark was profitably underway. Daynor’s vanity item, with its unauthorized appropriation of “Classic Comics Presents,” has no place whatsoever in the Classics Illustrated story. It is mentioned only because some collectors persist in treating the grotesquely overvalued rarity as yet another Classics-related “educational” publication somehow equivalent to the Ruberoid and Westinghouse issues.

Appendix E. Picture Parade/Picture Progress (Gilberton, 1953–1955) Picture Parade and Picture Progress issues in Vols. 1 and 2 were 24 pages in length; the two issues in Vol. 3 were 32 pages in length.

Vol. 1, No. 1. Andy’s Atomic Adventures. Art by Peter Costanza; script by Eleanor Lidofsky. First printing September 1953 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]; reprinted in Special Issue No. 138A. Vol. 1, No. 2. Around the World with the U.N. (per title page); The United Nations (per 1955 back-cover title list). Art by Peter Costanza; script by Eleanor Lidofsky. First and only printing October 1953 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]; this title was the forerunner of the Special Issue devoted to the United Nations. Vol. 1, No. 3. The Adventures of the Lost One (per title page); The American Indian (per 1955 back-cover title list). Art by Peter Costanza; back-cover art by Maurice del Bourgo; script by Eleanor Lidofsky. First and only printing November 1953 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]; this title was the forerunner of the World Around Us issue devoted to American Indians.

335

Vol. 1, No. 4. A Christmas Adventure. Art by Lin Streeter; insideback-cover coloring page by Alex A. Blum; script by Eleanor Lidofsky. First printing December 1953 (last issue as Picture Parade) [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]; reissued as giveaway 1969, with painted cover by Norman Nodel. Vol. 1, No. 5. News in Review —1953. Art by Peter Costanza; script by Eleanor Lidofsky. First and only printing January 1954 (first issue as Picture Progress) [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]. Vol. 1, No. 6. The Birth of America. Art by Lin Streeter; script by Eleanor Lidofsky. First printing February 1954 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]; reprinted in Special Issue No. 132A. Vol. 1, No. 7. The Four Seasons. Art by Lin Streeter; script by Eleanor Lidofsky. First and only printing March 1954 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]. Vol. 1, No. 8. Paul Revere’s Ride. Art by Peter Costanza; script by Eleanor Lidofsky. First printing April 1954 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]; reprinted in Special Issue No. 132A. Vol. 1, No. 9. The Hawaiian Islands. Art by Lin Streeter; script by Eleanor Lidofsky. First and only printing May 1954 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢] . Vol. 2, No. 1. The Story of Flight. Art by Peter Costanza. First printing September 1954 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]; reprinted in Special Issue No. 138A. Vol. 2, No. 2. A Vote for Crazy River (per front cover and title page); The Meaning of Elections (per 1955 back-cover title list). Art by Lin Streeter. First and only printing October 1954 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]. Vol. 2, No. 3. The Discoveries of Louis Pasteur. Art by Peter Costanza. First printing November 1954 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]; reprinted in Special Issue No. 138A. Vol. 2, No. 4. The Star-Spangled Banner. Art by Tom Hickey. First printing December 1954); reprinted in Special Issue No. 132A. Vol. 2, No. 5. 1954 — News in Review. Art by Peter Costanza. First and only printing January 1955 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢] . Vol. 2, No. 6. Alaska: “The Great Land.” Art by Lin Streeter. First and only printing February 1955 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]. Vol. 2, No. 7. Life in the Circus. Art by Norman Nodel. First and only printing March 1955 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]. Vol. 2, No. 8. The Time of the Cave Man. Art by Norman Nodel. First and only printing April 1955 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]. Vol. 2, No. 9. Summer Fun. Art by Lin Streeter. First and only printing May 1955 [no HRN, 24 pages, 10¢]. Vol. 3, No. 1. The Man Who Discovered America. Art by Lou Cameron. First printing September 1955 [no HRN, 32 pages, 10¢]; reprinted in Special Issue No. 132A. Vol. 3, No. 2. The Lewis and Clark Expedition. Art by Norman Nodel. First and only printing October 1955 [no HRN, 32 pages, 10¢]; this title was the forerunner of the Special Issue section devoted to the Lewis and Clark Expedition in Blazing the Trails West. Titles scheduled but never published; descriptive text from Gilberton promotional material: Whaling. Scheduled December 1955. “The thrilling facts and history of one of the most unusual industries in the world.” Later a World Around Us title. 1955 —The Year in Review. Scheduled January 1956. “The most interesting and exciting stories of 1955.” The Great Presidents: Washington and Lincoln. Scheduled February 1956. “Interesting highlights in the lives of these great men.” Abraham Lincoln later became the subject of a Classics Illustrated biography; a World Around Us issue was subsequently devoted to American Presidents. What Is Weather? Scheduled March 1956. “Some of the facts, fancies

336

APPENDIX F

and people that are part of the fascinating science we live with every day.” Building the Panama Canal. Scheduled April 1956. “The story of the men who fought disease and nature to build one of the greatest engineering wonders of the world.” America’s Giants. Scheduled May 1956. “The exciting, humorous, much-loved tales of the folk heroes of the different parts of America.”

Appendix F. Classics Illustrated Junior (Gilberton/Famous Authors, 1953–1967; Frawley, 1967–1971) All Classics Illustrated Junior issues were 32 pages in length. Additional features are listed. The first 20 titles featured back-cover fullcolor line drawings, which were converted to black-and-white “Color This Page with Crayons” inside-back-cover pages in the second or third printings. The author owes a special debt of gratitude to John Haufe for providing details of the printing histories, to Hames Ware for his assistance in identifying unsigned art, and to Rudy Tambone for help with information on back-of-the-book items.

501. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by the Brothers Grimm. Cover unattributed, interior art by Alex A. Blum, adaptation by Meyer A. Kaplan; back-cover art (first and second printings) by Alex A. Blum; inside-back-cover subscription ad with “Forthcoming Titles” shows cover illo for No. 502 by William A. Walsh. Fillers: “The Farmer in the Dell” (Alex A. Blum); “Lion” (William A. Walsh). First printing October 1953 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings March 1956 [HRN 524, coloring page introduced], August 1957 [HRN 541, CI HRN 139 reorder list replaces coloring page on inside back cover], November 1958 [no HRN, back-cover ad for CI JR LP record, CI reorder list HRN 147 replaces coloring page on inside back cover], April 1960 [HRN 565, coloring page restored], October 1960 [HRN 568], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 576], November 1964 [HRN 576], November 1966 [HRN 576], Spring 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Ten printings. 502. The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; back-cover art (first and second printings) by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: “The Cat and the Fiddle” (Alex A. Blum); “Polar Bear” (William A. Walsh). First printing November 1953 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings March 1956 [HRN 524], November 1957 [HRN 544 (back cover)/HRN 141 (CI reorder list on inside back cover)], December 1959 [HRN 563, coloring page introduced], October 1960 [HRN 568], February 1962 [HRN 575], October 1964 [HRN 576], December 1966 [HRN 576], Summer 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings. 503. Cinderella by Charles Perrault. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Peter Costanza; back-cover art (first and second printings) by Peter Costanza; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: “Jack and Jill” (Alex A. Blum); “Giant Panda” (William A. Walsh). First printing December 1953 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings March 1956 [HRN 524], August 1957 [HRN 541 (back cover)/HRN 139 (CI reorder list on inside back cover]; November 1958 [no HRN, back-cover ad for CI JR LP record, coloring page introduced], April 1960 [HRN 565], October 1960 [HRN 568], October 1961 [HRN 574], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 576], April 1964 [HRN 576], June 1966 [HRN 576], Spring 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eleven printings (tied with No. 519 as the most-often reprinted title). 504. The Pied Piper by Robert Browning. Cover and interior art by Dik Browne; back-cover art (first, second, and third printings)

by Dik Browne; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. Fillers: “Sing a Song of Sixpence” (Alex A. Blum); “Elephants” (William A. Walsh). First printing January 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1956 [HRN 523], May 1956 [HRN 526], November 1957 [HRN 544, coloring page introduced], December 1959 [HRN 563], October 1960 [HRN 568], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 576], November 1966 [HRN 576, “A” and “B” variants (indicia error “Number 571”)], Summer 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings. 505. The Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault/Brothers Grimm. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Peter Costanza; back-cover art (first and second printings) by Peter Costanza; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: “The Real Princess” [The Princess and the Pea”] by Hans Christian Andersen (Peter Costanza); “Simple Simon” (Alex A. Blum); “Camel” (William A. Walsh). First printing February 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings March 1956 [HRN 524], March 1958 [HRN 548], April 1959 [HRN 559 (back cover), HRN 142 (CI reorder list replaces inside-back-cover coloring page), “Coming Next” ad erroneously reinserted], October 1960 [HRN 568], October 1961 [HRN 574], March 1964 [HRN 576], October 1966 [HRN 576], Fall 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings. 506. The 3 Little Pigs by Joseph Jacobs. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; back-cover art (first, second, and third printings) by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: “I Saw a Ship a-Sailing” (Alex A. Blum); “Cheeta” (William A. Walsh). First printing March 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1956 [HRN 523], May 1956 [HRN 526], June 1959 [HRN 560, coloring page introduced], October 1960 [HRN 568], February 1962 [HRN 575], October 1964 [HRN 576], June 1967 [HRN 576], Spring 1971 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings. 507. Jack and the Beanstalk by William Godwin. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Alex A. Blum; back-cover art (first and second printings) by Alex A. Blum; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: “My Shadow” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum); “Gorilla” (William A. Walsh). First printing April 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings May 1956 [HRN 526], April 1959 [HRN 559, “Coming Next” ad erroneously reinserted, coloring page reintroduced], October 1960 [HRN 568], February 1962 [HRN 575], June 1964 [HRN 576], January 1967 [HRN 576], Summer 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 508. Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Robert Southey. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by William A. Walsh; back-cover art (first and second printings) by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: “Foreign Lands” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum); “Bison” (William A. Walsh). First printing May 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings May 1956 [HRN 526], December 1959 [HRN 563, coloring page introduced], October 1960 [HRN 568], March 1964 [HRN 576], June 1966 [HRN 576], Winter 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 509. Beauty and the Beast by Gianfrancesco Straparola/Charles Perrault. Cover and interior art by Dik Browne; back-cover art (first and second printings) by Dik Browne; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Dog and the Shadow” (William A. Walsh); “Ride a Cock-Horse” (Alex A. Blum); “Hippopotamus” (William A. Walsh). First printing June 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings June 1956 [HRN 527], July 1958 [HRN 552, coloring page introduced], December 1959 [HRN 563], October 1960 [HRN 568], March 1964 [HRN 576], July 1966 [HRN 576], Summer 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 510. Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault/Brothers Grimm. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by William A. Walsh; back-cover

APPENDIX F art (first and second printings) by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo (variants: cane added, cape different) by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Fox and the Grapes” (William A. Walsh); “Little Bo Peep” (Alex A. Blum); “Rhinoceros” (William A. Walsh). First printing July 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings June 1956 [HRN 527], December 1959 [HRN 563, coloring page introduced], October 1961 [HRN 574], November 1964 [HRN 576], March 1967 [HRN 576], Fall 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 511. Puss-in-Boots by Gianfrancesco Straparola/Charles Perrault. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by William A. Walsh; back-cover art (first and second printings) by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Fox and the Stork” (William A. Walsh); “There Was a Crooked Man,” “Peter Piper” (Alex A. Blum); “Platypus” (William A. Walsh); First printing August 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings May 1956 [HRN 526], April 1960 [HRN 565, coloring page introduced], October 1961 [HRN 574], March 1964 [HRN 576], February 1967 [HRN 576], Summer 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 512. Rumpelstiltskin by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by William A. Walsh; back-cover art (first and second printings) by William A. Walsh; “Coming next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Miller, His Son, and Their Donkey” (William A. Walsh); “To Market, to Market,” “Three Wise Men of Gotham” (Alex A. Blum); “Giraffe” (William A. Walsh). First printing September 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings May 1956 [HRN 526], June 1959 [HRN 560, coloring page introduced], March 1961 [HRN 161 (CI reorder list only)], May 1964 [HRN 576], January 1967 [HRN 576], Fall 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 513. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; back-cover art (first and second printings) by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Ant and the Grasshopper” (William A. Walsh); “Pirate Story” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum); “Grizzly Bear” (William A. Walsh). First printing November 1954 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings September 1956 [HRN 530], May 1958 [HRN 550, coloring page introduced], December 1959 [HRN 563], October 1960 [HRN 568], December 1963 [HRN 576], July 1965 [HRN 576], May 1967 [HRN 576], Fall 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Nine printings. 514. The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover and interior art by Dik Browne; back-cover art (first and second printings) by Dik Browne; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Actor and the Farmer” (Alex A. Blum); “Young Night Thought” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum); “Dingo” (William A. Walsh). First printing January 1955 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings September 1956 [HRN 530], June 1959 [HRN 560, coloring page introduced], October 1959 [HRN 562], October 1960 [HRN 568], April 1964 [HRN 576]. Six printings. 515. Johnny Appleseed. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; back-cover art (first and second printings) by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Kurt Schaffenberger. Fillers: “Pecos Bill” (William A. Walsh); “If All the Seas Were One Sea” (Alex A. Blum); “Kangaroo” (William A. Walsh). First printing March 1955 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings September 1956 [HRN 530], December 1959 [HRN 563, coloring page introduced], October 1960 [HRN 568], January 1964 [HRN 576], September 1966 [HRN 576], Spring 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 516. Aladdin and His Lamp. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Kurt Schaffenberger; back-cover art (first and second printings) by Alex A. Blum; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Boy and the Wolf ” (unattributed); “The Fat Man of Bombay,” “Wee Willie Winkie” (Alex A. Blum); “Sperm Whale”

337

(William A. Walsh). First printing May 1955 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings September 1956 [HRN 530], December 1959 [HRN 563, coloring page introduced], October 1961 [HRN 574], May 1965 [HRN 576], October 1966 [HRN 576], Spring 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 517. The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by William A. Walsh; back-cover art (first printing only) by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse” (William A. Walsh); “Peter, Peter,” “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” (Alex A. Blum); “The Swing” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum); “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. First printing July 1955 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings May 1957 [HRN 538, coloring page introduced], December 1959 [HRN 563], October 1961 [HRN 574], January 1967 [HRN 576], Summer 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 518. The Golden Goose by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia; backcover art (first printing only) by Alex A. Blum; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Lion and the Mouse” (Mike Sekowsky); “Hark! Hark!,” “Humpty Dumpty” (Alex A. Blum); “Rain” and “At the Seaside” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum). First printing September 1955 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1960 [HRN 565, coloring page introduced], October 1961 [HRN 574], November 1965 [HRN 576, color variants: title letters, middle figure turquoise or gray], Winter 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢, inside-back-cover coloring page illo by Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia]. Five printings. 519. Paul Bunyan by W.B. Laughead. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia; back-cover art (first and second printings) by Alex A. Blum; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Donkey and the Little Dog” (Mike Sekowsky); “Little Boy Blue” (Alex A. Blum); “Where Go the Boats” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum). First printing October 1955 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings June 1956 [HRN 527, coloring page introduced], May 1957 [HRN 538, CI HRN 137 reorder list replaces coloring page on inside back cover], December 1958 [HRN 557], April 1960 [HRN 565], October 1960 [HRN 568], February 1962 [HRN 575], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 576], May 1964 [HRN 576], December 1966 [HRN 576], Fall 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eleven printings (tied with No. 503 as the mostoften reprinted title). 520. Thumbelina by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Lin Streeter and William A. Walsh (background); back-cover art (first printing only) by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Crow and the Pitcher” (Mike Sekowsky); “Bed in Summer” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum); “Cock Robin and Jenny Wren” (Alex A. Blum). First printing November 1955 [no HRN, 15¢]; subsequent printings July 1958 [HRN 558], December 1959 [HRN 563], October 1960 [HRN 568], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 576], June 1964 [HRN 576], June 1967 [HRN 576], Fall 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Eight printings. 521. The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin. Cover by Mike Sekowsky; interior art by Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia; coloring page by Mike Sekowsky; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Aesop’s Fables: “The Unhappy Crow” (Mike Sekowsky); “The Land of Nod” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum); “This Is the Way” (Alex A. Blum). First printing December 1955 [HRN 522, 15¢]; subsequent printings November 1958 [HRN 556], April 1960 [HRN 565], October 1961 [HRN 574], November 1965 [HRN 576], Fall 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 522. The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover and interior art by Dik Browne; coloring page by Alex A. Blum; “Coming

338

APPENDIX F

Next” illo by Mike Sekowsky. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Hare and the Tortoise” (Dik Browne); “The Moon” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum); “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (Alex A. Blum). First printing January 1956 [HRN 523, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1960 [HRN 565], October 1961 [HRN 574], October 1965 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, issue number and price printed in blue, 25¢]. Five printings. 523. The Gallant Tailor by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by Mike Sekowsky; interior art by Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia; coloring page by Mike Sekowsky; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Fox and the Crow” (Mike Sekowsky); “Windy Nights” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum); “Wouldn’t It Be Funny?,” “Jack Be Nimble” (Alex A. Blum). First printing February 1956 [HRN 524, 15¢]; subsequent printings June 1957 [HRN 539 (back cover), HRN 138 (CI reorder list replaces inside-back-cover coloring page)], April 1960 [HRN 565, coloring page restored], October 1961 [HRN 574], September 1964 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 524. The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Raven and the Swan” (William A. Walsh); “I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing By” (Alex A. Blum); “The Wind” by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alex A. Blum). First printing March 1956 [HRN 524, 15¢]; subsequent printings July 1957 [HRN 540 (back cover), HRN 138 (CI reorder list replaces inside-back-cover coloring page)], June 1959 [HRN 560, coloring page restored], October 1960 [HRN 568], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 576], February 1967 [HRN 576]. Six printings. 525. The Little Mermaid (based on “The Mermaid”) by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Lin Streeter. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Milkmaid and Her Pail” (William A. Walsh); “Ding, Dong, Bell!,” “A Cat Came Fiddling” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: The Raccoon” (William A. Walsh). First printing April 1956 [HRN 525, The Mermaid title variant appears on back-cover reorder list, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1958 [HRN 547], December 1959 [HRN 563], April 1961 [HRN 571], December 1964 [HRN 576], January 1967 [HRN 576]. Six printings. 526. The Frog Prince by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by Lin Streeter; coloring page by Lin Streeter; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Hares and the Frogs” (William A. Walsh); “Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat,” “What Are Little Boys Made Of?” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Condor” (William A. Walsh). First printing May 1956 [HRN 526, The Mermaid title variant remains on reorder list, 15¢]; subsequent printings May 1958 [HRN 550 (back cover), HRN 143 (CI reorder list replaces coloring page)], December 1959 [HRN 563, coloring page restored], October 1960 [HRN 568], April 1964 [HRN 576], February 1967 [HRN 576]. Six printings. 527. The Golden-Haired Giant (based on “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs”) by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Fox and the Goat” (William A. Walsh); “There Was a Maid” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Moose” (William A. Walsh). First printing June 1956 [HRN 528, The Little Mermaid title corrected on backcover reorder list, 15¢]; subsequent printings June 1959 [HRN 560], October 1960 [HRN 568], January 1964 [HRN 576], June 1964 [HRN 576], March 1967 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 528. The Penny Prince (based on “The Swineherd”) by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Tom

Hickey; coloring page by Tom Hickey; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum (title-lettering variant). Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Two Goats” (William A. Walsh); “Three Little Kittens” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Rabbit” (William A. Walsh). First printing July 1956 [HRN 529, “The Swineherd” credit appears on title page, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1958 [HRN 557], April 1960 [HRN 565], October 1960 [HRN 568], November 1963 [HRN 576], July 1966 [HRN 576]. Six printings. 529. The Magic Servants (based on “The Six Servants”) by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh (previously appeared in No. 528 as “Coming Next” illo); “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” (William A. Walsh); “Froggie Went a’Courtin’” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Tiger” (William A. Walsh) First printing August 1956 [HRN 530, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1959 [HRN 559], October 1960 [HRN 568], February 1964 [HRN 576], October 1966 [HRN 576]. Five printings. 530. The Golden Bird by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Lin Streeter; coloring page by Lin Streeter; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum (title-lettering variant). Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Wind and the Sun” (Lin Streeter); “London Bridge” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Seal” (William A. Walsh). First printing September 1956 HRN 528 (edition 1A), HRN 531 (edition 1B), 15¢]; subsequent printings June 1959 [HRN 560], April 1961 [HRN 571], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], August 1965 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 531. Rapunzel by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by Lin Streeter; coloring page by Lin Streeter; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Mice in Council [Belling the Cat]” (Lin Streeter); “Little Miss Muffet” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Reindeer” (William A. Walsh). First printing October 1956 [HRN 532, 15¢]; subsequent printings November 1958 [HRN 556 (back cover), HRN 147 (CI reorder list replaces insideback-cover coloring page)], April 1960 [HRN 565, coloring page restored], April 1961 [HRN 571], July 1964 [HRN 576], February 1967 [HRN 576]. Six printings. 532. The Dancing Princesses (based on “The Shoes That Were Danced Through,” also known as “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”) by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by Mike Sekowsky; “Coming Next” illo by Mike Sekowsky. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Lark and Her Young Ones” (William A. Walsh); “Little Jack Horner” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Porcupine” (William A. Walsh). First printing November 1956 [HRN 533, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1959 [HRN 559], August 1960 [HRN 567], February 1962 [HRN 575], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 576], December 1965 [HRN 576], Winter 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Seven printings. 533. The Magic Fountain by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by Mike Sekowsky; interior art by Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia; coloring page by Mike Sekowsky; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: “The Straw, the Coal and the Bean” by the Brothers Grimm (Mike Sekowsky); “Where, O Where” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Squirrel” (William A. Walsh). First printing December 1956 [HRN 534, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1959 [HRN 562], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], December 1964 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 534. The Golden Touch (from A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys) by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Dik Browne. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “Stone Soup”

APPENDIX F (William A. Walsh); “Mistress Mary” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Turtle” (William A. Walsh). First printing January 1957 [HRN 534, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1959 [HRN 562], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], December 1964 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 535. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Cover by Dik Browne; interior art by Mike Sekowsky; coloring page by Mike Sekowsky; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Fox and the Lion” (Mike Sekowsky); “Old Mother Hubbard” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Koala” (William A. Walsh). First printing February 1957 [HRN 534, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1958 [HRN 557], April 1960 [HRN 565], April 1961 [HRN 571], December 1964 [HRN 576], October 1966 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢], Spring 1971 [HRN 576, stiff cover, “wavy-green” background]. Eight printings; one Twin Circle edition. 536. The Chimney Sweep by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Lin Streeter. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Fisherman and the Little Fish” (William A. Walsh); “Pat-a-Cake” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Beaver” (William A. Walsh). First printing March 1957 [HRN 534, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1959 [HRN 563], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], October 1961 [HRN 574], Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 576], March 1965 [HRN 576], March 1967 [HRN 576]. Seven printings. 537. The Three Fairies (from the Pentamerone) by Giambattista Basile. Cover and interior art by Lin Streeter; coloring page by Lin Streeter; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Ant and the Dove” (Lin Streeter); “Rub-a-Dub-Dub” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Flamingo” (William A. Walsh). First printing April 1957 [HRN 538, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1959 [HRN 559], October 1960 [HRN 568], May 1964 [HRN 576], February 1967 [HRN 576]. Five printings. 538. Silly Hans by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Lin Streeter (title-lettering variant). Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Lion and the Dolphin” (William A. Walsh); “The North Wind” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Penguin” (William A. Walsh). First printing May 1957 [HRN 539, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1960 [HRN 565], October 1961 [HRN 574], September 1964 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 539. The Enchanted Fish (based on “The Fisherman and His Wife”) by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by Lin Streeter; coloring page by Lin Streeter; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: The Four Oxen and the Lion” (William A. Walsh); “The Queen of Hearts” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Armadillo” (William A. Walsh). First printing June 1957 [HRN 540, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1959 [HRN 562], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], October 1961 [HRN 574], August 1965 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 540. The Tinder-Box by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Lioness and Her Family”(William A. Walsh); “Hickety, Pickety” (Alex A. Blum); The Animal World: “The Kinkajou” (William A. Walsh). First printing July 1957 [HRN 541, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1959 [HRN 559], August 1960 [HRN 567], JuneJuly 1961 [anomalous HRN 556, printing error — darker cover], September 1965 [HRN 576], Winter 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 541. Snow White and Rose Red by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh;

339

“Coming Next” illo by Stan Campbell. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Rich Man’s Guest” (William A. Walsh); “The Duck and the Kangaroo” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Cougar” (William A. Walsh). First printing August 1957 [HRN 542, 15¢]; subsequent printings August 1959 [HRN 561], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], September 1965 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 542. The Donkey’s Tale, based on a traditional fable. Cover and interior art by Stan Campbell; coloring page by Stan Campbell; “Coming Next” illo by Lin Streeter (title-lettering variant). Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Oak and the Reed” (Stan Campbell); “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear (Stan Campbell); The Animal World: “The Flying Squirrel” (William A. Walsh). First printing September 1957 [HRN 543, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1959 [HRN 563], October 1961 [HRN 574], October 1965 [HRN 576], Winter 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 543. The House in the Woods by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by Lin Streeter; coloring page by Lin Streeter; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Treasure in the Vineyard” (Lin Streeter); “The Broom, the Shovel, the Poker, and the Tongs” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Skunk” (William A. Walsh). First printing October 1957 [HRN 544, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1959 [HRN 563], JuneJuly 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], December 1964 [HRN 576], February 1967 [HRN 576]. Five printings. 544. The Golden Fleece (from Tanglewood Tales) by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Cover by Alex A. Blum; interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Alex A. Blum. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Donkey and the Cricket” (William A. Walsh); “The Daddy Long-Legs and the Fly” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Jaguar” (William A. Walsh). First printing November 1957 [HRN 545, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1960 [HRN 565], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], February 1962 [HRN 575], October 1964 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 545. The Glass Mountain, based on a Polish tale. Cover and interior art unattributed; coloring page unattributed; “Coming Next” illo by Alex. A. Blum. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Donkey and the Salt” (unattributed); “There Was an Old Man with a Beard” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Otter” (William A. Walsh). First printing December 1957 [HRN 545, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1959 [HRN 563], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], February 1962 [HRN 575], December 1964 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 546. The Elves and the Shoemaker by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Lin Streeter. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Greedy Lion” (William A. Walsh); “There Was an Old Lady of France” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Heron” (William A. Walsh). First printing January 1958 [HRN 545, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1960 [HRN 565], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], September 1964 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 547. The Wishing Table by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by Lin Streeter; coloring page by Lin Streeter; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Two Frogs” (Lin Streeter); “There Was an Old Person of Brigg” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Aardvark” (William A. Walsh). First printing February 1958 [HRN 545, 15¢]; subsequent printings April 1960 [HRN 565], February 1962 [HRN 575], November 1964 [HRN 576], March 1967 [HRN 576]. Five printings. 548. The Magic Pitcher (The Miraculous Pitcher, from A WonderBook for Girls and Boys) by Nathaniel Hawthorne (title-page credit).

340

APPENDIX F

Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Alex A. Blum. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Arab and His Camel” (William A. Walsh); “There Was an Old Man Who Said, ‘Hush!’” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Albatross” (William A. Walsh). First printing March 1958 [HRN 545, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1959 [HRN 563], October 1960 [HRN 568], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], July 1964 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 549. Simple Kate by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art unattributed ( Jerry Fasano?); coloring page unattributed ( Jerry Fasano?); “Coming Next” illo by Stan Campbell. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Spendthrift and the Swallow” (unattributed); “There Was a Young Lady of Welling” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Alligator” (William A. Walsh). First printing April 1958 [HRN 550, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1959 [HRN 563], October 1960 [HRN 568], February 1962 [HRN 575], December 1965 [HRN 576], Spring 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 550. The Singing Donkey (based on The Bremen Town Musicians) by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by Stan Campbell; coloring page by Stan Campbell; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Fortune Teller” (Stan Campbell); “There Was an Old Man Who Said, ‘Well!’” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Caribou” (William A. Walsh). First printing May 1958 [HRN 551, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1959 [HRN 563], October 1960 [HRN 568], April 1964 [HRN 576], Fall 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 551. The Queen Bee by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Plane Tree” (William A. Walsh); “There Was an Old Man of Kilkenny” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Puma” (William A. Walsh). First printing June 1958 [HRN 552, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1960 [HRN 568], February 1962 [HRN 575], July 1965 [HRN 576], Winter 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 552. The Three Little Dwarfs by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by William A Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Woodcutters and the Ax” (William A. Walsh); “There Was an Old Man of the West” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Salamander” (William A. Walsh). First printing July 1958 [HRN 553, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1959 [HRN 563], April 1961 [HRN 571], November 1963 [HRN 576], September 1966 [HRN 576]. Five printings. 553. King Thrushbeard by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Joe Sinnott. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Man and the Satyr” (William A. Walsh); “There Was an Old Man in a Boat” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Hamster” (William A. Walsh). First printing August 1958 [HRN 554, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1959 [HRN 562], August 1960 [HRN 567], February 1962 [HRN 575], March 1965 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 554. The Enchanted Deer by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by William A. Walsh; interior art by Joe Sinnott; coloring page by Joe Sinnott; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Mike Sekowsky. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Deer and the Hunters” ( Joe Sinnott); “There Was a Young Lady Whose Bonnet” by Edward Lear ( Joe Sinnott); The Animal World: “The Ostrich” (William A. Walsh). First printing September 1958 [HRN 555, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1959 [HRN 558], April 1960 [HRN 565], February 1962

[HRN 575], April 1964 [HRN 576], August 1966 [HRN 576]. Six printings. 555. The Three Golden Apples (from A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys) by Nathaniel Hawthorne (title-page credit). Cover and interior art by Mike Sekowsky; coloring page by Mike Sekowsky; “Coming Next” illo by William A. Walsh. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Boy and the Filberts” (Mike Sekowsky); “There Was an Old Man with a Nose” by Edward Lear (Mike Sekowsky); The Animal World: “The Swan” (William A. Walsh). First printing October 1958 [HRN 556, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1960 [HRN 568], SpringSummer 1963 [HRN 576], September 1966 [HRN 576]. Four printings. 556. The Elf Mound by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover and interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by Mike Sekowsky. Fillers: “The Shepherd Goes to Sea” (William A. Walsh); “There Was an Old Man in a Tree” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Lobster” (William A. Walsh). First printing November 1958 [HRN 557, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1960 [HRN 568], February 1962 [HRN 575], March 1965 [HRN 576], Fall 1968, soft cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 557. Silly Willy by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by Mike Sekowsky; coloring page by Mike Sekowsky; “Coming Next” illo by L.B. Cole. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Donkey’s Shadow” (Mike Sekowsky); “There Was an Old Man on a Hill” by Edward Lear (Mike Sekowsky); The Animal World: “The Ground Hog” (William A. Walsh). First printing December 1958 [no HRN, LP ad on back cover, stiff and soft covers, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1960 [HRN 568], June-July 1961 [anomalous HRN 556], October 1961 [HRN 574], October 1964 [HRN 576], Fall 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Six printings. 558. The Magic Dish. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by George Peltz; coloring page by George Peltz; “Coming Next” illo by L.B. Cole. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Wolf and the Kid” (George Peltz); “There Was an Old Person of Dover” by Edward Lear (George Peltz); The Animal World: “The Chinchilla” (William A. Walsh). First printing February 1959 [no HRN, LP ad on back cover, soft and stiff covers, 15¢]; subsequent printings June-July 1961 [HRN 556], October 1961 [HRN 574], October 1963 [HRN 576], September 1966. Five printings. 559. The Japanese Lantern by Lafcadio Hearn. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by George Peltz; coloring page by George Peltz; “Coming Next” illo by L.B. Cole. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “Hercules and the Wagon Driver” (George Peltz); “There Was a Young Lady Whose Chin” by Edward Lear (George Peltz); The Animal World: “The Badger” (William A. Walsh). First printing April 1959 [HRN 559, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1961 [HRN 574], December 1964 [HRN 576], January 1967 [HRN 576]. Four printings. 560. The Doll Princess. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo (title-lettering variant) by L.B. Cole. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Man and His Two Wives” (William A. Walsh); “There Was an Old Lady of Chertsey” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Bat” (William A. Walsh). First printing June 1959 [HRN 560, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1961 [HRN 574], December 1964 [HRN 576], April 1967 [HRN 576]. Four printings. 561. Hans Humdrum, a Danish fairy tale, collected by Sven Grundtvig. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by George Peltz; coloring page by George Peltz; and “Coming Next” illo (title-lettering variant) by L.B. Cole. Fillers: “The Camel and the Pig” (George Peltz); “There Was an Old Man Who Said ‘How’” by Edward Lear (George Peltz); The Animal World: “The Walrus” (William A. Walsh). First printing

APPENDIX F August 1959 [HRN 561, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1961 [HRN 574], March 1965 [HRN 576], Fall 1968 [HRN 576, soft and stiff covers, 25¢]. Four printings. 562. The Enchanted Pony, a Russian fairy tale. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by L.B. Cole. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Two Maids and the Cock” (William A. Walsh); “There Was a Young Lady Whose Eyes” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Katydid” (William A. Walsh). First printing October 1959 [HRN 562, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1961 [HRN 574], September 1964 [HRN 576], April 1967 [HRN 576]. Four printings. 563. The Wishing Well. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by L.B. Cole. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Boy Bathing” (William A. Walsh); “There Was a Young Lady Whose Nose” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Alpaca” (L.B. Cole). First printing December 1959 [HRN 563, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1961 [HRN 574], January 1965 [HRN 576], Spring 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, issue number and price printed in blue, 25¢]. Four printings. 564. The Salt Mountain, a Russian fairy tale. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by George Peltz; coloring page by George Peltz; “Coming Next” illo by L.B. Cole. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Father and His Two Daughters” (George Peltz); “There Was a Young Lady of Norway” by Edward Lear (George Peltz); The Animal World: “The Pelican” (L.B. Cole). First printing February 1960 [HRN 563, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1961 [HRN 574], January 1965 [HRN 576], March 1967 [HRN 576]. Four printings. 565. The Silly Princess, a Russian fairy tale. Cover by L.B. Cole, interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by L. B. Cole. Fillers: “Fortune and the Beggar” (William A. Walsh); “There Was a Young Lady of Bute” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Chameleon” (L.B. Cole). First printing April 1960 [HRN 565, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1962 [HRN 575], January 1965 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Four printings. 566. Clumsy Hans (based on “Clod Hans”) by Hans Christian Andersen. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by William A. Walsh; coloring page by William A. Walsh; “Coming Next” illo by L.B. Cole. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Mouse, the Cat and the Rooster” (William A. Walsh); “The Table and the Chair” by Edward Lear (William A. Walsh); The Animal World: “The Prairie Dog” (L.B. Cole). First printing June 1960 [HRN 566, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1962 [HRN 575], January 1965 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Four printings. 567. The Bearskin Soldier (based on “Bearskin”) by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by George Peltz; coloring page by George Peltz; “Coming Next” illo by L.B. Cole. Fillers: “The RedBud Tree” (George Peltz); “There Was a Young Lady of Russia” by Edward Lear (George Peltz); The Animal World: “The Swordfish” (L.B. Cole). First printing August 1960 [HRN 567, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1962 [HRN 575], February 1965 [HRN 576], May 1967 [HRN 576], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, 25¢]. Five printings. 568. The Happy Hedgehog (based on “Hans My Hedgehog”) by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by L.B. Cole; interior art by George Peltz; coloring page by George Peltz; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) unattributed. Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Mouse, the Frog, and the Hawk” (L.B. Cole); “There Was an Old Man of the Dee” by Edward Lear (George Peltz); The Animal World: “The Buffalo” ( Jay Disbrow). First printing October 1960 [HRN 568, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1962 [HRN 575], February 1965 [HRN 576], May 1967 [HRN 576]. Four printings.

341

569. The Three Giants (based on “The Skillful Huntsman”) by the Brothers Grimm. Cover unattributed; interior art by George Peltz; coloring page by George Peltz; “Coming Next” illo unattributed. Fillers: “The String of Carts” (George Peltz); “Spots of Greece” by Edward Lear (George Peltz); The Animal World: “The Ibex” (Norman Nodel). First printing December 1960 [HRN 568, issue number and price in different font and smaller point-size, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1962 [HRN 575], February 1965 [HRN 576], Fall 1968 [HRN 576, “A” and “B” cover variants, 25¢]. Four printings. 570. The Pearl Princess (based on “The Goose Girl at the Spring”) by the Brothers Grimm. Cover unattributed; interior art unattributed; coloring page “A” (from lower panel, page 17) unattributed; “Coming Next” illo (cover variant) by Jack Kirby. Fillers: “The Three Fish” (unattributed); “There Was an Old Person of Troy” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Grebe” (unattributed). First printing February 1961 [HRN 568, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1962 [HRN 575], February 1965 [HRN 576, printing error: reddish coloring on cover (absence of blue)], Winter 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, coloring page “B” (from lower left, page 19), 25¢]. Four printings. 571. How Fire Came to the Indians, a Native American tale. Cover unattributed; interior art by Tony Tallarico; coloring page by Tony Tallarico; “Coming Next” illo unattributed (possibly Sidney Miller). Fillers: “The Good King” (Tony Tallarico); “There Was a Young Person in Pink” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Tarsier” (unattributed). First printing April 1961 [HRN 571, 15¢]; subsequent printings Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 576], November 1966 [HRN 576, “A” and “B” variants (indicia error “Number 504”)]; Spring 1969(?) [HRN 576(?)] (existence questioned). Three (or four) printings. 572. The Drummer Boy by the Brothers Grimm. Cover unattributed (possibly Sidney Miller); interior art possibly by Sidney Miller; coloring page possibly by Sidney Miller; “Coming Next” illo by unidentified artist (larger-numbering variant). Fillers: Aesop’s Fables: “The Hare and the Hound” (Charles Berger); “There Was an Old Man in a Garden” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Road Runner” (unattributed). First printing June 1961 [HRN 572, 15¢]; subsequent printings Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 576], January 1967 [HRN 576]. Three printings. 573. The Crystal Ball by the Brothers Grimm. Cover by Pat Prichard (?); interior art by Sidney Miller (?); coloring page by Sidney Miller (?); “Coming Next” illo unattributed (title-lettering variant). Fillers: “The Fish and the Cat” (unattributed); “There Was an Old Person of Wilts” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Mastodon” (H.J. Kihl). First printing August 1961 [HRN 573, 15¢]; subsequent printings October 1963 [HRN 576], August 1966 [HRN 576]. Three printings. 574. Brightboots. Cover unattributed; interior art by Tony Tallarico; coloring page by Tony Tallarico; “Coming Next” illo unattributed (cover variants: title size; fence not included in published version). Fillers: “The Shepherd’s Bride” (Tony Tallarico); “There Was an Old Man of Dee-side” by Edward Lear (Erhard); The Animal World: “The Sloth” (unattributed). First printing October 1961 [HRN 574, 15¢]; subsequent printings November 1964 [HRN 576, cover variant: blues missing, white background], 1968 [HRN 576, soft cover, large point-size for number and price on white strip, 25¢]. Three printings. 575. The Fearless Prince by the Brothers Grimm. Cover unattributed; interior art by “Boris”; coloring page (adapted from p. 12, No. 575) by “Boris”; “Coming Next” illo by Pat Prichard. Fillers: “The Nail” (Erhard); “There Was an Old Person of Dean” by Edward Lear (Erhard); The Animal World: “The Panglion” (unattributed). First

342

APPENDIX G

printing February 1962 [HRN 575, 15¢]; subsequent printings February 1964 [HRN 576], November 1966 [HRN 576]. Three printings. 576. The Princess Who Saw Everything by the Brothers Grimm. Cover and interior art by Pat Prichard; coloring page by Pat Prichard (with figure added to panel found on p. 6, No. 576); “Coming Next” illo (amalgam of top panel, p. 19, No. 577, and top right panel, p. 25, No. 577) by Pat Prichard. Fillers: “The Unhappy Cow” (Erhard); “There Was an Old Man in a Tree” by Edward Lear (unattributed); The Animal World: “The Hummingbird” (unattributed). First printing June 1962 [HRN 576, 15¢]; subsequent printings December 1963 [HRN 576], March 1967 [HRN 576]. Three printings. 577. The Runaway Dumpling based on a Japanese folktale, told by Lafcadio Hearn. Cover and interior art by Pat Prichard; coloring page by Pat Prichard; no “Coming Next” ad. No fillers. First and only printing Winter 1969 [HRN 576, stiff cover, 25¢]. One printing.

Appendix G. Classics Illustrated Special Issues (Gilberton, 1955–1964) The Special Issues were, with the exception of the unnumbered United Nations edition, 96 pages in length; the cover price was 35 cents, with the exceptions of the United Nations issue and a Story of Jesus reprint. Bill Briggs and John Haufe argue persuasively that all Special Issues bearing a December publication date were in fact released in October, while those with a June publication date were actually issued in March.

129A. The Story of Jesus. First painted cover (“Jesus on the Mountain”) by Victor Prezio, interior art by William A. Walsh and Alex A. Blum, adaptation by Lorenz Graham. Chapters: “Birth and Boyhood of Jesus”; “Preparation for Life’s Work”; “The Galilean Ministry”; “Jesus at Jerusalem”; “Betrayal, Trial and Crucifixion”; “Resurrection.” First PC1 printing December (October) 1955 [no HRN, back-cover commendations, inside-back-cover note from “The Publishers”; 96 pages, 35¢]. Second painted cover (“Three Camels”) unattributed; original interior art. First and only PC 2 printing December (August-October) 1958 [No HRN, back-cover commendations with F. Orozco substituted for E.A. Love]. Second PC 1 printing March 1961 [HRN 161, 35¢]; third PC1 printing 1968 [HRN 166, 50¢]. Four printings (three PC1, one PC2). 132A. The Story of America. Painted cover by George Wilson. Chapters: “The Man Who Discovered America” (Lou Cameron); “The Birth of America” (Lin Streeter); “Paul Revere’s Ride” (Peter Costanza); “The Star-Spangled Banner” (Tom Hickey); all sections originally appeared in Picture Parade/Picture Progress series. First and only printing June (March) 1956 [HRN 132, inside-front-covere ditors’ note; 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 135A. The Ten Commandments. Painted cover and interior art by Norman Nodel, adaptation by Lorenz Graham. Chapters: “Oppression in Egypt”; “Early Life of Moses”; “God Calls Moses”; “The Plagues”; “Exodus”; “The Commandments”; “The Tabernacle.” First and only printing December (October) 1956 [no HRN, back-cover commendations, inside-back-cover promotion for Paramount film production of The Ten Commandments, 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 138A. Adventures in Science. Painted cover by George Wilson. Chapters: “The Story of Flight” (Peter Costanza); “Andy’s Atomic Adventures” (Peter Costanza); “The Discoveries of Louis Pasteur” (Peter Costanza); “From Tom-Tom to TV” (Lin Streeter); all sections originally appeared in Picture Parade/Picture Progress series except for “From Tom-Tom to TV,” which was scheduled for publication in

November 1955. Fillers: Great Lives: “Amelia Earhart”; Pioneers of Science: “Joseph Priestley” (first appeared in Classic Comics No. 31). First printing June (March) 1957 [HRN 137, inside-front-cover editors’ note; 96 pages, 35¢]; subsequent printings June (March) 1959 [HRN 149], December (October) 1961 [anomalous HRN 149]. Three printings. 141A. The Rough Rider, Painted cover unattributed; interior art by George Evans (pencils). Fillers: “This He Believed...”; “Theodore Roosevelt” by Hermann Hagedorn. First and only printing December (October) 1957 [HRN 141, inside-front-cover letter from Hermann Hagedorn, Director, Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Commission; inside-back-cover commendations; 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 144A. Blazing the Trails West. Painted cover by George Wilson; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “Daniel Boone” (George Evans); “The Lewis and Clark Expedition” (George Evans); “The Santa Fe Trail” (George Evans); “Fur and Mountains” (George Evans); “Kit Carson” (George Evans); “Texas and the Alamo” ( John P. Severin); “The Mexican War” ( John P. Severin); Fillers: “End of an Empire”; “Frontier Fun.” First and only printing June (March) 1958 [HRN 143, 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 147A. Crossing the Rockies. Cover by Gerald McCann; page-one splash by Norman Nodel. Chapters: “The Oregon Trail” (Norman Nodel); “Death and the Donners” (Norman Nodel); “‘This Is the Place’” (Norman Nodel); “The Gold Rush” (George Evans); “The Apache Wars” ( Joe Orlando); “The Overland Mail” ( Joe Orlando): “Pony Express” ( Joe Orlando); “Bound by Rails” ( Joe Orlando); Fillers: “Meanwhile, Back in the East...”; “The Magic Wire.” First and only printing December (October) 1958 [HRN 146, 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 150A. Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Painted cover by Gerald McCann; page-one splash by L.B. Cole. Chapters: “March to Fort Whoop-Up” (Sam Glanzman); “Pony Soldiers” (Graham Ingels); “Indians and Outlaws” (Sid Check); “Unrest and Rebellion” (Kirner); “Patrolling the Prairies” (Sam Becker); “The Gold Rush” (unattributed); “Into the Far North” (Norman Nodel); “The Modern Mountie” (Stan Campbell); Manhunt!” (Ray Ramsey); “Molding a Mountie (Norman Nodel); Fillers: “Mountie Museum”; “Heroic Rescues.” First and only printing June (March) 1959 [HRN 149, 96 pages, 35¢). One printing. 153A. Men, Guns and Cattle. Painted cover by Gerald McCann; page-one splash by L.B. Cole. Chapters: “Horns and Hoofs” (George Evans); “Iron Fisted Marshal” (George Evans); “The Chisholm Trail” (George Evans); “The Lincoln County War” (Gerald McCann); “Dodge City Lawman” (Gerald McCann); “The Last War” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “The West’s Wildest Town” (Norman Nodel); “The Death of Tombstone” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “Koohoppers and Cactus Cats” (George Peltz); “The Closing Frontier” (Gerald McCann); Fillers: “Guns and Gunfighters”; “Git Along Little Dogies.” First and only printing December (October) 1959 [HRN 152, 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 156A. The Atomic Age. Painted cover by Gaylord Welker; pageone splash by Norman Nodel. Chapters: “Adventure North” (Norman Nodel); “The Smallest Particle” (Bruno Premiani); “Inside the Atom” (Edd Ashe); “The Atomic Furnace” (Gerald McCann); “The Magic Mineral” (Sam Glanzman); “How to Build a Radiation Detector” (George Evans); “Alpha, Beta and Gamma” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “Atoms for Power” (George Evans); “The Radioscope” (Sam Glanzman); “Atoms and Industry” ( John Tartaglione); “Atoms and Agriculture” (Gerald McCann); “Atoms and Medicine” (Angelo Torres); “The Healing Rays” (Gerald McCann); “The Atom Tomorrow” (Bruno Premiani); Fillers: “The Ages of Energy”; “The Search for Uranium.” First and only printing June (March) 1960 [HRN 154, 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing.

APPENDIX H 159A. Rockets, Jets and Missiles. Painted cover by Allen Simon; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “Flight of the X-1” (George Evans); “Space Talk” I (Sam Glanzman); “The Moon” (Gerald McCann); “The Jet Is Born” (Gerald McCann); “Space Talk” II (Sam Glanzman); “Mercury” ( John Tartaglione); “Jet Engines” ( John Tartaglione); “Jets Around the World” ( John Tartaglione); “Space Talk” III (Sam Glanzman); “Venus” ( John Tartaglione); “Rockets Through Time” (H.J. Kihl); “Space Talk” IV (Sam Glanzman); “Mars” (Gerald McCann); “The Wizard of Worcester” (Gerald McCann); “Space Talk” V (Sam Glanzman); “Jupiter” (Gerald McCann); “Rocket Engines” ( John Tartaglione); “Don’t Do It Yourself ” (Jack Abel); “Space Talk” VI (Sam Glanzman); “Saturn” (Gerald McCann); “Rockets and Missiles Around the World” (Gerald McCann); “Artifical Moons” (Sam Glanzman); “Space Talk” VII (Sam Glanzman); “Uranus” ( John Tartaglione); “Seven for Space” (Gray Morrow); “Space Talk” VIII (Sam Glanzman); “Neptune” ( John Tartaglione); “Off into Orbit” (Gray Morrow); “Space Talk” IX (Sam Glanzman); “Pluto” (Gerald McCann); “Doorway to Tomorrow” (Sam Glanzman); Fillers: “Stones from Space”; “Other Worlds.” First and only printing December (October) 1960 [HRN 156, 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 162A. The War Between the States. Painted cover by Geoffrey Biggs; page-one splash by Jack Kirby. Chapters: “April, 1861: Fort Sumter” ( Jack Kirby); “The Causes” (Sam Glanzman); “July, 1861: Bull Run” (Till Goodan); “Battle Report” I (George Peltz); “April, 1862: Shiloh” (George Evans); “April, 1862: New Orleans” (Edd Ashe); “April–July, 1862: The Peninsula” ( Jack Kirby); “July, 1862: Kentucky” ( John Tartaglione); “Battle Report” II (Till Goodan); “June, 1863: Brandy Station” (George Peltz); “June–July, 1863: Gettysburg” (Sam Glanzman); “April–July, 1863: Vicksburg” ( Jack Kirby); “September–November, 1863: Chattanooga” (Edd Ashe); “Battle Report” III (George Peltz); “May–September, 1864: Georgia” (Till Goodan); “October, 1864: The Atlantic” (Stan Campbell); “November, 1864: New York City” ( Jack Kirby); “April, 1865: Appomattox Court House” (Till Goodan); “Final Report” (Till Goodan); “Reconstruction” (George Evans); Fillers: The Exile’s Dream”; “The Peasants’ Revolt.” First and only printing June (March) 1961 [HRN 161, 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 165A. To the Stars! Painted cover by Norman Nodel; page-one splash by Angelo Torres. Chapters: “Man in the Skies” (Angelo Torres); “Earth in Space” (George Evans): “The Magic Eye” (George Evans); “The Giant of Palomar” (George Evans); “A Simple Telescope ( Jack Kirby); “Lines and Signals” ( Jack Kirby); “Viewing the Spectrum” ( Jack Kirby); “Our Neighbor —The Moon” (Sam Glanzman); “The Copper Moon” (Sam Glanzman); “The Inner Planets” ( Jo Albistur); “The Giants” ( Jo Albistur); “The Georgian Planet” (George Evans); “Uranus” ( Jo Albistur); “Neptune” ( Jo Albistur); “Planet X”( Jo Albistur); “Pluto” ( Jo Albistur”); “Are There Other Planets?” ( Jo Albistur); “Fiery Streaks and Tails” (Sam Glanzman); “Figures in the Sky” (Sam Glanzman); “Star Facts” (Sam Glanzman); “Our Nearest Star” (Sam Glanzman); “The Disappearing Sun” (Norman Nodel); “Light Years” (Norman Nodel); “The Universe” (Norman Nodel); “The Universe and Life” (Norman Nodel); Fillers: “The Swiss Patent Clerk”; “Days and Years.” First and only printing December (October) 1961 [HRN 163, 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 166A. World War II. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Angelo Torres. Chapters: “Blitzkrieg” (Angelo Torres); “The Fuehrer” (Angelo Torres); “War on the High Seas” (Angelo Torres); “Il Duce” (Angelo Torres); “The Conquest of Western Europe” (George Evans); “The Battle of Britain” (Norman Nodel); and Wolf Packs” (Norman Nodel); “The Resistance” (George Evans); “The Eastern Front” (Norman Nodel); “The Big Three” (Angelo Torres); “War in the Pacific” (Norman Nodel); “The Doolittle Raid” (George

343

Evans); “Guadalcanal” (George Evans); “Tarawa”(George Evans); “War Leaders” I (Angelo Torres); “Stalingrad” (Angelo Torres); “War Leaders” II (Angelo Torres); “Lidice and Warsaw” (Norman Nodel); “The Death Camps” (Norman Nodel); “North Africa” (Norman Nodel); “War Leaders” III (Angelo Torres); “The Italian Campaign” (Norman Nodel); “Blockbusters and Buzz Bombs” (George Evans); “The Normandy Invasion” (George Evans); “The Battle of the Bulge” (Norman Nodel); “Victory in Europe” (Norman Nodel); “War Leaders” IV (Angelo Torres); “Leyte Gulf ” (Angelo Torres); “The Mainland War” (Angelo Torres); War Leaders” V (Angelo Torres); “Iwo Jima and Okinawa” (Angelo Torres); “Victory in the Pacific” (Angelo Torres); “Crimes Against Humanity” (Angelo Torres). First and only printing Spring 1962 [HRN 165, 96 pages, 35¢]. One printing. 167A. Prehistoric World. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Angelo Torres. Chapters: “In Search of the Past” (Angelo Torres); “Survival of the Fittest” (Angelo Torres); “The Wonderful Earth Movie” (Angelo Torres); “The First Fishes” (Angelo Torres); “Living on Land” (Angelo Torres); “The Dinosaurs” (Angelo Torres); “A Missing Link” (Angelo Torres); “Mammals, Bones and Stones” (Angelo Torres); “The Treasure of Flaming Cliffs” (Angelo Torres); “End of an Era” (Angelo Torres); “The Age of the Mammals” (Angelo Torres); “Prehistoric Man” (Angelo Torres); “The Bulls of Altamira” (Angelo Torres); “The Dawn Men” (George Evans); “Neanderthal Man” (George Evans); “Homo Sapiens” (Norman Nodel); “CroMagnon Man” (George Evans); “The Reindeer Age” ( Jo Albistur); “The Races of Man” (Jo Albistur); “The Early Farmers” (Jo Albistur); “The Long Journeys: Into America, into Africa” (Gerald McCann); “The Long Journeys: The Mixing of Peoples, Across the Pacific” (Norman Nodel); “The Stone Builders” (Norman Nodel); “The Fuegian Experiment” (Norman Nodel); “Primitives Today” (Norman Nodel). First printing July 1962 [HRN 165, 96 pages, 35¢]; second printing Spring-Summer 1963 [HRN 167]. Two printings. [No number] The United Nations. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “The Clinic at Solo” (George Evans); “United for Peace” (George Evans); “The Troubled Congo” (George Evans); “Peace—Through Education, Science, Culture” (George Evans); “Freedom from Hunger” (George Evans); “Special Agencies” (George Evans); “The Health Army” (George Evans); “The Key” (George Evans, text/illos); “A New Life” (Angelo Torres); “The Technical Expert” (Angelo Torres, text/illos); “A Light Is Set” (Angelo Torres); “A Home for Premadasa” (Angelo Torres); “Shoes for François” (George Evans, text/illos); “The Pajama Safari” (George Evans); “The Elders of Shewaki” (George Evans); “All the World’s Children” (Bruno Premiani); Untitled end page (Bruno Premiani, text/illos); Introduction (inside front cover) by Hernane Tavares de Sá; “Red More About the United Nations” (inside back cover). Not part of U.S. series; English edition printed in Norway for sale at United Nations headquarters. First and only printing 1964, per publication indicia (Dan Malan argues, based on the inclusion of the zip code for 101 Fifth Avenue, that the publication date was actually 1966, when Gilberton added 10003 to its back-cover reorder lists; nevertheless, zip codes were introduced in 1963, and the United Nations cover stock is consistent with 1964 CI reprints rather than the slicker 1966 examples) [HRN 167/HRN 576 (unique combined CI and CI JR back-cover reorder lists), 64 pages, 50¢]. One printing.

Appendix H. The Best from Boys’ Life Comics (Gilberton, 1957–1958) The Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Number 1 (tornado cover depicting David Carson, Troop 25, Worcester, Massachusetts); “Meet Your Friends” (message from Arthur A. Schuck, Chief Scout Executive, Boy Scouts of America, inside front cover); Note from the Editors

344

APPENDIX I

of Classics Illustrated (inside back cover); Reprinted material: “Pee Wee Harris” (Percy K. Fitzhugh); “Space Conquerors!” (Al Stenzel); “Rockets and Jets” (Al Stenzel); “David and Goliath” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [David Carson, Troop 25, Worcester, Massachusetts]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Think and Grin” (various)/”Millicent” (Clyde Lamb); “Old Timer Tales of Kit Carson” (Lee Ames); “10 Safety Commandments That Everyone Handling a Rifle Should Know” (Al Stenzel); “Scouts in Action [Scott Raymond Ewing, Explorer Squadron 18, Nampa, Idaho]” (Stan Pashko and John Sink); “The Good Samaritan” (Irving Novick); “How to Make It: Pony Express Mail Holder” (unattributed); “Puzzles and Tricks” (unattributed); “How to Make It: Apple Indians and Pilgrims” (unattributed); “Pine Cone Turkey” (unattributed); “How to Develop Film” (Al Stenzel); “How to Print Pictures” (Al Stenzel); “Rocky Stoneaxe” (Mal Eaton); “Think and Grin” (various)/”Millicent” (Clyde Lamb); “Faith of His Fathers [Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, USS Dorchester]”; “The Tracy Twins, Dicky + Nicky” (Dik Browne); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [Ronald Kubisiak, Troop 97, Stevens Point, Wisconsin]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Kam of the ‘Ancient Ones’” ( Joe King); “Special Features: Fiction; Sports; Hobbies; How-to-Make.” One printing October 1957 [HRN 141, 96 pages, 35¢]. The Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Number 2 (rescue cover by Leonard B. Cole depicting James Kinney, Troop 115, Barberton, Ohio). Reprinted material: “Pee Wee Harris” (Percy K. Fitzhugh); “Space Conquerors!” (Al Stenzel); “How to Make It: Puppet Shows” (unattributed); “Stories from the Bible: The Beginning” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [James Kinney, Troop 115, Barberton, Ohio]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Think and Grin” (various)/Millicent (Clyde Lamb)”; “Tales of Kit Carson: Caught in a Buffalo Stampede” (Lee Ames); “How to Make It: Carnival Capers” (Dik Browne); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [Parker Edward Stratt, Pack 305, Coral Gables, Florida]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); Stories from the Bible: The Warning [Noah]” (Creig Flessel); “How to Enjoy Winter Camping” (Al Stenzel); “How to Make It: Wizard of Oz Costumes” (Al Stenzel); “Rocky Stoneaxe” (Mal Eaton); “Think and Grin” (various)/”Millicent” (Clyde Lamb); “Stories from the Bible: The Deluge [Noah]” (Creig Flessel); “The Tracy Twins, Dicky + Nicky” (Dik Browne); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [George W. Kingston, Troop 710, Detroit, Michigan]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Kam of the ‘Ancient Ones’” ( Joe King); “Special Features: Fiction; Sports; Hobbies; How-toMake.” One printing January 1958 [HRN 142, 96 pages, 35¢]. The Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Number 3 (space cover by Leonard B. Cole). Reprinted material: “Space Conquerors!” (Al Stenzel); “Heroes of Legend: Daedalus and Icarus” (unattributed); “Pee Wee Harris” (Percy K. Fitzhugh); “Stories from the Bible: The Sower and other Parables” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [Robert Wyant, Troop 10, Albert Lea, Minnesota]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “How to Make It: A Cigar Box Mississippi River Show Boat” (unattributed); “How to Make It: The Eddy Bow Kite” (unattributed); “Think and Grin” (various)/”Millicent” (Clyde Lamb); “Old Timer Tales of Kit Carson” (Lee Ames); “Stories from the Bible: The Tower of Babel” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [John Francis Sapik, Troop 5, Superior, Wisconsin]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Rocky Stoneaxe” (Mal Eaton); “The Tracy Twins, Dicky + Nicky” (Dik Browne); “From ‘Town Ball’ to the ‘Majors’ [Abner Doubleday]” (Al Stenzel); “Think and Grin” (various)/”Millicent” (Clyde Lamb); “The Tracy Twins, Dicky + Nicky” (Dik Browne); “Stories from the Bible: Samson” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouting in Action [Scoutmaster Valois A. Zarr, Scouts Dennis McSharry, Steve Durrant, Mike

Wallace, Paul Dremann, Troop 70, Salt Lake City, Utah]” (Alsten (Al Stenzel)]; “Kam of the ‘Ancient Ones’” ( Joe King); “Special Features: Fiction; Sports; Hobbies; How-to-Make.” One printing April 1958 [HRN 143, 96 pages, 35¢]. The Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Number 4 (canoeing cover by Leonard B. Cole). Reprinted material: “Pee Wee Harris” (Percy K. Fitzhugh); “Space Conquerors!” (Al Stenzel); “Stories from the Bible: The Wise Servant” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [Aaron Tokunaga, Post 140, Wailuku, Hawaii]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Think and Grin” (various)/”Millicent” (Clyde Lamb); “Kit Carson Tales” (Lee Ames); “Stories from the Bible: Joseph and His Brothers” (Creig Flessel); “Johnny Appleseed” (unattributed); “Fun in the Water” (Dik Browne); “Boating Hints” (Dik Browne); “Here Are Three Good Water Sports” (unattributed); “How to Make It: A Life Buoy” (unattributed); “Rocky Stoneaxe” (Mal Eaton); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [Joseph Higgins, Troop 89, Woodburne, New York]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Think and Grin” (various)/”Millicent” (Clyde Lamb); “The Tracy Twins, Dicky + Nicky” (Dik Browne); “Stories from the Bible: Joseph in Egypt” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [John Tracy, Troop 45, Fair Lawn, New Jersey]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Kam of the ‘Ancient Ones’” ( Joe King); “Special Features: Fiction; Sports; Hobbies; How-to-Make.” One printing July 1958 [HRN 143, 96 pages, 35¢]. The Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Number 5 (hiking cover by Leonard B. Cole). “Reprinted material: Pee Wee Harris” (Percy K. Fitzhugh); “Space Conquerors!” (Al Stenzel); “How to Make It: Have a Nut Zoo at Your Harvest Fair” and “Skill Games” (Dik Browne); “Stories from the Bible: David in the Cave of Adullam” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [Brookner Brady, Jr., Air Explorer 31, Monterey, California]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Think and Grin” (various)/”Millicent” (Clyde Lamb); “Frontier Tales: Across the Great Divide [Lewis and Clark]” (Lee Ames); “Frontier Tales [First Great Cattle Drive] (Lee Ames); “Frontier Tales [Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde]” (Lee Ames); “Stories from the Bible: Moses” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [Donnie McFarland, Troop 17, Claue, Texas]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “The Man Who Sent the First Christmas Card” (Dik Browne); “Underground Sunshine [Coal, Oil]” (Al Stenzel); “Rocky Stoneaxe” (Mal Eaton); “The Red Feather” ( Joe King); “Think and Grin” (various)/”Millicent” (Clyde Lamb); “The Tracy Twins, Dicky + Nicky” (Dik Browne); “Stories from the Bible: The Exodus” (Creig Flessel); “A True Story of Scouts in Action [Houston (‘Sonny’) Sansome, Sea Explorer Ship 194, Columbus, Georgia]” (Alsten [Al Stenzel]); “Peter Zenger and the Fight for Freedom of the Press” (Lee Ames); “Kam of the ‘Ancient Ones’” (Joe King); “Special Features” section (no introductory page). One printing October 1958 [HRN 147, 96 pages, 35¢].

Appendix I. The World Around Us (Gilberton, 1958–1961) The first 14 issues contained 80 pages; the length decreased to 72 pages in W15, and there was a final reduction to 64 pages in W21. No World Around Us issue was reprinted. The cover price was 25 cents.

W1. The Illustrated Story of Dogs. Painted cover and page-one splash by Ernest H. Hart. Chapters: Heroic Dogs: “Moustache,” “Balto,” “Bob of Carmel” (George Evans); “How the Dog Began” (Ernest H. Hart); Dogs of War: “Chips,” “Andy,” “Peefka,” “Sandy,” “Bruce” (Ernest H. Hart); “Canine Clippings” (George Peltz); “Breeds” (unattributed); “Dog Diagram” (Ernest H. Hart); Dogs of

APPENDIX I Peace: “The Far Frontiers,” “Dog Paratroopers” (Lin Streeter); “Guide to the Blind”(Ernest H. Hart); “Their Human Friends [Diamond/Sir Isaac Newton, Bounce/Alexander Pope, Maida/Sir Walter Scott, British commanding officer’s dog/George Washington]” (George Peltz); “Their Animal Friends [mongrel pup/lion, Princess/piglets, Ginger/chicks, Noble/robins]” (George Peltz); You and Your Dog: “Care,” “Training,” “Tricks” (William A. Walsh); “How Would Your Dog Rate You?” (Ernest H. Hart). One printing September 1958 [HRN 146, 80 pages, 25¢]. W2. The Illustrated Story of Indians. Painted cover by Gerald McCann; page-one splash by Sam Glanzman. Chapters: “Buffalo Hunt” (Sam Glanzman); “The White Buffalo” ( John Forte); “Play the Chunkey Game,” “First in America” (George Tukell); “Chief Joseph” (Till Goodan); “Test of Friendship” (Alfonso Green); “Make an Indian Bonnet” (H.J. Kihl); “Sequoya” ( John Tartaglione); “Sign Talk” (Ann Brewster); “First Among the Indians [Hiawatha, Samoset, Chief John Logan, Sacagawea, Charles Curtis, Jim Thorpe, Will Rogers, Chief Bender, Maria Tallchief ]” (Sid Check). One printing October 1958 [HRN 146, 80 pages, 25¢]. W3. The Illustrated Story of Horses. Painted cover by Leonard B. Cole; page-one splash by John Forte. Chapters: “The Indian and His Horse” (Gerald McCann); “Mustang!” (Sam Glanzman); “The Cowboy and His Horse” (Gerald McCann); “Know Your Oats,” “Horse Diagram” (E.H. Hart); “Horses in War [includes “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson]” ( John Forte); “Horses in Sport” (Ernest H. Hart); “Harness Racing,” “Heroic Horsemen” (Gerald McCann); “Stories and Legends” (Leonard B. Cole); “You and Your Horse” ( John Forte); “Riding Through the Looking Glass [text by Lewis Carroll]” (H.J. Kihl); “Yesterday and Today” (Ann Brewster); “Parades” etc. (Gerald McCann). One printing November 1958 [HRN 146, 80 pages, 25¢]. W4. The Illustrated Story of Railroads. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Leonard B. Cole. Chapters: “A Weapon of War [Herman Haupt]” (Marvin Stein); “Birth of the Locomotive” (Kirner); “A Very Merry Ride” (unattributed); “A Steel Driving Man [John Henry]” (Norman Nodel); “Stopped by Wind [air brake]” (Leonard B. Cole and others); “The Way West” (Sam Becker); “Highball!” (Leonard B. Cole); “Casey’s Last Ride [John Luther (Casey) Jones]” (George Klein); “Today and Tomorrow” ( John Tartaglione). One printing December 1958 [HRN 146, 80 pages, 25¢]. W5. The Illustrated Story of Space. Painted cover by Gay Welker; page-one splash by Marvin Stein. Chapters: “Training for Space” (Marvin Stein); “Rocket Around the Moon” ( John Tartaglione); “What Is Space?” (Sam Glanzman); “Birth of the Rocket” (Gerald McCann); “Man-Made Moons” (Ernest H. Hart); “Countdown!” (Graham Ingels); “Assignment Space Station” (Sam Glanzman); “Planet Patter [Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Pluto, Neptune],” “Life on Other Planets?” (H.J. Kihl). One printing January 1959 [HRN 147, 80 pages, 25¢]. W6. The Illustrated Story of the FBI. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “The FBI in War: Spies on the Beach” (George Evans); “The FBI in War: Double Agents” (Graham Ingels); “The FBI in War: The Doll Woman” (Ann Brewster); “The FBI in War: The Spy Scientists” ( Jim Infantino); “How It Began”(Gerald McCann); “G-Men” (H.J. Kihl); “The FBI in Peace: Planes Over Paradise” (Ann Brewster); “The FBI in Peace: Wanted” (Ray Ramsey); “The FBI in Peace: Playing Many Parts” ( John Tartaglione); “Solved by Science” (George Klein); “Telltale Fingerprints” ( Jay Disbrow); “If You Join” (Ray Ramsey); “MakeBelieve Cases” (Ray Ramsey); “To Catch a Thief ” (Stan Campbell); “You’re an Agent” ( Jay Disbrow). One printing February 1959 [HRN 149, 80 pages, 25¢]. W7. The Illustrated Story of Pirates. Painted by Norman B. Saunders

345

(copied from Howard Pyle); page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “The Buccaneer Chief [Henry Morgan]” (Gerald McCann); “The World’s Greatest Treasure [William Phips]” ( Jay Disbrow); “The First Buccaneers [Pierre Le Grand]” (Ann Brewster); “The Pirate Who Couldn’t Swim [Batholomew Portuguese]” ( John Forte); “Robin Hood of the Sea [Red Legs Greaves]” (Ernest H. Hart); “The Amateur Pirate [Francis Drake]” (unattributed); “Pirate Patter” (H.J. Kihl); “Marooned [Alexander Selkirk]” (Sam Glanzman); “The World’s Greatest Pirate [Madame Ching]” (Stan Campbell); “ARobbing Upon the Salt Sea” (Norman Nodel); “Caesar’s Revenge” (Ann Brewster); “Bloody Blackbeard” (Graham Ingels); “Captain Kidd” (H.J. Kihl); “Pirate and Patriot [Jean Lafitte]” ( John Tartaglione); “The Last Pirates” (H.J. Kihl); “Are You in Ship Shape?” (Gerald McCann); “Buried Treasure” (Gerald McCann). One printing March 1959 [HRN 149, 80 pages, 25¢]. W8. The Illustrated Story of Flight. Painted cover by Stan Campbell; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “Blizzard Rescue” ( John Tartaglione); “Wings of Myth,” “Wings of Man,” “Leonardo’s Dream of Flight” (H.J. Kihl); “First in the Sky [Montgolfier Brothers]” (Graham Ingels); “From Gliders to Gasoline” (Ann Brewster); “The Great Almost [Samuel Pierpont Langley]” (Gerald McCann); “The First to Fly [Wright Brothers]” (Stan Campbell); “What Makes an Airplane Fly?” (H.J. Kihl); “Pioneer Pilots” (Ann Brewster); “A New Weapon” (Sam Becker); “The Red Knight of Germany [Baron Manfred von Richthofen]” (George Evans); “Between the Wars [Richard E. Byrd, Charles Lindbergh, etc.]” (Stan Campbell); “A Deadly Weapon” (Sam Glanzman); “Brick Wall in the Sky [Charles Yeager]” ( John Tartaglione); “Flight of the Future” (Stan Campbell). One printing April 1959 [HRN 149, 80 pages, 25¢]. W9. The Illustrated Story of the Army. Painted cover by Doug Roea; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “Follow Old Minick” ( John Tartaglione); “Here Comes Yankee Doodle” (Ann Brewster); “Frontier Forts” (Graham Ingels); “The Corps of Cadets” (George Klein); “Two Too Many” (Edd Ashe); “Rifles and Arrows” (Sam Glanzman); “Custer’s Last Stand” (Gerald McCann); “Northern Raiders” (Edward Moritz); “The Army in War: The War of 1812” (Ann Brewster); “The Army in War: The Mexican War” (Ray Ramsey); “The Army in War: The Civil War” ( Joe Orlando); “The Army in War: The Spanish-American War” (Stephen L. Addeo); “The Army in War: World War I” ( Jay Disbrow); “The Army in War: World War II” (Norman Nodel); “The Army in War: The Korean War” (Norman Nodel); “The Army in Peace” (Gerald McCann); “Scooter Burke’s Peak”(Sam Glanzman). One printing May 1959 [HRN 149, 80 pages, 25¢]. W10. The Illustrated Story of the Navy. Painted cover by Gay Welker; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “The First Hero” (Gerald McCann); “The First Fleet” (H.J. Kihl); “They Shall Fight Today” (Gerald McCann); “A Bet Is Paid” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “Learning to Lead” (Jay Disbrow); “Fighting Words” (Gerald McCann); “The Navy in War: An Impossible Task” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “The Navy in War: Battle After Breakfast” (Ann Brewster); “The Navy in War: The Unseen Enemy” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “The Navy in War: Full Speed Ahead!,” “The Navy in War: The Wonderful Blunder” (Sam Glanzman); “Cheese-Box on a Barrelhead” (H.J. Kihl); “The Navy in Peace” (George Klein); “The Fleet Below” (Gerald McCann); “The Good Old Days” (George Peltz); “Mission to Mindanao” (Sam Glanzman). One printing June 1959 [HRN 149, 80 pages, 25¢]. W11. The Illustrated Story of the Marines. Painted cover by Frank X. Doyle; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “The Shores of Tripoli” (Gerald McCann); “Fighting Leathernecks,” “The Halls of Montezuma” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “The Marines Have Landed” ( Joe Orlando); “Six Outposts to Charlemagne” (Graham

346

APPENDIX I

Ingels); “Devil Dogs” (George Woodbridge); “Becoming a Marine” ( John Tartaglione); “Peacetime Firemen” (Stan Campbell); “Circle of Death” (Sidney Check); “Rocks, Sand and Bullets” (Sam Glanzman); Fillers: “The Terrible Tiger”; “A Gentle Hand [Florence Nightingale]”; “The Piltdown Hoax”; “The Floating Laboratory.” One printing July 1959 [HRN 150, 80 pages, 25¢]. W12. The Illustrated Story of the Coast Guard. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “Four Last Words,” “Revenues and Rescues” (Edd Ashe); “Send for Black Maria” (George Peltz); “Cutters at War” (Stan Campbell); “The Matchbox Fleet” (Kirner); “Training for Duty” (Ann Brewster); “Sea Patrol” (Graham Ingels); “Mayday!” ( John Tartaglione); “Six Subs in Twelve Hours” (Edd Ashe); “The Long March” (Sam Glanzman); Fillers: “The Gallant Mare [Dick Turpin and Black Bess]”; “The Mystery of Stonehenge”; “The Fatal Fever”; “First Around the World [Magellan].” One printing August 1959 [HRN 150, 80 pages, 25¢]. W13. The Illustrated Story of the Air Force. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “We Need the Ship!” (Sam Glanzman); “The Air Force Is Born” (Gerald McCann); “Seek Out the Enemy” (Edd Ashe); “Brave Men Must Die” (H.J. Kihl); “Between Two Wars” (Norman Nodel); “Victory in the Air” (Gerald McCann); “A Separate Service” (Ann Brewster); “Fourteen to One” (George Klein); “SAC, TAC and ADC” (H.J. Kihl); “End of an Ace” (Sam Glanzman); Fillers: “The White Whale”; “Henry’s Six Wives”; “The Blizzard of ’88”; “Frontier Heroines [Molly Pitcher, Betty Zane].” One printing September 1959 [HRN 150, 80 pages, 25¢]. W14. The Illustrated Story of the French Revolution. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “To the Bastille!,” “Seeds of the Revolution,” “Fanning the Flames” (Gerald McCann); “The Tennis Court Oath” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “The End of Feudalism” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “The Rights of Man” (George Klein); “Escape to Varennes” (George Klein); “To Arms, to Arms, Ye Brave! [La Marseillaise],” “Death of a King” (Norman Nodel); “The Enemy at the Gate,” “The Committee of Public Safety [Georges Jacques Danton, Maximilien Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat, Louis de Saint-Just, Jacques Hébert],” “The Reign of Terror,” “Death of a Queen” (George Evans, inked by Graham Ingels); “The End of Terror” (H.J. Kihl); “The Mystery of the Dauphin” (Norman Nodel); “The Rise of Napoleon” (Ann Brewster); “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!” (Norman Nodel); Fillers: “The Death of Byron [Lord Byron in Greece]”; “Inca Gold [Francisco Pizarro and Atahualpa]”; “He Followed the River [La Salle]”; “The First Hypnotist [Franz Anton Mesmer].” One printing October 1959 [HRN 150, 80 pages, 25¢]. W15. The Illustrated Story of Prehistoric Animals. Painted cover by Geoffrey Biggs; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “The Fish That Never Died [Coelacanth]” (Gerald McCann); “Birth of a Planet,” “Life Begins” (Stephen L. Addeo); “Backbones, Lungs and Shells: Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles” (Gray Morrow); “Giants in the Earth [dinosaurs]” (Sam Glanzman); “Tracks, Teeth and Bones [fossils]” (Gray Morrow); “Fixing Fossils” (Stephen L. Addeo); “Death of the Dinosaur,” “Mammals, Men and Ice” (Al Williamson); “Icebox in Siberia [mammoth]” (George Peltz); “Science, Strata and Species [William Smith, Baron Cuvier, Charles Darwin]” (Gerald McCann); “Living Fossils” (Till Goodan); Fillers: “Forbidden Land [Tibet]”; “The Smallest Continent [Australia]”; “For the Honor of Our Country [Captain Robert Scott]”; “The Schoolboy and the Scientists [Fred Schatzman].” One printing November 1959 [HRN 152, 72 pages, 25¢]. W16. The Illustrated Story of the Crusades. Painted cover by Gerald McCann; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “The Cross Bearers” (Gerald McCann); “The Road to War [St. Gilles]” (Gerald

McCann); “The Red Lion” (Everett Raymond Kinstler); “The Walled City [Antioch]” (Bruno Premiani); “The Holy Lance” (Edd Ashe); “Defeat” (Gerald McCann); “Richard the Lion-Hearted” (H.J. Kihl); “Jerusalem, Jerusalem”: “The Sack of Constantinople,” “The Children’s Crusade,” “The Last Crusades” (Bruno Premiani); Fillers: “Dante’s Lesson”; “Faithful Unto Death [Mary Dyer]”; “Search for a Home [Jewish homeland]”; “Art and Inspiration [Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic].” One printing December 1959 [HRN 152, 72 pages, 25¢]. W17. The Illustrated Story of Festivals. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (George Evans); “A Child Is Born: The Presepe” (Bruno Premiani); “A Child Is Born: The Posadas” (William A. Walsh); “Christmas Long Ago: Myrtle and Mistletoe” (H.J. Kihl); “Christmas Long Ago: Christmas in America” (Alex A. Blum); “Christmas Long Ago: Feasting and Firing” (George Peltz); “The New Year” ( John Tartaglione); “The Earth Unlocks: The Death of Winter,” “The Earth Unlocks: Easter” (Bruno Premiani); “The Earth Unlocks: “Preparing Papaquis, Watch Me Tap This Easter Egg” (H.J. Kihl); “The Earth Unlocks: Merry May Day” (George Peltz); “Summer Is a-Comin’ In” (Edd Ashe); “Harvest Home” (Norman Nodel); “Festivals of Freedom: July 4, 1776, ‘To the Bastille!’” (H.J. Kihl); “Festivals of Freedom: Buzkashi Races” (George Peltz); “Festivals of Freedom: A Great Miracle” (Norman Nodel); “A Grab-Bag of Festivals” ( John Tartaglione); Fillers: “The Ancient Games [Olympics]”; “Washington’s Vision”; “A Leprechaun I Spied”; “The Wrath of Juno [The Aeneid].” One printing January 1960 [HRN 152, 72 pages, 25¢]. W18. The Illustrated Story of Great Scientists. Painted cover by Norman Nodel; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “The Earth Is Round” (George Evans); “Famous Geographers [Unknown Chinese inventor of compass, Marco Polo, Mercator, Byrd]” (George Evans); “Fun with Geography” (Stephen L. Addeo); “The Body Is Charted” (Edd Ashe); “Famous Physiologists [Herophilus, Harvey, Virchow, Pavlov]” (Edd Ashe); “The Earth Moves” (Al Williamson); “Famous Astronomers [Thales, Copernicus, Kepler, Tombaugh]” (Al Williamson); “Fun with Astronomy” (Stephen L. Addeo); “Nature Has Laws” (John Tartaglione); “Famous Mathematicians [Euclid, AlKhwarizimi, LaPlace, Mach]” ( John Tartaglione); “Fun with Mathematics” (Stephen L. Addeo); “The Earth’s Secrets” (Bruno Premiani); “Famous Geologists [Buffon, Smith, Murchison, Ewing]” (Bruno Premiani); “Fun with Geology” (Stephen L. Addeo); “Germs Cause Disease” (Gray Morrow); “Famous Biologists [Leeuwenhoek, Darwin, Mendel, Fleming]” (Gray Morrow); “Fun with Biology” (Stephen L. Addeo); “The Ways of Mankind” (Sam Glanzman); “Famous Anthropologists [Blumenbach, Galton, Boas, Mead] (Sam Glanzman); “Fun with Anthropology” (Stephen L. Addeo); “The Magic Element” (Norman Nodel); “Famous Chemists [Paracelsus, Priestley, Lavoisier]” (Norman Nodel); “Fun with Chemistry” (Stephen L. Addeo); “The Inner Man” (Angelo Torres); “Famous Psychologists [Locke, James, Munsterberg, Adler]” (Angelo Torres); “Fun with Psychology” (Stephen L. Addeo); “The Atom Splits” (H.J. Kihl); “Famous Physicists [Gilbert, Marconi, Goddard, Yukawa]” (Stephen L. Addeo); “Fun with Physics” (Stephen L. Addeo); Fillers: “House of Hope [Jane Addams and Hull House]”; “Water for Springfield [Sugar Creek]”; “Ten Thousand Muskets [Eli Whitney]”; “Classroom to an Age [medieval schools].” One printing February 1960 [HRN 154, 72 pages, 25¢]. W19. The Illustrated Story of the Jungle. Painted cover, page-one splash, and page two by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “The Explorer [David Livingstone]” (Sid Check); “A Spear for Buth Mwon” ( John Tartaglione); “The Lion and the Fox [Nuer folktale (Sudan)]” (George Peltz); “Jungle Riddles” (George Peltz); “African Wildlife [Lion, Crocodile, Buffalo, Leopard, Secretary Bird, Hyena, Elephant, Hippopota-

APPENDIX I mus, Rhinoceros, Gorilla, Python, Giraffe, Impala, Zebra, Gnu]” (Sam Glanzman); “The Hunter” (Gray Morrow); “The Missionary” (Gray Morrow); “Asian and North Australian Wildlife” (Sam Glanzman); “The Scientist [Richard Spruce]” (Gerald McCann); “Central and South American Wildlife” (Gerald McCann); “Today and Tomorrow” (Gerald McCann); Fillers: “Island of Mystery [Easter Island]”; “Age of Iron [Nama Hottentot and Wioto cultures]”; “Insect Giants”; “The Impossible Canal [Panama Canal].” One printing March 1960 [HRN 154, 72 pages, 25¢]. W20. Through Time and Space: The Illustrated Story of Communications. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Gerald McCann. Chapters: “The First Words” (Gerald McCann); “Signs and Sounds” (Gerald McCann); “Signals and Speed [Pheidippides]” (Bruno Premiani); “Mounted Messengers [Marco Polo]” (George Peltz); “The Art of Printing” ( John Tartaglione); “A Moving Stream [electricity]” (H.J. Kihl); “Words Over Wires [Samuel Morse]” (Gerald McCann); “Linking Two Worlds [Cyrus Field and Sir Charles Bright]” (Angelo Torres); “Talking by Telegraph [Alexander Graham Bell]” (George Evans); “Words Without Wires [Guglielmo Marconi]” (Ann Brewster); “The Electronic Ear” (Sam Glanzman); “The Electronic Eye” (H.J. Kihl); “Today and Tomorrow” (Edd Ashe); Fillers: “The Liberty to Know [Peter Wentworth, John Milton, John Peter Zenger]”; “Death of an Age [Copernicus]”; “The Artist Who Did Not Starve [El Greco]”; “The Clue to Life [vitamins].” One printing April 1960 [HRN 154, 72 pages, 25¢]. W21. The Illustrated Story of American Presidents. Painted cover by Harry Myers; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “The Founding Fathers” (George Evans); “First in Peace [Washington]” (George Evans); “Mansion in the Mud [John Adams]” (Norman Nodel); “Is This the Fourth? [Jefferson]” (Edd Ashe); “Madison and Monroe” (H.J. Kihl); “Old Man Eloquent [John Quincy Adams]” (Gerald McCann); “Old Hickory [Jackson]” (Gray Morrow); “Before the Great War [Van Buren through Buchanan]” (H.J. Kihl); “The Nation’s Wounds [Lincoln]” (Norman Nodel); “From Johnson to McKinley” (H.J. Kihl); “The Rough Rider [Theodore Roosevelt]” (Gerald McCann); “From Boom to Bust [Taft through Hoover]” (H.J. Kihl); “The Nation Asks for Action [Franklin Delano Roosevelt]”(Norman Nodel); “The Atomic Age [Truman, Eisenhower]” (Gerald McCann); “Electing the President” (George Peltz); Fillers: “The Asphalt Trap [La Brea]”; “March Across the Alps [Hannibal]”; “Buried City [Mycenae]”; “The Unlucky Submarine [C.S.S. Hunley].” One printing May 1960 [HRN 155, 64 pages, 25¢]. W22. The Illustrated Story of Boating. Painted cover by Gerald McCann; page-one splash by Norman Nodel. Chapters: “Race Against Time” (Norman Nodel); “Boat Talk” (H.J. Kihl); “Boats for Sport” (Gerald McCann); “From Trunk to Outboard” (Edd Ashe); “From Kayak to KuDru” ( John Tartaglione); “Racing Sails [America’s Cup]” (Gerald McCann); “Ski Tips” (George Peltz); “Course Contest” (H.J. Kihl); “Wrecks and Rescues” (Gray Morrow); “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane (Norman Nodel); “A Safe Voyage” (Sam Glanzman); “Till Next Season” (H.J. Kihl); Fillers: “The Flying Windmill [helicopter]”; “Revolution in Electricity [Nikola Tesla]”; “The Enchanted Isles [Galapagos Islands]”; “When the Earth Was Flat.” One printing June 1960 [HRN 156, 64 pages, 25¢]. W23. The Illustrated Story of Great Explorers. Painted cover by Gerald McCann; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “Passage to the Indies [Vasco da Gama]” (George Evans); “The Land of El Dorado [Francisco de Orellana]” (Gray Morrow); “Famous Explorers [Eric the Red, Columbus, Magellan]” (H.J. Kihl); “The Mysterious Continent [James Cook]” (Gerald McCann); “Famous Explorers [Scott, Amundsen, Byrd]” (H.J. Kihl); “The Great Wilderness [Alexander Mackenzie]” ( John Tartaglione); “The Pathmarker [John Charles Fremont]” (George Evans); “Famous Explorers [Cartier,

347

Bering, Parry] (H.J. Kihl); “To the North Pole [Robert Edwin Peary]” (Gray Morrow); “Famous Explorers [Fuchs, Heyerdahl, Herzog]” (H.J. Kihl); “The Roof of the World [Mount Everest]” (Gerald McCann); Fillers: “A Storm of Peace”; “Emmeline [Pankhurst] Went Marching [women’s suffrage]”; “The Mine of Death [Lost Dutchman’s Mine]”; “The Duel [Hamilton and Burr].” One printing July 1960 [HRN 156, 64 pages, 25¢]. W24. The Illustrated Story of Ghosts. Painted cover by Norman Nodel; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “The HitchHiker” (George Evans); “Room for the Night” (Gray Morrow); “The Ghost of Gold Gulch” ( Jack Abel); “Ghosts That Make a Racket [Poltergeist]” (Gray Morrow); “The House of Flying Objects” (William A. Walsh); “The Talking Mongoose” (H.J. Kihl); “The Mummy’s Foot” by Théophile Gautier (George Peltz); “The Sixth Sense [extrasensory perception]” ( John Tartaglione); “The Scientific Search” (Norman Nodel); “A Question of Ghosts” (Gray Morrow); Fillers: “The Chinese Sage [Confucius]”; “Olga’s Revenge”; “The Mysterious Lake [mirage]”; “The Yellow Star.” One printing August 1960 [HRN 155, 64 pages, 25¢]. W25. The Illustrated Story of Magic. Painted cover by Gray Morrow; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “The Wizard of France [Robert-Houdin]” (George Evans); “The First Magicians” (George Peltz); “The Cursed Trick” (Ann Brewster); “The Great Houdini” (Norman Nodel); “The Most Marvelous Trick in the World [Indian Rope Trick]” (George Peltz); “Witches, Magic and Medicine” ( John Tartaglione); “The Truth Will Out” (Gray Morrow); “What’s Magic About It?” (George Evans); Fillers: “Secrets of the Pharaohs”; “The Beheading Game [Cuchulainn]”; “The Mysterious Traveler [Paracelsus]”; “A Man of Sense [Omar Khayyam].” One printing September 1960 [HRN 155, 64 pages, 25¢]. W26. The Illustrated Story of the Civil War. Painted cover by Norman Nodel; page-one splash by Gray Morrow. Chapters: “Before the Storm” (Gray Morrow); “The Storm Breaks [Fort Sumter],” “War Leaders [Lincoln, Davis]” (H.J. Kihl); “The General Who Fought [Ulysses S. Grant]” (Angelo Torres); “The Great Train Chase” (George Peltz); “Flames on the Sea [Raphael Semmes]” (Sam Glanzman); “The Iron Ships [Monitor and Merrimac]” (George Peltz); “War Leaders [Grant, Lee, Farragut]”; “War Drums [Harry M. Kieffer]” (Gray Morrow); “These Brave Fields [Gettysburg]” (Sam Glanzman); “The Men in Uniform” (George Peltz); “War Leaders [Pickett, Meade, Jackson]” (H.J. Kihl); “The Gray Ghost [John Singleton Mosby]” (Sam Glanzman); “The People at Home” (George Peltz); “War Leaders [Kearny, Stuart, Sherman]” (H.J. Kihl); “The Final Days” (Gerald McCann); “An April Day [assassination of Lincoln]” (George Peltz); “The Aftermath [Reconstruction]” (Norman Nodel); Fillers: “Restless Conspirator [Joseph Mazzini]”; “Trial of the Century [Nuremberg]”; “The Ghost Dance”; “The Prophet from Hoboken [John Stevens]” (October 1960). One printing October 1960 [HRN 156, 64 pages, 25¢]. W27. High Adventure: The Illustrated Story of Men Against Mountains. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “The Highest Mountain [John Hunt, Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norkey]” (George Evans); “How Mountains Are Made” (Tony Tallarico); “Men of the Mountains [Abyssinians, Tibetans, Incas]” (Tony Tallarico); “Conquering the Barriers” (Gerald McCann); “In Seas and Space” (Sam Glanzman); “The Home of the Gods” (Gray Morrow); “The Fiery Mound” (Gray Morrow); “The Father of Mountaineering [Horace Benedict de Saussure]” (George Peltz); “Fun and Danger” (Gerald McCann); “The Mysterious Footprints [“Abominable Snowman”]” (Sam Glanzman); Fillers: The World of Story: “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Samuel L. Clemens (George Peltz); Serials: “D-Day, Part 1: The Key to Victory” (George Evans); “The Red Planet, Part 1: The True

348

APPENDIX I

Orbit” (Gray Morrow); The World of Science: “How Grass Holds Water” (Stephen L. Addeo) (November 1960). One printing November 1960 [HRN 156, 64 pages, 25¢]. W28. The Illustrated Story of Whaling. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Gray Morrow. Chapters: “The Long Voyage” (Gray Morrow); “Whale Facts: Sperm Whale” (Sam Glanzman); “Whale Lore [whale as a mammal]” (Norman Nodel); “The Great Hunt” (Gerald McCann); “Whale Facts: Arctic Right Whale” (Sam Glanzman); “Yankee Whaling” (Angelo Torres); “Whale Lore: Gamming, Scrimshaw, Nantucket Sleigh Ride” (Norman Nodel); “Stove by a Whale [Essex]” (Bruno Premiani); “Whale Facts: Northern Bottle-Nosed Dolphin, Killer Whale, Blackfish” (Sam Glanzman); “Whale Lore: Spouting, Sounding” (Norman Nodel); “Whale Facts: Blue Whale” (Sam Glanzman); “Captain Larsen’s Ship” (Bruno Premiani); “Whale Facts: Finback Whale, Sei Whale, Common Porpoise” (Sam Glanzman); “Whale Lore [accounts of men swallowed by whales]” (Norman Nodel); “Whaling Today” (Gray Morrow); Fillers: The World of Story: “An Episode of War” by Stephen Crane (H.J. Kihl); Serials: “D-Day, Part 2: Target Normandy” (George Evans); “The Red Planet, Part 2: Mars Is a World” (Angelo Torres); The World of Science: “Jets in the Bathtub” (Gray Morrow). One printing December 1960 [HRN 156, 64 pages, 25¢]. W29. The Vikings. Painted cover by Gerald McCann; page-one splash by George Evans. Chapters: “The Dragon Ships” (George Evans); “The Home Shores” (Norman Nodel); “The Longship” (Gerald McCann); “Rivers of Blood [Ragnar Lodbrok]” (Gray Morrow); “The Viking Gods” (Norman Nodel); “The Uneasy Throne [England]” (Angelo Torres); “The Colonists: Ireland, Northern Isles, Iceland, Russia, Normandy, Greenland” (Sam Glanzman); “The Strongest of Vikings” (Tony Tallarico); “The Far Shores” (Bruno Premiani); “End of an Age” (George Evans); Fillers: The World of Story: “The Convicts and the Eagle” (from The House of the Dead) by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Norman Nodel); Serials: “D-Day, Part 3: The Decision” George Evans); “The Red Planet, Part 3: The Martian Canals” (Angelo Torres); The World of Science: “What the Weather Will Be” (Sam Glanzman). One printing January 1961 [HRN 159, 64 pages, 25¢]. W30. Undersea Adventures. Painted cover by Jay Scott Pike; pageone splash by Jack Kirby. Chapters: “The Frogmen” (Angelo Torres); “Mines Below [Lionel Crabb]” (Angelo Torres); “Underwater Conquest” (Sam Glanzman); “Sea Monsters — False and True” (unattributed); “Sunken Treasure” (Lou Morales); “Skin Diving” (Tony Tallarico); “In Magellan’s Wake [Triton]” (Sam Glanzman); “Seven Miles Down” (Stan Campbell); Fillers: The World of Story: “The Duel” by Guy de Maupassant (unattributed); Serials: “D-Day, Part 4: Night Drop” (George Evans); “The Red Planet, Part 4: A Trip to Mars” (Angelo Torres); The World of Science: “Blue Skies” ( Jack Kirby). One printing February 1961 [HRN 159, 64 pages, 25¢]. W31. Hunting. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Jack Kirby. Chapters: “The Rogue Elephant” (Till Goodan); “Early Hunters” (Jack Kirby); “Mythical Monsters [chimera]” (Pete Morisi); “Mythical Monsters [unicorn, basilisk]” (George Peltz); “From Falcon to Fox” (Stan Campbell); “Wanton Killing” (Sam Glanzman); “An End to Slaughter” ( Jack Kirby); “The Trapped Trapper [Evert Stenmark]” (Sam Glanzman); “Bringing Them Back Alive” (Till Goodan); “Malay Tiger” (Luis Dominguez); “Hunting Today” (unattributed); “Dogs and Guns” (H.J. Kihl); “A New Way to Hunt” (Sam Glanzman); Fillers: The World of Story: “Two Tales of Baron Munchausen” by Rudolf Erich Raspe (unattributed); Serials: “DDay, Part 5: The Landing” (George Evans); “Desert Treasure, Part 1: The Dead Sea Scrolls” (Norman Nodel); The World of Science: “A Puff of Steam” (Pete Morisi). One printing March 1961 [HRN 161, 64 pages, 25¢].

W32. For Gold and Glory. Cover photo (Zapotec funerary urn) by Alfred Sundel; page-one splash by Gray Morrow. Chapters: “The Golden Shore [Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba]” (Gray Morrow); “The Aztecs” (George Tukell); “The Great City” by Bernal Diaz del Castillo (Aztec pictographs); “The Mayas” ( Jack Kirby); “Omens of Evil [Pedro de Alvarado]” ( Jack Kirby); “The Incas” ( Jack Kirby); “Peru! Peru! [Francisco Pizarro]” (George Evans); “The Long Journey [Alvar Cabeza de Vaca]” (Sam Glanzman); “The Seven Cities of Gold [Francisco Vazquez de Coronado]” (Maxwell Elkan); “The Golden Man [El Dorado]” (Gray Morrow); “The Glory [other discoveries and conquests: Magellan, Mendoza, de Soto, etc.]” (Gray Morrow); Fillers: “Two Merry Pranks of Till Eulenspiegel” (Charles Berger); Serials: “D-Day, Part 6: Beachhead” (George Evans); “Desert Treasure, Part 2: Unraveling the Mystery” (Norman Nodel); The World of Science: “A Balancing Act” (Jack Kirby). One printing April 1961 [HRN 161, 64 pages, 25¢]. W33. Famous Teens. Painted cover by Geggan; page-one splash by Angelo Torres. Chapters: “Victory at Orleans [Joan of Arc]” (Till Goodan); “Teens as Rulers [Charles XII, Prince Edward, Victoria]” (Norman Nodel); “Mr. Farragut, Sir!” (Angelo Torres); “Teens in War [Anne Frank, Marquis de Montcalm, Horatio Nelson] (Angelo Torres); “The Young Engineer [John Ericsson]” (Stan Campbell); “Teens in Science [Perry Klein, Raphael Soifer, Tycho Brahe, Blaise Pascal, Eli Whitney, Karl Friedrich Gauss, William Henry Perkin]” (Angelo Torres); “The Boy Mozart” (Gray Morrow); “Teens in the Arts [Pliny the Younger, John Singleton Copley, Franz Schubert, Sarah Bernhardt, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Yehudi Menuhin, Margot Fonteyn]” (Tony Tallarico); “Olympic Champion [Bob Mathias]” (Maxwell Elkan); “Teens in Sports [Babe Didrikson, Murray Rose]” (Angelo Torres); Fillers: “The Knight of the Couchant Leopard” (from The Talisman) by Sir Walter Scott (Charles Berger); Serials: “The Battle of Tours, Part 1: The Threat from the East” (George Evans); “Desert Treasure, Part 3: Fortress of Faith” (Norman Nodel); The World of Science: “Getting a Lift” (unattributed). One printing May 1961 [HRN 161, 64 pages, 25¢]. W34. Fishing. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Jo Albistur. Chapters: “The Salmon of Miramichi” (Jo Albistur); “Hook, Line and Sinker” (Sam Glanzman); “Gills and Grunts” (Sam Glanzman); “Lungs and Lures” (Sam Glanzman); “Angler’s Angles” (Sam Glanzman); “Salt-Water Game Fish [barracuda, bluefish, marlin, sailfish, swordfish, tarpon]” (Sam Glanzman); “The Compleat Angler” (excerpts) by Sir Izaak Walton (first page by Angelo Torres, remainder by Pat Pritchard); “Fresh-Water Game Fish [bass, common eel, muskellunge, roach, trout, walleyed pike]” (Sam Glanzman); “A Share for Awang” (Sidney Miller?); “From Drags to Kites” (Sam Glanzman); “Fish for Food [cod, haddock, halibut, herring, menhaden, salmon, sardine, sturgeon, tuna]” (Sam Glanzman); “The Secret Fleet” (Sidney Miller); “Know the Law” ( Jo Albistur); “A Home Aquarium” ( Jo Albistur); Fillers: The World of Story: “The Champion of Rum Alley” (from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets) by Stephen Crane (unattributed); Serials: “The Battle of Tours, Part 2: The Franks Fight Back” (George Evans); “Desert Treasure, Part 4: The Fate of Qumran” (Norman Nodel); The World of Science: “Upside Down and Inside Out” (Sidney Miller). One printing June 1961, last monthly issue [HRN 161, 64 pages, 25¢]. W35. Spies. Mixed-media cover unattributed; page-one splash by Norman Nodel. Chapters: “Most Conspicuous Courage [Noor Khan]” (George Evans); “From Moses to Madrid” (Norman Nodel); “The Conspirators [Allan Pinkerton]” (Edd Ashe); “The Spy Who Was a Traitor [Alfred Redl]” ( Jo Albistur); “The Master Saboteur [Franz von Rintelen]” (George Evans); “Sky Spies” ( Jack Kirby); “The Business of Spying” ( Jack Kirby); “Famous Spies [Chevalier d’Eon de Beaumont, Nathan Hale, John André, Sir Robert Baden-Powell,

APPENDIX J Eugene Azeff, Mata Hari, Thomas E. Lawrence, Cicero] (Jo Albistur); “Tricks of the Trade” ( Jack Kirby); “Codes and Ciphers” (unattributed); Fillers: The World of Story: “The Death of Captain Cook” by Captain King (unattributed); Serials: “The Battle of Tours, Part 3: The Moslems Retreat” (George Evans); “Witches in Salem, Part 1: The First Accusations” (unattributed); The World of Science: “Floating in the Air” (Sidney Miller). One printing August 1961 [HRN W36, 64 pages, 25¢]. W36. Fight for Life. Painted cover unattributed; page-one splash by Jo Albistur. Chapters: “The Field Surgeon [Ambroise Paré]” ( Jo Albistur); “The Ancient Heritage” ( Jo Albistur); “The Middle Ages” ( Jo Albistur); “The Great Awakening” (Tony Tallarico); “The Black Death” (from A Journal of the Plague Year) by Daniel Defoe (unattributed); “Ending Epidemics” ( Jo Albistur); “The Germ Fighters [Pasteur, Koch, Semmelweiss, Lister]” (Tony Tallarico); “Triumph Over Pain” (unattributed); “The Native Cure” (unattributed); “Quacks and Quackery” ( Jack Kirby); “The Branches of Medicine” ( Jack Kirby); “The Pure Substance” ( Jack Kirby); “The War on Insects” ( Jack Kirby); “Machines of Modern Medicine” (Tony Tallarico); “Aid from the Atom” (Tony Tallarico); “The Challenge of Space” ( Jack Kirby); Fillers: “The Gift of the Plow” (from The Age of Fable) by Thomas Bulfinch (Sidney Miller?); Serials: “The Armada, Part 1: The Sea Powers” (Norman Nodel); “Witches in Salem, Part 2: The Suspicion Spreads” (unattributed); The World of Science: “The Weight of Air” (Sidney Miller). One printing October 1961 [HRN W36, 64 pages, 25¢].

Appendix J. British Classics Illustrated, First and Second Series (Thorpe & Porter, 1951–1963) With the exceptions of Nos. 60, 95, 109, 120, 127, 135, 138, 142, 151, 152, 153, 154, and 163, as many as four variants occurred in one or more printings of each title. For a more detailed account of the publication history of each title, see Dan Malan’s Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated, Vol. 2. Note that several painted covers and new interiors were published in Britain before they appeared in the U.S. An asterisk (*) indicates either a title or a painted cover not included in the U.S. series.

1. Huckleberry Finn by Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain). Identical to U.S. No. 19 painted-cover revised edition (1956). Four printings. 2. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. Identical to U.S. No. 47 first painted-cover edition. [An earlier No. 2, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (1952), identical to U.S. No. 2 line-drawing cover edition, was replaced in 1956 by the Verne title.] Four printings. 3. The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Identical to U.S. No. 34 painted-covere dition( 1956). Four printings. 4. Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Identical to U.S. No. 128 (1956). Three printings. 5. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Identical to U.S. No. 5 painted-covere dition( 1956). Six printings. 6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 6 line-drawing cover edition (1952); (2) identical to U.S. No. 6 painted-cover edition except for black rather than red title lettering (1957). Four printings. 7. Robin Hood [by Howard Pyle]. Three editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 7 line-drawing cover edition (1952); (2) identical to U.S. No. 7 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1957); (3) painted cover with first interior art (1959, anomaly). Seven printings. 8. The Odyssey by Homer. Interior identical to U.S. No. 81 first

349

painted-cover edition; cover features “newer” logo, different lettering, and different coloring (1957). Three printings. 9. Caesar’s Conquests by Julius Caesar. Identical to U.S. No. 130 (1957). Three printings. 10. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 10 line-drawing cover edition (1952); (2) identical to U.S. No. 10 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1957). Six printings. 11. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Identical to U.S. No. 133 (1956). Two printings. 12. The Dark Frigate by Charles Boardman Hawes. Identical to U.S. No. 132 (1956). Five printings (second printing erroneously numbered 132). 13. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Identical to U.S. No. 134 (1957). [An earlier No. 13, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with two editions (first,1952, identical to 1949 U.S. No. 13 line-drawing cover; second, 1955, with 1953 painted cover but original interior art) were replaced in 1957 by the Shakespeare title.] Two printings. *14. Westward Ho! By Charles Kingsley. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 14 line-drawing cover edition (1952); (2) identical interior art, with new painted cover by unidentified artist (1960). Four printings. 15. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Three editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 15 line-drawing cover edition (1953); (2) hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-cover edition (1954); (3) identical to U.S. No. 15 first painted-cover edition (1957). Five printings. *16. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 16 line-drawing cover edition (November 1951); (2) cover similar to U.S. No. 16 painted-cover edition, but redrawn with different coloring and title lettering (1960). Three printings. *17. The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. line-drawing cover (March 1952); (2) new British painted cover (1959). Five printings. 18. Waterloo by Erckmann-Chatrain. Identical to U.S. No. 135 (1957). [*An earlier No. 18, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with two editions (first, 1953, identical to second U.S. No. 18 line-drawing cover; the second, 1954, a hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-cover edition), was replaced by the Erckmann-Chatrain title. Two printings. 19. The Covered Wagon by Emerson Hough. Identical to U.S. No. 131 (1957). Seven printings. 20. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Identical to U.S. No. 2 paintedcover edition (1957). Three printings. 21. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Identical to U.S. No. 3 painted-cover edition (1957). Two printings. *22. The Pathfinder by James Fenimore Cooper. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 22 line-drawing-cover edition (February 1952); (2) new British painted cover (1960). Six printings. *23. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Three editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 23 line-drawing-cover edition (1955); (2) identical to U.S. No. 23 painted-cover edition with first interior art (1959); (3) reversed painted-cover image with second interior art (1961). Four printings. 24. A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne. Identical to U.S. No. 138 except for British spelling of “Centre” in title (1957). Two printings. 25. Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 25 line-drawing-cover edition (1952); (2) identical to U.S. No. 25 painted-cover edition (1961). Four printings. 26. The Little Savage by Frederick Marryat. Identical to U.S. No. 137 (1957). Three printings. 27. The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper. Identical to U.S. No. 51 painted-covere dition( 1957). Four printings.

350

APPENDIX J

28. The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott. Identical to U.S. No. 75 painted-cover edition (1957). Two printings. 29. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain. Identical to U.S. No. 29 painted-cover edition (1956). Three printings. 30. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. Identical to U.S. No. 24 painted-cover edition (1958). Four printings. 31. The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 31 line-drawing-cover edition (1956); (2) identical to U.S. No. 31 painted-cover edition (1959). Three printings. 32. Lorna Doone by Richard D. Blackmore. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 32 line-drawing-cover edition (1956); (2) identical to U.S. No. 32 first painted-cover edition (1959). Four printings. 33. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 50 painted-cover edition with first interior art (1958); (2) identical to U.S. No. 50 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1961). Four printings. 34. The Sea Wolf by Jack London. Identical to U.S. No. 85 except for title lettering and open-book device (1957). Four printings. 35. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 39 first painted-cover edition with first interior art (1958); (2) identical to U.S. No. 39 first painted-cover and second interiorart edition (1961). Four printings. 36. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas. Identical to U.S. No. 54 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1957). Four printings. *37. The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 37 line-drawing-cover edition (1952); (2) new British painted cover (1959). Three printings. 38. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Identical to U.S. No. 52 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1958). Three printings. 39. The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter. Identical to U.S. No. 67 painted-covere dition( 1958). Four printings. 40. Benjamin Franklin (based on Autobiography and other sources). Identical to U.S. No. 65 painted-cover edition (1958). [An earlier No. 40, Mysteries (1952), was replaced by the Franklin title and was never reprinted.] Four printings. 41. The Pilot by James Fenimore Cooper. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 70 line-drawing-cover edition (1957); (2) identical to U.S. No. 70 painted-cover edition except for new title box superimposed on original lettering (1961). Four printings. 42. Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss. Three editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 42 line-drawing-cover edition (1953); (2) identical to U.S. No. 42 painted-cover edition with first interior art (1957); (3) identical to No. 42 U.S. painted-cover edition with second interior art (1960). Seven printings. 43. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. Identical to U.S. No. 87, with one background-color variant (1958). Three printings. 44. Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 93 first painted-cover edition (1958); (2) identical to U.S. No. 93 second painted-cover edition except for new title box superimposed on original lettering (1961). Two printings. 45. The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson. Identical to U.S. No 116 except for color variation in upper background and title lettering (1958). Four printings. 46. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 46 line-drawing-cover edition (1955); (2) identical to U.S. No. 46 painted-cover edition (1958). Five printings. 47. In the Reign of Terror by G.A. Henty. Identical to U.S. No. 139 (1958). Three printings.

48. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Identical to U.S. No 48 painted-cover edition (1954). Five printings. 49. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 49 line-drawing-cover edition (first title published in British series October 1951); (2) prototype of U.S. No. 49 paintedcover edition (1956). Five printings. 50. Castle Dangerous by Sir Walter Scott. Identical to U.S. No. 141 (1958). Four printings. 51. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. Included on British reorder lists and published in the Joint European Series as No. 67 (1958) but not believed to exist as a British Classics Illustrated title; copyright questions may have been at issue. 52. The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells. Identical to U.S. No. 144 except for superimposed title box (1958). Three printings. *53. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 53 line-drawing-cover edition (1955); (2) new British painted cover (1960). Three printings. 54. With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Identical to U.S. No. 146 (1959). Two printings. 55. Silas Marner by George Eliot. Identical to U.S. No. 55 painted-covere dition( 1958). Three printings. 56. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 18 first painted-cover edition (1959); (2) identical to U.S. No. 18 second painted-cover edition (1960). Two printings. *56A. The Corsican Brothers by Alexandre Dumas. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 20 line-drawing-cover edition (1959); (2) new British painted cover (1960). Three printings. 57. The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 57 line-drawing-cover edition (1954); (2) identical to U.S. No. 57 painted-cover edition (1959). Four printings. 58. The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 58 line-drawing-cover edition (March 1952); (2) identical to U.S. No. 58 painted-cover edition (1957). Four printings. 59. Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace. Identical to U.S. No. 147 first painted-covere dition( 1959). Three printings. 60. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. line-drawing-cover edition (November 1951); (2) identical to U.S. No. 60 first painted-cover edition (1960). Two printings. 61. The Buccaneer. Identical to U.S. No. 148 (1959). Two printings. 62. Western Stories by Bret Harte. Identical to U.S. No. 62 first painted-covere dition( 1959). Three printings. 63. Off on a Comet by Jules Verne. Identical to U.S. No. 149 first painted-covere dition( 1959). Two printings. 64. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 64 line-drawing-cover edition ( January 1952); (2) identical to U.S. No. 64 painted-cover edition (1956). Four printings. 65. The King of the Mountains by Edmond About. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 127, erroneous “No. 127” (1959); (2) identical to U.S. No. 127 except for black rather than red title lettering (1959). Three printings. 66. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Identical to U.S. No. 4 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1959). Three printings. 67. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Identical to U.S. No. 1 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1959). One printing. 68. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Three editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 68 line-drawing-cover edition (October 1951); (2)

APPENDIX J identical to U.S. painted-cover edition with second interior art (1960); (3) identical to U.S. painted-cover edition with first interior art (1961; note reversed order on interior art; a variant printing with second interior art was simultaneously issued). Three printings. 69. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 69 line-drawing-cover edition (1956); (2) identical to U.S. No. 69 painted-cover edition (1957). Five printings. 70. The Virginian by Owen Wister. Identical to U.S. No. 150 (1959). Two printings. *71. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 71 line-drawing-cover edition (1956); (2) reversed painted-cover edition with second interior art (1961). Two printings. 72. The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 72 line-drawing-cover edition (1954); (2) identical to U.S. No. 72 painted-cover edition (1957). Four printings. *73. The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 73 line-drawing-cover edition (1954); (2) new British painted cover (1958). Four printings. *74. Mr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marryat. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. line-drawing cover edition (1952); (2) new British painted cover (1961). Three printings. 75. On Jungle Trails by Frank Buck. Identical to U.S. No. 140 (1959). Two printings. 76. Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving. Identical to U.S. No. 12 first painted-cover edition with second interior art (1959). Three printings. *77. The Iliad by Homer. Four editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 77 line-drawing-cover edition (January 1952); (2) new British painted cover (1956); (3) identical to U.S. No. 77 painted-cover edition (1959); (4) reversion to British painted cover. Four printings. *78. Joan of Arc. Three editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 78 linedrawing-cover edition (1953); (2) hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-cover edition (1954); (3) identical to U.S. No. 78 first painted-covere dition( 1956). Six printings. 79. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. Identical to U.S. No. 79l ine-drawing-covere dition( 1956). One printing. 80. White Fang by Jack London. Identical to U.S. No. 80 paintedcover-edition( 1956). Five printings. 81. The Adventures of Marco Polo. Identical to U.S. No. 27 painted-cover edition with title-lettering variant (1960). Two printings. *82. The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson. Three editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 82 first painted-cover edition (1953); (2) hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-cover edition (midnight duel) (1954); (3) new British painted cover (pirates boarding ship) (1960). Seven printings. 83. Won by the Sword by G.A. Henty. Identical to U.S. No. 151 (1959). Two printings. *84. The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 84 (1959); (2) new British cover by Mick Anglo with new interior art (1962). 85. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Identical to U.S. No. 13 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1960). One printing. 86. Under Two Flags by Ouida. Identical to U.S. No. 86 (1954). Three printings. 87. Abraham Lincoln. Identical to U.S. No 142 (1960). One printing. 88. Men of Iron by Howard Pyle. Identical to U.S. No. 88 (1954). Three printings. *89. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Two editions:

351

(1) identical to U.S. No. 89 (1953); (2) hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-cover edition (1954). Five printings. 90. Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 90 first painted-cover edition (1956); (2) identical to U.S. No. 90 second painted-cover edition (1961). Two printings. 91. The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Identical to U.S. No. 91 (1955). Five printings. 92. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Identical to U.S. No. 9 first painted-cover edition with second interior art (1960). One printing. 93. Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 152, with “No. 152” erroneously printed as issue number (1960); (2) identical to U.S. No. 152, with corrected British title number (1960). Two printings. 94. David Balfour by Robert Louis Stevenson. Identical to U.S. No. 94 (1956). Three printings. 95. The Crisis by Winston Churchill. Identical to U.S. No. 145 (1960). One printing. 96. Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness by John Bakeless. Identical to U.S. No. 96 first painted-cover edition (1954). Five printings. 97. King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard. Identical to U.S. No. 97 (1953). Eight printings (most-often reprinted British title). 98. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. Identical to U.S. No. 98 first painted-cover edition (1955). Four printings. 99. Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Identical to U.S. No. 99 first painted-cover edition (1956). Three printings. 100. Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Identical to U.S. No. 100 (1955). Four printings. 101. William Tell by Frederick Schiller. Identical to U.S. No. 101 (1953). Four printings. 102. The Moonstone by William Wilkie Collins. Identical to U.S. painted-covere dition( 1960). One printing. 103. Men Against the Sea by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 103 first painted-cover edition (1955); (2) identical to U.S. No. 103 second painted-cover edition (1958). Four printings. 104. Bring ’Em Back Alive by Frank Buck. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 104 (1953); (2) hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-covere dition( 1954). Five printings. 105. From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne. Identical to U.S. No. 105 (1955). Three printings. 106. Buffalo Bill. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 106 (1953); (2) hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-cover edition (1954). Seven printings. 107. King-of the Khyber Rifles by Talbot Mundy. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 107 (1954); (2) hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-covere dition( 1954). Six printings. 108. Knights of the Round Table. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 108 (1953); (2) hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-cover edition (1954). Six printings. 109. Pitcairn’s Island by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Identical to U.S. No. 109 (1959). Two printings. 110. Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne. Identical to U.S. No. 28 first painted-covere dition( 1960). Two printings. 111. The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott. Identical to U.S. No. 111 (1954). Five printings (fifth printing erroneously numbered 16). 112. The Adventures of Kit Carson. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. first painted-cover edition (1953); (2) hardcover British DeLuxe new painted-cover edition (1954). Seven printings. 113. The Forty-Five Guardsmen by Alexandre Dumas. Identical to U.S. No. 113 (1956). Two printings (orange border on second printing). 114. The Red Rover by James Fenimore Cooper. Identical to U.S. No. 114 (1954). Six printings.

352

APPENDIX J

115. How I Found Livingstone by Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Identical to U.S. No. 115 (1954). Six printings. 116. Typee by Herman Melville. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. painted-cover edition with first interior art (1960); (2) identical to U.S. painted cover with title-lettering variant and new interior art by Luis Dominguez (1961). Two printings. 117. Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas. Identical to U.S. No. 41 painted-covere dition( 1961). One printing. 118. Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott. Identical to U.S. No. 118 (1955). Four printings. 119. Soldiers of Fortune by Richard Harding Davis. Identical to U.S. No. 119 (1956). Four printings. 120. The Hurricane by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Identical to U.S. No. 120 (1954). Five printings. 121. Wild Bill Hickok. Identical to U.S. No. 121 (1955). Six printings. 122. The Mutineers by Charles Boardman Hawes. Identical to U.S. No. 122 (1956). Three printings. 123. Fang and Claw by Frank Buck. Identical to U.S. No. 123 (1955). Five printings. 124. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Identical to U.S. No. 124 (1955). Three printings. 125. The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Identical to U.S. No. 125 (1956). Three printings. 126. The Downfall by Emile Zola. Identical to No. U.S. No. 126 (1956). Three printings. 127. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 153, with “No. 153” erroneously printed as title number (1960); (2) same U.S. painted cover, with image brightened and original “invisible” title lettering replaced with yellow rectangle and black lettering (1960). Two printings. 128. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Identical to U.S. No. 59 painted-covere dition( 1960). Two printings. 129. Davy Crockett. Identical to U.S. No. 129 (1956). Three printings. 130. The Woman in White by William Wilkie Collins. Identical to U.S. No. 61 painted-covere dition( 1961). Two printings. 131. The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale. Two editions: (1) identical to U.S. No. 63 painted-cover edition with first interior art (1961); (2) identical to U.S. No. 63 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1961). Two printings. 132. The Conspiracy of Pontiac by Francis Parkman. Identical to U.S. No. 154 (1960). Two printings. 133. The Lion of the North by G.A. Henty. Identical to U.S. No. 155 (1960). Two printings. 134. The Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Identical to U.S. No. 156 (1960). Three printings. 135. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. New British painted cover with U.S. No. 43 interior art (1961). Two printings. 136. Lives of the Hunted by Ernest Thompson Seton. Identical to U.S. No. 157 (1961). One printing. 137. The Conspirators by Alexandre Dumas. Identical to U.S. No. 158 (1961). One printing. 138. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Identical to U.S. No. 11 first painted-cover edition with title-lettering variant (1961). One printing. 139. The Octopus by Frank Norris. Identical to U.S. No. 159 (1961). One printing. 139A. The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells. Identical to U.S. No. 160 with darker sky on cover (1961). One printing (erroneously numbered 139). 139B. Cleopatra by H. Rider Haggard. Identical to U.S. No. 161 (1961). One printing.

140. Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne. Identical to U.S. No. 162 (1961). One printing. 141. Master of the World by Jules Verne. Identical to U.S. No. 163 (1961). One printing. 142. The Cossack Chief by Nikolai Gogol. Identical to U.S. No. 164 (1961). One printing. *143. Sail with the Devil: Captain Singleton’s Adventures by Daniel Defoe. Interior art by Norman Light. Not included in U.S. series (1962). One printing. 144. The Queen’s Necklace by Alexandre Dumas. Identical to U.S. No. 165 except for title-lettering variant (1962). One printing. 145. Tigers and Traitors by Jules Verne. Identical to U.S. No. 166 (1962). One printing. *146. Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolph E. Raspe. Cover and interior art by Denis Gifford. Not included in U.S. series (1962). One printing. *147. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Cover and interior art by Jennifer Robertson. Not included in U.S. series (1962). One printing. *148. Nights of Terror by William Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. Interior art by Mick Anglo. Not included in U.S. series (1962). One printing. *149. The Gorilla Hunters by Robert M. Ballantyne. Not included in U.S. series (1962). One printing. *150. The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde. Interior art by Mick Anglo. Not included in U.S. series (1962). One printing. 151. Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. Identical to U.S. No. 45 painted-cover edition with second interior art and title variant “Schooldays” rather than “School Days” (1962). One printing. 152. Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo. Identical to U.S. No. 56 painted-cover edition with second interior art but reversed cover image (1962). One printing. 153. The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Identical to U.S. No. 35 painted-cover edition with second interior art (1962). One printing. 154. Arabian Nights. Identical to U.S. painted-cover edition with second interior art but reversed cover image (1962). One printing. 155. Adventures of Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini. Identical to U.S. No. 38 except for title-lettering variant (1962). One printing. *156. The Dog Crusoe by Robert M. Ballantyne. Interior art by Norman Light. Not included in U.S. series (1962). One printing. *157. The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin. Not included in U.S. series (1962). One printing. *158A. Doctor No by Ian Fleming. Interior art by Norman Nodel. Not included in U.S. series (1963). One printing. *159. Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy. Not included in U.S. series (1963). One printing. 160. In Freedom’s Cause by G.A. Henty. Prototype of U.S. No. 168 (1963; preceded U.S. edition by six years). One printing. *161. The Aeneid by Virgil (based on the 1697 translation by John Dryden). Pencils attributed to Reed Crandall. Not included in U.S. series (1963). One printing. Added in 2007 to Jack Lake Productions revived North American series as No. 170. *162. Saga of the North by Pierre Loti. Interior art by Tomas Porto. Not included in U.S. series (1963). One printing. *163. The Argonauts by Appolonius of Rhodes. Not included in U.S. series (1963). One printing.

APPENDIX K, APPENDIX L Appendix K. Classics Illustrated, Second Series (Berkley Publishing Group/First Publishing, 1990–1991; Classics International Entertainment, 1994) All editions were 48 pages in length; author biographies were in cluded. Issues 1 through 17 were priced at $3.75 U.S./$4.75 Canada; issues 18 through 27 were increased to $3.95 U.S./$4.95 Canada. All first printings were by Berkley/First; all second printings were by Classics International Entertainment (CIE).

1. The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe; illustrated by Gahan Wilson. First and only printing February 1990. 2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens; adapted and illustrated by Rick Geary. First and only printing February 1990. 3. Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll; adapted and illustrated by Kyle Baker. First and only printing February 1990. 4. Moby Dick by Herman Melville; adapted and illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz. First and only printing February 1990. 5. Hamlet by William Shakespeare; adapted by Steven Grant; illustrated by Tom Mandrake; lettered by Gary Fields. First and only printing March 1990. 6. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; adapted by P. Craig Russell; illustrated by Jill Thompson; lettered by Bill Pearson. First printing March 1990; second printing (retro CI logo) 1994. 7. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas; cover by Pat Boyette; adapted by Steven Grant; illustrated by Dan Spiegle; colored by Les Dorscheid; lettered by Carrie Spiegle. First April 1990; second printing (retro CI logo) 1994. 8. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson; adapted and illustrated by John K. Snyder, III; lettered by Paul Fricke. First and only printing April 1990. 9. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain; adapted and illustrated by Michael Ploog; lettered by Willie Schubert. First printing May 1990; second printing (retro CI logo) 1994. 10. The Call of the Wild by Jack London; adapted by Charles Dixon; illustrated by Ricardo Villagran; lettered by Gary Fields. First printing June 1990; second printing (retro CI logo) 1994. 11. Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving; adapted and illustrated by Jeffrey Busch; lettered by Willie Schubert. First and only printing July 1990. 12. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells; cover by Jeffrey K. Potter; adapted by Steven Grant; illustrated by Eric Vincent; lettered by Ken Bruzenak; colored by Steve Oliff and Olyoptics. First and only printing August 1990. 13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë; adapted and illustrated by Rick Geary. First and only printing October [sic] 1990. 14. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe; adapted by P. Craig Russell; illustrated by Jay Geldhof; lettered by Willie Schubert; colored by Steve Oliff and Olyoptics. First and only printing September [sic] 1990. 15. The Gift of the Magi and Other Stories by O. Henry; Contents: “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Pimienta Pancakes,” “A Retrieved Reformation,” “The Cop and the Anthem,” “The Voice of the City,” and “The Last Leaf ”; adapted and illustrated by Gary Gianni. First and only printing November 1990. 16. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens; cover by Gary Gianni; adapted and illustrated by Joe Staton; lettered by Willie Schubert; colored by Les Dorscheid. First printing December 1990; second printing (retro CI logo) 1994. 17. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson; adapted and illustrated by Pat Boyette. First printing January 1991; second printing (retro CI logo) 1994.

353

18. The Devil’s Dictionary and Other Works by Ambrose Bierce; Contents: “The Devil’s Dictionary,” “The Boarded Window,” “Dead,” and “An Imperfect Conflagration”; adapted and illustrated by Gahan Wilson. First and only printing February 1991. 19. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad; adapted and illustrated by John K. Snyder, III; lettered by Paul Fricke. First and only printing February 1991. 20. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells; adapted and illustrated by Rick Geary. First and only printing March 1991. 21. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand; adapted by Peter David; illustrated and lettered by Kyle Baker. First and only printing March 1991. 22. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe; cover by Bill Wray; adapted by Sam Wray; illustrated by Pat Boyette; lettered by Gary Fields. First and only printing April 1991. 23. The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling; adapted and illustrated by Jeffrey Busch; lettered by Willie Schubert. First and only printing April 1991. 24. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; adapted and illustrated by Dean Motter; lettered by Willie Schubert. First and only printing May 1991. 25. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott; adapted by Mark Wayne Harris; illustrated by Ray Lago; lettered by Willie Schubert. First and only printing May 1991. 26. Aesop’s Fables; adapted and illustrated by Eric Vincent; lettered by Patrick Owsley. First printing June 1991; second printing (retro CI logo) 1994. 27. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair; adapted by Peter Kuper and Emily Russell; illustrated by Peter Kuper; lettered by Willie Schubert. First and only printing June 1991.

Appendix L. Classics Illustrated, Third Series, Study Guides (Acclaim Books, 1997–1998) An asterisk (*) indicates a title new to Classics Illustrated.

[SG1.] The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain; digest reissue of 1948 edition; essay by Andrew Jay Hoffman (February 1997). [SG2.] Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare; cover by Rebecca Guay; digest reissue of 1956 edition; essay by Susan Shwartz (February 1997). [SG3.] A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens; cover by Enrique Alcatena; digest reissue of 1956 edition; essay by Stuart Christie (February 1997). [SG4.] Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë; cover by Rebecca Guay; digest reissue of 1947 edition; essay by David Hoover (February 1997). [SG5.] Hamlet by William Shakespeare; digest reissue of 1952 edition; essay by Debra Doyle (March 1997). [SG6.] The Odyssey by Homer; cover by Enrique Alcatena; digest reissue of 1951 edition; essay by Maurice A. Randall (March 1997). [SG7.] Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain; digest reissue of 1956 edition; essay by Andrew Jay Hoffman (March 1997). [SG8.] Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky; cover by Dennis Calero; digest reissue of 1951 edition; essay by Andrew Jay Hoffman (March 1997). [SG9.] A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare; cover by Richard Case; digest reissue of 1951 edition; essay by Bruce Glassco (April 1997). [SG10.] Great Expectations by Charles Dickens; cover by Chuck Wotjkiewicz; digest reissue of 1947 edition; essay by Michael Doylen (April 1997). [SG11.] The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain; cover by Bo

354

APPENDIX L

Hampton; digest reissue of 1946 edition; essay by Andrew Jay Hoffman (April 1997). [SG12.] Moby Dick by Herman Melville; cover by Chuck Wotjkiewicz; digest reissue of 1942 edition; essay by Debra Doyle (April 1997). [SG13.] Macbeth by William Shakespeare; cover by Richard Case; digest reissue of 1955 edition; essay by Karen Karbiener (May 1997). [SG14.] Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens; digest reissue of 1945 edition; essay by Deborah Condon (May 1997). [SG15.] A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain; cover by Bo Hampton; digest reissue of 1957 edition; essay by Andrew Jay Hoffman (May 1997). [SG16.] Les Miserables by Victor Hugo; cover by Alexander Maleev; digest reissue of 1961 edition; essay by Sherwood Smith (May 1997). [SG17.] Stories by Poe (“The Adventure of Hans Pfall”; “The TellTale Heart”; “The Cask of Amontillado”) by Edgar Allan Poe; cover by Jen Marrus; digest reissue of excerpts from 1947 and 1951 editions; essay by Gregory Feeley ( June 1997). [SG18.] The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas; cover by John Paul Leon; digest reissue of 1959 edition; essay by Sherwood Smith ( June 1997). [SG19.] Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand; cover by Richard Case; digest reissue of 1951 edition; essay by Sherwood Smith ( June 1997). [SG20.] Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe; cover by Rebecca Guay; digest reissue of 1943 edition; essay by Karen Karbiener ( June 1997). [SG21.] Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson; cover by Tommy Lee Edwards; digest reissue of 1949 edition; essay by Trevor Pickering ( June 1997). [SG22.] Typee by Herman Melville; cover by Clem Robins; digest reissue of 1947 edition; essay by Debra Doyle ( June 1997). [SG23.] 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne; cover by John Paul Leon; digest reissue of 1948 edition; essay by Beth Nachison ( July 1997). [SG24.] The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne; cover by Richard Case; digest reissue of 1947 edition; essay by Beth Nachison ( July 1997). [SG25.] A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne; cover by Lou Harrison; digest reissue of 1957 edition; essay by Howard Hendrix ( July 1997). [SG26.] From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne; cover by Jim Calafiore; digest reissue of 1953 edition; essay by Gregory Freeley ( July 1997). [SG27.] Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift; cover by Bo Hampton; digest reissue of 1943 edition; essay by Gregory Feeley (July 1997). [SG28.] Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott; cover by Bo Hampton; digest reissue of 1957 edition; essay by Susan Schwartz ( July 1997). [SG29.] More Stories by Poe (“The Pit and the Pendulum”; “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”; “The Fall of the House of Usher”; “The Raven”) by Edgar Allan Poe; cover by Jen Marrus; digest reissue of excerpts from 1944, 1947, and 1990 editions; essay by Gregory Feeley (August 1997). [SG30.] The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas; cover by Jay Geldof; digest reissue of 1958 edition; essay by Beth Nachison (August 1997). [SG31.] Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare; cover by Lou Harrison; digest reissue of 1950 edition; essay by Julie Bleha (August 1997). [SG32.] David Copperfield by Charles Dickens; cover by Gene Ha; digest reissue of 1948 edition; essay by Emily Woudenberg (August 1997).

[SG33.] Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain; cover by Clem Robins; digest reissue of 1952 edition; essay by Andrew Jay Hoffman (August 1997). [SG34.] The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling; cover by Alex Maleev; digest reissue of 1951 edition; essay by Gregory Feeley (August 1997). [SG35.] Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad; cover by Dennis Calero; digest reissue of 1957 edition; essay by John Barnes (September 1997). [SG36.] The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo; cover by Alexander Maleev; digest reissue of 1960 edition; essay by Howard Hendrix (September 1997). [SG37.] The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane; cover by John Paul Leon; digest reissue of 1952 edition; essay by Julie Bleha (September 1997). [SG38.] The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne; cover by Chuck Wotjkiewicz; digest reissue of 1958 edition; essay by Joshua Miller (September 1997). [SG39.] Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe; cover by Scott Hampton; digest reissue of 1957 edition; essay by June Foley (September 1997). [SG40.] The Call of the Wild by Jack London; cover by Leonardo Manco; digest reissue of 1952 edition; essay by Joshua Miller (September 1997). [SG41.] Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; cover by Jordan Raskin; digest reissue of 1945 edition; essay by Debra Doyle (October 1997). [SG42.] The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells; cover by Tony Harris; digest reissue of 1959 edition; essay by Beth Nachison (October 1997). [SG43.] The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving; cover by Bo Hampton; digest reissue of 1943 edition; essay by Debra Doyle (October 1997). [SG44.] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson; cover by Tony Harris; digest reissue of 1953 edition; essay by Andrew Jay Hoffman (October 1997). [SG45.] Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling; cover by Chuck Wotjkiewicz; digest reissue of 1954 edition; essay by Debra Doyle (November 1997). [SG46.] The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson; cover by Enrique Alcatena; digest reissue of 1951 edition; essay by Beth Nachison (November 1997). [SG47.] Silas Marner by George Eliot; cover by Scott Hampton; digest reissue of 1949 edition; essay by Andrew Jay Hoffman (November 1997). [SG48.] Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë; cover by Rebecca Guay; digest reissue of 1949 edition; essay by Abigail Burnham Bloom (November 1997). [SG49.] Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes; cover by Tommy Lee Edwards; digest reissue of 1943 edition; essay by Gregory Feeley (December 1997). [SG50.] A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens; cover by Doug Tropea-Wheatley; digest reissue of 1948 edition; essay by Debra Doyle (December 1997). [SG51.] The Iliad by Homer; cover by Enrique Alcatena; digest reissue of 1950 edition; essay by Maurice A. Randall (December 1997). [SG52.] The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper; cover by Alexander Maleev; digest reissue of 1959 edition; essay by June Foley (December 1997). [SG53.] Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson; cover by Scott Hampton; digest reissue of 1948 edition; essay by Andrew Jay Hoffman ( January 1998). [SG54.] The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas; cover by Alexander Maleev; digest reissue of 1956 edition; essay by Susan Shwartz ( January 1998).

APPENDIX M [SG55.] Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne; cover by Lou Harrison; digest reissue of 1950 edition; essay by Beth Nachison ( January 1998). [SG56.] All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque; cover by Tommy Lee Edwards; digest reissue of 1952 edition; essay by A.J. Scopino, Jr. ( January 1998). [SG57.] Kim by Rudyard Kipling; cover by Vince Evans; digest reissue of 1958 edition; essay by Debra Doyle (February 1998). [SG58.] Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; cover by Ray Lago; digest reissue of 1962 edition; essay by Debra Doyle (February 1998). [SG59.] *Henry IV — Part 1 by William Shakespeare; original Acclaim edition; cover by George Pratt; interior art by Patrick Broderick; adaptation by Gregory Feeley; essay by Susan Shwartz (February 1998). [SG60.] The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells; cover by Clem Robins; digest reissue of 1955 edition; essay by Joshua Miller (February 1998). [SG61.] *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass; original Acclaim edition; cover by Steven Musgrave; interior art by Jamal Igle, Ravil Lopez, and Mike DeCarlo; lettering by Jade Moede; adaptation by Len Wein and Christine Vallada; essay by Joshua Miller (March 1998). [SG62.] *The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy; original Acclaim edition; cover by Linda Fennimore; interior art by Patrick Broderick and Ralph Reese; coloring by Colorpillar; lettering by Jade Moede; adaptation by Madeleine Robins; essay by Beth Nachison (April 1998). The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper; scheduled (March 1998) but not issued. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll; scheduled (March 1998) but not issued. Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas; scheduled (March 1998) but not issued. *Henry IV — Part 2 by William Shakespeare; scheduled (April 1998) but not issued. David Balfour by Robert Louis Stevenson; scheduled (April 1998) but not issued. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen; scheduled (May 1998) but not issued. The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells; scheduled (May 1998) but not issued. *Henry V by William Shakespeare; scheduled ( June 1998) but not issued. White Fang by Jack London; scheduled ( June 1998) but not issued. *Beowulf; scheduled ( July 1998) but not issued. The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark; scheduled ( July 1998) but not issued. Mutiny on the Bounty by Nordhoff and Hall; scheduled but not published. The Pathfinder by James Fenimore Cooper; scheduled but not published. The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte; scheduled but not published. *The Awakening by Kate Chopin; scheduled but not published. The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper; scheduled but not published. The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells; scheduled but not published. *King Lear by William Shakespeare; scheduled but not published. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope; scheduled but not published. Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana; scheduled but not published.

355

*Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare; scheduled but not published. *Emma by Jane Austen; scheduled but not published. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins; scheduled but not published. *The Turn of the Screw by Henry James; scheduled but not published. *Othello by William Shakespeare; scheduled but not published. *Dracula by Bram Stoker; scheduled but not published.

Appendix M. Classics Illustrated, Fourth Series, (Jack Lake Productions, Inc., 2005– ) 1. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Reissue of 1959 CI PC, A2 (George Evans) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2007 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Reissue of 1956 PC, A2 (Lou Cameron) edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art recoloring by Ali Morbi. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2010 [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99]. 4. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Reissue of 1959 PC, A2 John P. Severin, Stephen L. Addeo) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2007 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 5. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Reissue of 1956 PC1, A2 (Norman Nodel) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2007 [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99]. 6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Reissue of 1956 PC1, A2 ( Joe Orlando) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 7. Robin Hood [based on Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and other sources]. Reissue of 1957 PC (Victor Prezio), A2 ( Jack Sparling) edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art recoloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 9. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. Reissue of 1961 PC1 (Gerald McCann), A2 (Norman Nodel) edition. Original cover painting reproduced; interior art recoloring by Shane Kirshenblatt. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 16. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. Reissue of 1960 PC, original interior art (Lillian Chestney) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 18. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. Reissue of 1960 PC2 (Gerald McCann), A2 (George Evans, Reed Crandall) edition. Original cover painting reproduced; interior art recoloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 19. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). Reissue of 1956 PC, A2 (Mike Sekowsky, Frank Giacoia) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 23. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Reissue of 1961 PC, A2 (George Evans, Reed Crandall) edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art recoloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 26. Frankenstein by Mary W. Shelley. Reissue of 1958 PC (Norman B. Saunders), original interior art (Robert H. Webb, Ann Brewster) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99].

356

APPENDIX M

37. The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper. Reissue of 1968 PC (Thomas Oughton), original interior art (Rudolph Palais) edition. New digitalized artwork: interior art recoloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing February 2011 [HRN 171, 48 pages (“Pioneers of Science: Thomas Alva Edison” from 1947 edition replaces “Jungle Promise” on page 48), $9.99]. 39. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Reissue of 1962 PC1, A2 (H.J. Kihl) edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; coloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 42. Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss. Reissue of 1959 PC, A2 (Norman Nodel) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 43. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Reissue of 1947 interior-art (Henry C. Kiefer); UK painted-cover edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; coloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2010 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 47. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. Reissue of 1955 PC1, original interior art (Henry C. Kiefer) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 49. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Reissue of 1960 PC1 (originally 1956 Joint European series cover), original interior art (Alex A. Blum) edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art recoloring by Shane Kirshenblatt. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing February 2011 [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99]. 53. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Reissue of 1948 interior-art (Henry C. Kiefer) and UK painted-cover edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2010 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 54. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas. Reissue of 1958 PC, A2 (Ken Battefield) edition. New digital artwork: cover by Christina Choma; coloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 57. The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Reissue of 1956 PC, original interior art (Alex A. Blum) edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; coloring by Shane Kirshenblatt and Alana Peroff. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2010 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 59. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Reissue of 1960 PC (Geoffrey Biggs), original interior art (Henry C. Kiefer) edition. Original cover painting reproduced; new digitalized coloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 60. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Reissue of 1960 PC1 (Leonard B. Cole), A2 (Leonard B. Cole, Norman Nodel, Stephen L. Addeo) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 64. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Reissue of 1956 PC (George Wilson), original interior art (Alex A. Blum) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing (cover variant, Hispaniola deleted from enlarged image) 2008 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 65. Benjamin Franklin. Reissue of 1956 PC, original interior art (Robert Hebberd et al.) edition. New digitalized artwork: interior art recoloring by Mike Gagnon. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing February 2011 [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99]. 68. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Reissue of 1962 PC (Leonard B. Cole), A2 (George Evans, Reed Crandall) edition. Orig-

inal cover painting reproduced; new digitalized coloring by Ali Morbi. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 72. The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman. Reissue of 1956 PC, original interior art (Henry C. Kiefer) edition. New digitalized artwork: interior art recoloring by Mike Gagnon. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing February 2011 [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99]. 78. Joan of Arc. Reissue of 1955 PC1, original interior art (Henry C. Kiefer) edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; coloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 83. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Reissue of 1951 PC1 (Alex A. Blum), 1968 A2 (Norman Nodel) edition (only union of original painted cover and second interior art). New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; coloring by Shane Kirshenblatt and Bram Cayne. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 87. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. Reissue of 1951 PC (Alex A. Blum), original interior art (Alex A. Blum) edition. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; coloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 91. The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Reissue of 1952 PC (Alex A. Blum), original interior art (Maurice del Bourgo) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 52 pages (three ads plus Kanter bio by Jones), $9.99]. 95. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Reissue of 1952 PC, original interior art (Maurice del Bourgo) edition. Original cover painting reproduced; new digitalized coloring by Shane Kirshenblatt. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 96. Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness by John Bakeless. Reissue of 1952 PC1, original interior art (Alex A. Blum) edition. Original cover painting reproduced; new digitalized coloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2010 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 99. Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Reissue of 1952 PC1 (Alex A. Blum), original interior art (Alex A. Blum) edition. New digitalized artwork unattributed. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 100. Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Reissue of 1952 PC (Henry C. Kiefer), original interior art (Morris Waldinger) edition. Original cover painting reproduced; new digitalized coloring by Shane Kirshenblatt. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 106. Buffalo Bill. Reissue of 1953 PC (Mort Künstler), original interior art (Maurice del Bourgo) edition. New digitalized artwork: interior art recoloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing February 2011; limited initial run (200 copies) with “No. 112” erroneously printed in open-book device on front cover [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99]. 108. Knights of the Round Table by Sir Thomas Malory and others. Reissue of 1953 PC (Mort Künstler), original interior art (Alex A. Blum) edition. New digitalized interior artwork by Holly Stover. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 112. The Adventures of Kit Carson. Reissue of 1953 PC1 (Mort Künstler), original interior art (Rudolph Palais) edition. New digitalized artwork: interior art recoloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing February 2011 [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99].

APPENDIX N 121. Wild Bill Hickok. Reissue of 1954 PC, original interior art (Sal Trapani, Medio Iorio) edition. Original cover painting reproduced. New digitalized artwork: interior art recoloring by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing February 2011 [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99]. 124. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Reissue of 1955 PC (Lou Cameron), original interior art (Lou Cameron) edition. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2005 [no HRN, Albert Lewis Kanter biography by William B. Jones, Jr., on back cover, 48 pages, hardcover $12.99, softcover $9.99]. 128. Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Reissue of 1955 PC, original interior art (Alex A. Blum) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2009 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 129. Davy Crockett. Reissue of 1955 PC, original interior art (Lou Cameron) edition. Original cover painting reproduced; new digitalized coloring by Mike Gagnon. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2010 [no HRN, essay on Davy Crockett Craze of 1955 by William B. Jones, Jr., on back cover, 48 pages, $9.99]. 133. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Reissue of 1956 PC (George Wilson), original interior art (Lou Cameron) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 52 pages (three ads plus Kanter bio by Jones), $9.99]. 134. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Reissue of 1956 PC, original interior art (George Evans) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 52 pages (three ads plus Kanter bio by Jones, $9.99]. 138. A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. Reissue of 1957 PC (Norman B. Saunders), original interior art (Norman Nodel) edition (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 170, 52 pages (three ads plus Kanter bio by Jones), $9.99]. 142. Abraham Lincoln [based on Abraham Lincoln: A Biography by Benjamin P. Thomas]. Reissue of 1958 PC (Gerald McCann), original interior art (Norman Nodel) edition. Original cover painting reproduced. New digitalized artwork: interior art recoloring by Mike Gagnon. Introduction and biography of Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing February 2011 [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99]. 153. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Reissue of 1959 PC (Geoffrey Biggs), original interior art (Norman Nodel) edition. Original cover painting reproduced. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2010 [HRN 170, 48 pages, $9.99]. 170. The Aeneid by Virgil. Reissue of UK PC original Reed Crandall interior art edition. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing December 2007 [HRN 170, 48 pages (in-house ad plus Kanter bio by Jones replacing original pages 47–48), $9.99]. 171. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Reissue of 1950 Famous Authors original interior art (Gustav Schrotter) edition. New painted cover by Colin Mayne. New digitalized coloring by Ali Morbi. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing October 2010 [HRN 171, 48 pages, $9.99].

Appendix N. Classics Illustrated Junior, Second Series (Jack Lake Productions, Inc., 2003– ) 501. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Reissue of 1953 edition. Digitalized restorations of original cover and Alex A. Blum interior artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan Shaw-Russell. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 502. The Ugly Duckling. Reissue of 1953 edition. Digitalized

357

restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan Shaw-Russell. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2004 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/ Can. $4.99]. 503. Cinderella. Reissue of 1953 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2004 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 504. The Pied Piper. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Chad Solomon and Miah Moon. Biography of Robert Browning by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2005 [HRN 577, 32 pages, perfect-bound, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 505. The Sleeping Beauty. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan Shaw-Russell. Biography of Charles Perrault by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/ Can. $4.99]. 506. The 3 Little Pigs. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan Shaw-Russell. Biography of Joseph Jacobs by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 507. Jack and the Beanstalk. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Blum artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan Shaw-Russell. Biography of William Godwin by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 508. Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of Robert Southey by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2005 [HRN 577, 32 pages, perfect-bound, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 509. Beauty and the Beast. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Richard Zajac and Matt Kells. Biography of Charles Perrault by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2005 [HRN 577, 32 pages, perfect-bound, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 510. Little Red Riding Hood. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan Shaw-Russell. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2008 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/ Can. $4.99]. 511. Puss-in-Boots. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Dik Browne/William A. Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Binah and Miah Moon. Biography of Charles Perrault by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2009 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 512. Rumpelstiltskin. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2004 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 513. Pinocchio. Reissue of 1954 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Binah Moon and Miah Moon. Biography of Carlo Collodi by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2005 [HRN 577, 32 pages, perfect-bound, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 514. The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Reissue of 1955 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Kaarel and Pärt Prommik. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 515. Johnny Appleseed. Reissue of 1955 edition. Digitalized restora-

358

APPENDIX N

tions of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2004 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 516. Aladdin and His Lamp. Reissue of 1955 edition. Digitalized restoration of original Schaffenberger artwork: interior art by Bruce Downey. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 517. The Emperor’s New Clothes. Reissue of 1955 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Bram Cayne. Biography of Hans Christian Andersen by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 518. The Golden Goose. Reissue of 1955 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan-Shaw Russell. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./ Can. $5.99]. 519. Paul Bunyan. Reissue of 1955 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Sekowsky/Giacoia artwork: cover by Yvonne Poon; interior art by Susan-Shaw Russell. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/ Can. $4.99]. 520. Thumbelina. Reissue of 1955 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Leigh Young. Biography of Hans Christian Andersen by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2004 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 521. The King of the Golden River. Reissue of 1955 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Ali Morbi. Biography of John Ruskin by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 522. The Nightingale. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Ali Morbi. Biography of Hans Christian Andersen by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S.9/Can. $5.99]. 523. The Gallant Tailor. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Ali Morbi. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 524. The Wild Swans. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 525. The Little Mermaid. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original William A. Walsh/Alex A. Blum artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Binah Moon and Miah Moon. Biography of Hans Christian Andersen by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2009 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 526. The Frog Prince. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Ali Morbi. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 527. The Golden-Haired Giant. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Shane Kirshenblatt. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can.$ 5.99]. 528. The Penny Prince. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Browne/Hickey art: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Ali Morbi. Biography of Hans Christian Andersen by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./ Can. $5.99]. 529. The Magic Servants. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized

restorations of original Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Ali Morbi. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 530. The Golden Bird. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Browne/Streeter artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 531. Rapunzel. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Streeter/ Blum artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Ali Morbi. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2009 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 532. The Dancing Princesses. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Dik Browne/William A. Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Binah Moon and Miah Moon. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2009 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 533. The Magic Fountain. Reissue of 1956 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Sekowsky artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior artwork by Bram Cayne. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2010 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./ Can.$5.99]. 535. The Wizard of Oz. Reissue of 1957 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Sekowsky artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Chen Yu Wei, Dai Cheng Song, and Yu Jing. Biography of L. Frank Baum by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2004 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 536. The Chimney Sweep. Reissue of 1957 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 539. The Enchanted Fish. Reissue of 1957 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Browne/Streeter artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Binah Moon and Miah Moon. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2004 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 540. The Tinder-Box. Reissue of 1957 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Browne/Streeter artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan Shaw-Russell. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 541. Snow White and Rose Red. Reissue of 1957 edition. Digitalized restorations of original William A. Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan Shaw-Russell. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2009 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99]. 546. The Elves and the Shoemaker. Reissue of 1958 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 548. The Magic Pitcher. Reissue of 1958 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Chen Yu Wei, Dai Cheng Song, and Yu Jing. Biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2005 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 551. The Queen Bee. Reissue of 1958 edition. Digitalized restorations of original William A. Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Eva Oja and Ali Morbi. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2009 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99].

APPENDIX O, APPENDIX P 562. The Enchanted Pony: A Russian Fairy Tale. Reissue of October 1959 edition. Digitalized restorations of original L.B. Cole/William A. Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Shane Kirshenblatt. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2009 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 563. The Wishing Well. Reissue of 1959 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Cole/Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 564. The Salt Mountain: A Russian Fairy Tale. Reissue of 1960 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Cole/Peltz artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 565. The Silly Princess. Reissue of 1960 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Cole/Walsh artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Binah and Miah Moon. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2004 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 570. The Pearl Princess. Reissue of 1961 edition; first title to be reissued in second series. Digitalized restorations of original artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan Shaw-Russell. Biography of Albert L. Kanter by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2003 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 571. How Fire Came to the Indians. Reissue of 1961 edition. Digitalized restorations of original Tony Tallarico artwork: cover by Christina Choma (based on Jack Kirby “Coming Next” art in No. 570 [1961]); interior art by Richard Zajac and Matt Kells. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2005 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S. $3.99/Can. $4.99]. 576. The Princess Who Saw Everything. Entirely new edition, replacing 1962 Pat Prichard cover and interior. Artwork: cover by Colin Mayne; interior art by Wayne Downey. Biography of the Brothers Grimm by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing 2009 [HRN 577, 32 pages, U.S./Can. $5.99.

Appendix O. Classics Illustrated Special Issues, Second Series (Jack Lake Productions, Inc., 2004 – ) 129A. The Story of Jesus. Original painted cover by Victor Prezio; interior art by William A. Walsh and Alex A. Blum. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Susan ShawRussell, Leigh Young, and Bruce Downey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing (hardcover edition) 2004 [Back-cover display of all 16 Special Issues; 98 pages; $19.99]. Second printing (softcover edition) October 2010 [Back-cover display of all 16 Special Issues; 100 pages, including biographies of Albert L. Kanter and Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht by William B. Jones, Jr.; $14.99]. 132A. The Story of America. Original painted cover by George Wilson; interior art by Lou Cameron, Lin Streeter, Peter Costanza, and Tom Hickey (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing (softcover edition) 2007 [Back-cover display of all 16 Special Issues; 96 pages; $14.99]. 135A. The Ten Commandments. Original painted cover and interior art by Norman Nodel. New digitalized artwork: cover by Christina Choma; interior art by Richard Zajac, Matt Kells, and Chad Solomon. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. Second printing (softcover edition) October 2010 [Back-cover display of all 16 Special Issues; 100 pages, including biographies of Albert L. Kanter and Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht by William B. Jones, Jr.; $14.99]. 141A. The Rough Rider. Original painted cover (unidentified artist);

359

interior art (pencils) by George Evans (reproduced from original Gilberton proof pages). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing (softcover edition) 2008 [Back-cover display of all 16 Special Issues; 96 pages; $14.99]. 150A. Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Original painted cover by Gerald McCann; interior art by L.B. Cole, Sam Glanzman, Graham Ingels, Sid Check, Kirner, Sam Becker, Norman Nodel, Stan Campbell, and Ray Ramsey. Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing (softcover edition) September 2011 [Back-cover display of all 16 Special Issues; 96 pages; $14.99]. 162A. The War Between the States. Original painted cover by Geoffrey Biggs; interior art by Jack Kirby, Sam Glanzman, Till Goodan, George Peltz, George Evans, John Tartaglione, and Edd Ashe (scanned). Introduction by William B. Jones, Jr. First printing (softcover edition) 2007 [Back-cover display of all 16 Special Issues; 96 pages; $14.99].

Appendix P. British Classics Illustrated, Third Series (Classic Comics Store, 2008– ) Produced in conjunction with Jack Lake Productions, Inc., and using same digitalized art. All titles perfect-bound and priced at £3.25. Note that some titles were published in the third British series before they were added to the Jack Lake Productions catalogue. A Junior series is also published, as well as teachers’ guides.

1. The War of the Worlds (September 2008). 2. Oliver Twist (November 2008) 3. Robin Hood (December 2008) 4. The Man in the Iron Mask ( January 2009). 5. Romeo and Juliet (February 2009). 6. A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (February 2009; British spelling of “Centre” in title). 7. Les Miserables (April 2009). 8. The Jungle Book (May 2009; first appearance in a British Classics Illustrated series; Nodel rather than Blum cover; Nodel interior art). 9. Mutiny on the Bounty ( June 2009). 10. Wuthering Heights ( July 2009). 11. Knights of the Round Table (September 2009). 12. Jane Eyre (September 2009). 13. Frankenstein (October 2009; first appearance in a British Classics Illustrated series). 14. The Time Machine (November 2009). 15. A Christmas Carol (December 2009). 16. Moby Dick ( January 2010). 17. Macbeth (February 2010). 18. The Invisible Man (March 2010). 19. Huckleberry Finn (April 2010). 20. Great Expectations ( June 2010). 21. Treasure Island ( June 2010). 22. Alice in Wonderland ( July 2010). 23. Black Beauty (August 2010). 24. Kidnapped (September 2010). 25. The Three Musketeers (October 2010). 26. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (November 2010). 27. Ben-Hur (December 2010). 28. The Last Days of Pompeii ( January 2011). 29. Ivanhoe (March 2011). 30. Julius Caesar (April 2011). 31. Around the World in Eighty Days (2011). 32. Nicholas Nickleby (2011; first appearance in a British Classics Illustrated series).

360 33. 34. 35. 36.

APPENDIX Q, APPENDIX R, APPENDIX S Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (2011). The Last of the Mohicans (2011). A Tale of Two Cities (2011). The Hunchback of Notre Dame (2011).

Appendix Q. Papercutz Classics Illustrated DeLuxe Editions (Papercutz, 2008– ) All 6 1 ⁄ 2" ¥ 9", 144 pages, full-color; hardcover and softcover.

1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Adapted by Michel Plessix. Translation by Joe Johnson. First printing January 2008. 2. Tales from the Brothers Grimm by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: “Hansel and Gretel” adapted by Philip Petit; “Learning How to Shudder” adapted by Mazan; “The Devil and the Three Golden Hairs” adapted by Cecile Chicault; “The Valiant Little Tailor” adapted by Mazan. Translation by Joe Johnson. First Printing April 2008. 3. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Adapted by Marion Mousse. Translation by Joe Johnson. First printing January 2009. 4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Adapted by Jean David Morvan, Voulyze, and Lefebre. Translation by Joe Johnson. First printing December 2009. 5. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Adapted by David Chauvel and Fred Simon. Translation by Joe Johnson. First printing March 2010. 6. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Adapted by Jean David Morvan, Michel Dufranne, and Rubén. Translation by Joe Johnson. First printing June 2011.

Appendix R. Papercutz Classics Illustrated Editions (Papercutz, 2008– ) 1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Adapted by Rick Geary. First printing March 2008. 2. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Adapted by Rick Geary. First printing June 2008. 3. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Adapted by Kyle Baker. First printing September 2008. 4. The Raven and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll. Adapted by Gahan Wilson. First printing March 2009. 5. Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Adapted by Steven Grant and Tom Mandrake. First printing May 2009. 6. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Adapted by P. Craig Russell and Jill Thompson. First printing September 2009. 7. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Adapted by John K. Snyder, III. First printing December 2009. 8. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Adapted by Steven Grant and Dan Spiegle. First printing January 2010. 9. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Adapted by Peter Kuper. First printing May 2010. 10. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. Adapted by Peter David and Kyle Baker. First printing June 2010. 11. The Devil’s Dictionary and Other Works by Ambrose Bierce. Adapted by Gahan Wilson. First printing November 2010. 12. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells. Adapted by Steven Grant and Eric Vincent. First printing January 2011. 13. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Adapted by Mark Wayne Harris and Ray Lago. First printing April 2011. 14. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Adapted by Rick Geary. First printing August 2011.

Appendix S. Correspondence Between Roberta Strauss and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, re: The Dark Frigate (November-December 1955) November 18, 1955 National Maritime Museum Greenwich London, SE 10, England Gentlemen: We are in the process of adapting a novel, The Dark Frigate by Charles Boardman Hawes. The climax of the book is a trial in an admiralty court in London toward the end of the reign of Charles I. We will have to illustrate this trial, yet we find a remarkable paucity of reference material. We finally checked with British Information Services and were told to contact you. We are not interested as such in the procedure in these courts; we are mainly concerned with the physical makeup of the court. Questions that occur are: a. were all of the officers of the court naval personnel? b. did the court contain a judge, prosecutor, defense attorney or similar comparable figures? was there a particular costume for any of these gentlemen? c. was there a jury, and if so, how many members did it contain, and were they all naval officers? where did they deliberate — in the courtroom or elsewhere? d. was there a specific seating arrangement? were there any other physical details of the courtroom of which we should be aware? If material for this specific period is not available, is general material available on admiralty courts? Did they vary greatly from era to era? Any information you forward to us will be gratefully received, although, unhappily, publishing deadlines demand that we hear from you within one month. But if you can help us produce a more accurate book, we will indeed be indebted to you. Sincerely, GILBERTON COMPANY, INC. Roberta Strauss Script Editor *** Postmark: 2 DEC 1955 National Maritime Museum Greenwich, S.E. 10 Dear Madam, In answer to your letter of 18th November, there is nothing, as far as I have been able to discover, which illustrates the points about the Admiralty Court, which you raise. There would have been nothing to distinguish those appearing in the court as naval people, (there was at the time no uniform) and nothing is known of the arrangement of the rooms or halls in which the judges sat. A small informal gathering round a table is probably a more likely arrangement than any well-set-out Court Room. In a book called “Doctors Commons & the Old Court of Admiralty” by W. Senior (London) 1922, there is a description of a costume worn by Doctors before the Admiralty Judge or Judges; black gowns, with the hoods of their Degrees and “all-round black velvet caps” (not unlike present day Doctor’s robes). This refers to the time of Charles II, but these details could well be incorporated in your illustration. Samuel Pepys describes two visits to an Admiralty Court, and

APPENDIX T speaks of his three counsel, and only one on the opposing side. There was also a jury, at least in one of his passages (concerned with a trial for dishonesty in a Dockyard). In the other instance, a case of Prize, he mentions only the Judge delivering his sentence. He notes that he had to sit with his hat off, and its worth noting that in your period the Court was held in part of an old church, so that perhaps a “Gothic” background, or windows, would be a useful reference for your artist. There remains the Admiralty mace to be mentioned. This was a silver oar, about 3 feet in length according to some accounts, which was carried into the Court and placed on the table before the Judge. This too could well figure in your pictures. I hope these details will be of some help, Yours truly, J. MUNDAY. LIBRARIAN. Miss R. Strauss Gilberton Company, Inc. 101, Fifth Avenue New York 3. N.Y. U.S.A.

Appendix T. Letter from Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht to E. Nelson Bridwell

361

This page intentionally left blank

Bibliography Books, Journals, Magazines, and Other Printed Matter Amash, Jim. “‘I Was So Busy, I Never Read the Stories’: Unique Artist Rudy Palais on Living and Drawing Comics.” Alter Ego, No. 62 (October 2006): 42–55. Anderson, Paul F. The Davy Crockett Craze. Hillside, Ill.: R & G Productions, 1996. Bachleitner, Norbert. “Jane Eyre for Young Readers: Three Illustrated Adaptations.” In A Breath of Fresh Eyre: Intertextual and Intermedial Reworkings of Jane Eyre, edited by Margarete Rubik and Elke MettingerSchartmann. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007. Bails, Jerry, and Hames Ware. The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Volume One. Detroit: Jerry Bails, 1973. _____. The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Volume Two. Detroit: Jerry Bails, 1974. _____. The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Volume Three. Detroit: Jerry Bails, 1975. _____. The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Volume Four. Detroit: Jerry Bails, 1976. Barker, Martin, and Roger Sabin. The Lasting of the Mohicans: History of an American Myth. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. Beaty, Bart. “Featuring Stories by the World’s Greatest Authors: Classics Illustrated and the ‘Middlebrow Problem’ in the Postwar Era.” International Journal of Comic Art, 1:1 (Spring/Summer 1999): 122–139. Beerbohm, Robert L., and Richard D. Olson. “In the Beginning: New Discoveries Beyond the Platinum Age.” In The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, 30th Edition, by Robert M. Overstreet. New York: Gemstone/HarperCollins, 2000. Benton, Mike. The Comic Book in America: An Illustrated History. Dallas: Taylor, 1993. _____. Crime Comics: The Illustrated History. Dallas: Taylor, 1993. _____. Horror Comics: The Illustrated History. Dallas: Taylor, 1991. Buhle, Paul. “History and Comics.” Reviews in American History, 35:2 (2007): 315–323.

_____. “Political Education, Illustrated,” ZEEK: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture (March 2010). Carter, Henry A. “Chemistry in the Comics: Part 2. Classic Chemistry.” Journal of Chemical Education, 66:2 (February 1989). Certificate of Amendment of Certificate of Incorporation of Gilberton Corporation Respecting Purposes, Powers and Number of Directors (Pursuant to Section 35 of the Stock Corporation Law), File No. 6020, NY 4095-60 (filed 13 May 1942). Certificate of Incorporation of Gilberton Company, Inc. (Pursuant to Article II of the Stock Corporation Law), File No. 6869, NY 686998 (filed 25 November 1946). “Classic Comics Success Based on Al Kanter’s Sound, Original Idea.” The Publishers’ Distributor, Vol. I, No. 11 (May 1944): 3. Collins, William Wilkie. The Woman in White. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc./Everyman’s Library, 1991. Crawford, Hubert H. Crawford’s Encyclopedia of Comic Books. Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David, 1978. Cwiklik, Gregory. Untitled article. The Comics Journal, No. 139 (December 1990). Daniels, Les. Comix: A History of Comic Books in America. New York: Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, 1971. _____. DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes. Boston: A Bulfinch Press Book/Little, Brown, 1995. _____. Marvel: Five Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. Duin, Steve, and Mike Richardson. Comics: Between the Panels. Milwaukie, Ore.: Dark Horse Comics, 1998. Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. Tamarac, Fla.: Poorhouse Press, 1985. Evanier, Mark. Kirby: King of Comics. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2008. Evory, Ann, ed. Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale Research, 1981. Feuerlicht, Roberta Strauss. The Fate of the Jews: A People Torn Between Israeli Power and Jewish Ethics. New York: Times Books, 1983. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Ed.

363

Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Scribner, 2003. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Hollis Robbins, eds. The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. Glut, Donald F., “Frankenstein Meets the Comics.” In The Comic-Book Book, edited by Don Thompson and Dick Lupoff. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1973. Goulart, Ron. Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1986. Goulart, Ron, ed. The Encyclopedia of American Comics: From 1897 to the Present. New York, Oxford: Facts on File, 1990. Grimm, Jakob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Grimms’ Tales for Young and Old: The Complete Stories. Trans. Ralph Mannheim. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983. Hagenauer, George. “Cameron and the Count.” The Classics Reader, No. 10 (February 1978): 30. Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Hamill, Pete. A Drinking Life: A Memoir. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994. Harvey, Robert C. The Art of the Comic Book: An Aesthetic History. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. Haufe, John. “Raiders of the Lost Art ... Raymond True and the Class of Classics.” Typed manuscript, used by permission of the author. Heffernan, Helen. “The RIGHT Comics Can Be Classroom Tools.” The Instructor (November 1955): 91, 105, 113. Iger, Jerry. “Jerry Iger Talks About Matt Baker.” In Jerry Iger’s Famous Features, Vol. I, No. 1. San Diego: Pacific Comics ( July 1984): 9. In Re: Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc., Initial Decision of Hearing Examiner, William A. Duval, P.O.D. Docket No. 1/58 (2 November 1959). In Re: Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc., Departmental Decision, Charles D. Ablard, Judicial Officer, P.O.D. Docket No. 1/58 (26 February 1960). In Re: Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc., Amended Departmental Decision, Raymond

364 J. Kelly, Judicial Officer, P.O.D. Docket No. 1/58 (19 April 1960). Inge, M. Thomas. “Edgar Allan Poe and the Comics Connection.” Comic Book Marketplace (March 2000). “Introducing ... Picture Parade.” Advertisement. The Instructor (October 1953): 99. Irving, Washington. The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. Retold by Cherney Berg; illustrated by Norman Nodel. Mahwah, N.J.: Educational Reading Service, 1970. _____. “Rip Van Winkle.” The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., in Tales and Sketches. New York: The Library of America, 1983. Jensen, Michael P. “The Comic Book Shakespeare.” The Shakespeare Newsletter, 56:3, No. 270 (Winter 2006–07). Jones, Bill. “A Tale of Two Classics.” Spectrum, No. 126 (6–19 June 1990): 1, 22. Jones, Malcolm. “Everything Is Illuminated.” Newsweek (22 March 2008). Jones, William B., Jr. Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002. _____. “‘Hello, Mackellar’: Classics Illustrated Meets The Master of Ballantrae.” Journal of Stevenson Studies, Vol. 4 (Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Stirling, 2007): 247–269. Kanter, Hal. So Far, So Funny: My Life in Show Business. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999. Kunzle, David. Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Lupoff, Dick, and Don Thompson. All in Color for a Dime. Iola, Wis.: Krause Publications, 1997. Malan, Dan. “CI#124, The War of the Worlds Model.” The Classics Collector, No. 17 ( January 1996): 13. _____. “CIE Drops NCI.” The Classics Collector, No. 17 ( January 1996): 11. _____. “Classics Displays.” The Classics Collector, No. 14 (December 1991): 10. _____. The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Volume One: The U.S. Series of Classics Illustrated and Related Collectibles. St. Louis: Malan Classical Enterprises, 1991. _____. The Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated, Volume Two: Foreign Series and Related Collectibles. St. Louis: Malan Classical Enterprises, 1993, rev. 1996. _____. “Interview: David Batt [Chief Financial Officer, Frawley Group].” The Classics Collector, No. 10 (February-March 1990): 27–28. _____. “Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht.” The ClassicsC ollector, No. 14 (December 1991): 19. _____. [Untitled item]. The Classics Collector, No. 17 ( January 1996): 17. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Northampton, Mass.: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993. McLoughlin, Jim. “A Trip to Dept. S, or Taking the Shoe-leather Express Down Ralph Ave.” Typed manuscript, used by permission of the author. Moore, Scotty. “Artist, Author, & Publisher!

BIBLIOGRAPHY L.B. Cole.” Interview in Comic Book Marketplace (December 1995). Nollen, Scott Allen. Robert Louis Stevenson: Life, Literature and the Silver Screen. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1994. Norris, Frank. The Octopus, in Novels and Essays. New York: The Library of America, 1986. Nyberg, Amy Kiste. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. Overstreet, Robert M. Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, No. 39. York, Pa.: Gemstone, Inc., 2009. Perret, Marion. “Not Just Condensation: How Comic Books Interpret Shakespeare.” College Literature, 31:4 (Fall 2004): 72–93. Prager, Ron. “My Friend — Jerry Iger.” The Classics Collector, No. 14 (December 1991). Rice, Anne. “Giving 100%” (interview). Comic Buyers Guide # 1340 (23 July 1999). Richardson, Donna. “Classics Illustrated.” American Heritage ( June 1993). Robbins, Trina, and Catherine Yronwode. Women and the Comics. [No publication site given]: Eclipse Books, 1985. “Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, 59, Historian and Author.” New York Times Obituary (5 October 1991). Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. London: Phaidon Press, 1996. Sands, Jim. “Maurice del Bourgo [Interview with Maurice del Bourgo].” The Classics Reader, No. 4 (August 1975). _____. “M.D.B. [Interview with Maurice del Bourgo].” The Classics Reader, No. 5 (October 1975). Savage, William W., Jr. Comic Books and America, 1945 –1954. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990. Sawyer, Michael. “Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics: The Man Behind the Gilberton Company.” The Journal of Popular Culture, 20:4 (Spring 1987). _____. “The Classics: The Forgotten Comic.” Pittsburgh Fan Forum, No. 35 (FebruaryMarch 1978). Scott, Keith. The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar, in The Complete Works, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. “Shakespeare Bows to ‘Comics’ Public: Play Texts Will Be Produced in Picture Form to Interest World’s Popular Audience.” New York Times (9 March 1950): 24. Stafford, Charlotte. “The Deaf Can Get Concepts from Comics.” The Instructor (December 1967): 40. Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Norton Critical Edition), edited by Katherine Linehan. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.

_____. Treasure Island. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911. Thomas, Robert McG., Jr. “Patrick Frawley, Jr., 75, Ex-Owner of Schick.” New York Times (Monday, 9 November 1998): 8B. Toth, Alex. Letter, The Classics Collector, No. 14 (December 1991). Versaci, Rocco. This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature. New York, London: Continuum, 2007. Walston, Frank. Classics Illustrated Field Manual. Philadelphia: Curtis Circulation, 1968. Warshow, Robert. “Paul, the Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham.” Commentary, 17 ( June 1954): 596–604. Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart, 1954. Who’s Who in American Art: 1999 –2000. New Providence, N.J.: Marquis/Reed Elsevier, 1999. Wiater, Stanley, and Stephen R. Bissette. Comic Book Rebels. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1993. Witek, Joseph. Comics as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989. Wolk, Douglas. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2008. Zansky, Louis. Resumé for art show, 1976.

Correspondence Ashe, Edd. Letter to Raymond S. True, 17 February 1972. Bridwell, E. Nelson. Letter to Charles Heffelfinger, 30 September 1980. Briggs, Bill. Letter to author, 30 June 2000. Cameron, Lou. Letter to author, 4 November 1993. _____. Letter to author, 20 November 1993. _____. Letter to author, 3 May 2010. De Fuccio, Jerry. Letter to author, 10 November 1993. Evans, George. Letter to author, 17 February 1997. _____. Letter to author, 27 May 1997. _____. Letter to Michael Sawyer, 26 April 1978. Feuerlicht, Roberta Strauss. Letter to E. Nelson Bridwell, 25 July 1960. _____. Letter to Rich Rostel, 3 September 1981. Griffiths, Harley M., Jr. Letter to author, 30 May 1995. Harm, Michelle. E-mail to author, 13 May 2008. Haufe, John. Letter to author, 6 June 2000. _____. Letter to author, 3 July 2010. Jarve, Jaak. E-mail to author, 23 August 2010. Kanter, Hal. Note to author, 3 January 2003. Kanter, John. E-mail to author, 15 August 2010. Lamme, Bob. Letter to Charles Heffelfinger, 11 October 1977. Lecar, Helene. E-mail to author, 28 June 2010. _____.E -mail to author, 23 July 2010. _____.E -mail to author, 30 July 2010. _____.E -mail to author, 1 September 2010.

BIBLIOGRAPHY _____.E -mail to author, 10 November 2010. _____.E -mail to author, 5 December 2010. Morrow, Gray. Letter to author, 22 July 1994. Munson, Wayne. Letter to author, 10 November 2010. Nodel, Norman. Letter to author, 25 July 1997. Overstreet, Robert M. Letter to Raymond True, 17 November 1971. Palais, Rudolph. Letter to author, 30 December 1993. Petránek, Michael. E-mail to author, 1 September 2010. Rubinstein, Annette T. Letter to Roberta Strauss, 3 February 1955. Sørensen, Øystein. E-mail to author, 21 November 2010. Sundel, Alfred. Letter to author, 21 August 1994. _____. Letter to author, 17 September 1994. Teglbjaerg, Lars. E-mail to author, 7 June 2008. True, Raymond S. Letter to Robert M. Overstreet, 11 November 1971. Vadeboncoeur, Jim, Jr. E-mail to author, 21 March 2000. Ware, Hames. Letter to Mike Nicastre, March 1997. Zansky, Jeanette. Letter to author, 16 June 1997.

Interviews Evans, George. Interview with author, 31 May 1997. _____. Interview with author, 28 January 2000. _____. Interview with author, 30 January 2000. Feuerlicht, Herb. Interview with author, 25 March 1996. _____. Interview with author, June 1997. _____. Interview with author, 29 July 1997. Haufe, John. Interview with author, 5 February 2000. Künstler, Mort. Interview with author, 25 March 2008. Lidofsky, Eleanor. Interview with author, 1 February 2009. _____. Interview with author, 20 July 2010.

Mahler, Nancy. Interview with author, 15 June 2000. Nodel, Norman. Interview with author, 22 November 1993. _____. Interview with author, 20 April 1997. _____. Interview with author, 12 May 1997. _____. Interview with author, 3 August 1997. Obadiah, Rick. Interview with author, May 1990. Palais, Rudolph. Interview with author, 1 November 1993. Prager, Ron. Interview with author, 25 May 2000. _____. Interview with author, 31 May 2000. Robins, Madeleine. Interview with author, 4 April 1997. _____. Interview with author, 23 July 1997. Sawyer, Michael. Interview with author, 18 September 2010. _____. Interview with author, 25 October 2010. Stiskin, O.B. Interview with author, 8 August 2002. Swayze, Marc. Interview with author, 1 June 2000. Tierney, Michael. Interview with author, 24 December 1998. True, Raymond. Interview with author, 16 January 2000. _____. Interview with author, 23 December 2009. Ware, Hames. Interview with author, 21 July 1994. _____. Interview with author, 22 July 1994. _____. Interview with author, 20 February 1996. _____. Interview with author, 27 January 1997. _____. Interview with author, 23 February 1997. _____. Interview with author, 12 March 1997. _____. Interview with author, 20 March 1997. _____. Interview with author, 31 March 1997. _____. Interview with author, 15 April 1997. _____. Interview with author, 5 March 2000. _____. Interview with author, 7 July 2000.

365 Zansky, Jeanette. Interview with author, 25 July 1994.

Internet Sources Boger, Mary. “The Annette T. Rubinstein Reading Room” Brecht Forum, http://brecht forum.org/annette. Accessed 30 October 2010. “Bruno Premiani.” Lambiek Comiclopedia, http//lambiek.net/artists/p/premiani_bruno. htm. Accessed 26 November 2010. “Classics Illustrated Artists (Who are they, and who did what!)” http://www.ttbwrr.com/ ClassicsIllustrated /Classics- IllustratedArtists-contributions.htm. Accessed 19 November 2010. “Dino Battaglia.” DanDare.Info, http://dan dare.info/artists/battaglia.htm. Accessed 27 November 2010. “Dino Battaglia.” Lambiek Comiclopedia, Lambiek.net, http://lambiek.net/artists/b/battag lia_dino.htm. Accessed 27 November 2010. Gravett, Paul. Review of Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History. Paul Gravett website, http:// www.paulgravett.com/index.php/articles/ar ticle/classics_illustrated/ posted 30 April 2006). Accessed 27 November 2010. Jo Polseno biography. AskART website, http:// www.askart.com/askart/artist.aspx?artist= 127991. Accessed 10 August 2010. Royal, Derek Parker. “Meddling with ‘hifalut’n foolishness’: Capturing Mark Twain in Recent Comics.” The Mark Twain Annual, 7:1 (Wiley Online Library, first published online 22 October 2009), pp. 22–51, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1756-2597.2009. 00016x/pdf. Accessed 27 November 2010. Salicrup, Jim. Newsarama interview, 26 October 2007, http://forum.newarama.com/ showthread.php?t=134346. Accessed 18 September 2010. Stanley M. Zuckerberg biography. AskART website, http://www.askart.com/askart/art ist.aspx?artist=103237. Accessed 15 November 2010.

This page intentionally left blank

Index Numbers in bold italics indicate pages with illustrations. Abel, Jack 343, 347 About, Edmond 154, 331 Abraham Lincoln (Nodel) 157–158, 332, 357 Abramson, Samuel H. 33, 319 Acclaim Books 5, 6, 32, 103, 291– 293, 353 Ace Comics 28, 105, 128, 129, 131, 144, 153 Aces High (EC) 191 Ackroyd, Dan 281 Action Comics 6 Adam, Pat 44, 321 Adam-12 57 Adams, John Quincy 265, 347 Addeo, Stephen L. 21, 176, 179, 180, 208, 234, 318, 325, 345, 346, 348 Adler, Harry M. 49 Adorno, Theodor 165 The Adventure of Hans Pfall (Kiefer) 66, 69, 323, 354 The Adventure of the Speckled Band (Moskowitz) 121, 122, 330 Adventures in Science (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 129, 255, 342 Adventures of Baron Munchausen (British Classics Illustrated) 352 Adventures of Cellini (Battaglia?) 231, 232, 323 Adventures of Cellini (Froehlich) 95, 322–323 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (First, unpublished) 290 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) 137, 201 The Adventures of Kit Carson (Palais) 105, 107–108, 330, 356 The Adventures of Marco Polo (Fleming) 55, 321 The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck (Töpffer, transl.) 10 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Zansky/Kiefer) 30, 31, 32, 64, 66, 90, 94, 121, 322 “The Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor” (Chestney) 38, 318 Adventures of Superman (Golden) 125 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Acc. Books) 103, 292, 353 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Papercutz) 297, 360 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Ploog) 287, 353 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Polseno) 12

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Rubano) 2, 100, 101, 103, 232, 324, C4 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (unattributed) 232, 324 The Aeneid (British Classics Illustrated) 238–239, 278, 352 The Aeneid (Greek) C14 The Aeneid ( Jack Lake Productions) 296, 357 “Aesop’s Fables” (Classics Illustrated Junior) 252, 336–341 Aesop’s Fables (Vincent) 288, 353 The Age of Fable (Bulfinch) 322, 349 Aida (Famous Operas) 138, 325 Air Force (World Around Us) 264, 346 Airmont Books 238, 315 Aizen, Adolfo 277 “Aladdin” (Berger) 231, 318 Aladdin and His Lamp (Classics Illustrated Junior) 125, 231, 246, 337 “Aladdin and His Magic Lamp” (Chestney) 38, 318 Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (Dell) 280 Alaska: “The Great Land” (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 246, 335 Albistur, Jo 262, 343, 348, 349 Alcatena, Enrique 353, 354 Alcott, Louisa May 4, 136 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey 63 Alexander, Grover Cleveland (“Old Pete”) 328 “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (Berger) 230, 231, 318 “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (Chestney) 37, 318 Alice in Wonderland (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 Alice in Wonderland (Blum) 5, 76, 77, 91, 136, 198, 222, 271, 324, 350, 355, 356 All Quiet on the Western Front (Acc. Books) 355 All Quiet on the Western Front (del Bourgo) 132, 133, 141, 239, 328, 356 Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday 9 Alsten see Stenzel, Al Amash, Jim x, 105, 108, 311, 363 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay 7 The Amazing Spider-Man (Marvel) 228

American Communist Party 180 American Flagg! (First Publishing/ First Classics, Inc.) 283 American Heritage 3, 309, 311, 364 The American Indian (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 335 “American Indians” (Classic Comics, Classics Illustrated filler) 321, 322, 323, 328 “American Presidents” (Classics Illustrated filler) 328, 329, 330 American Presidents (World Around Us) 19, 219, 263, 265, 347 American Red Cross 16 America’s Reign of Terror (Feuerlicht) 197 Ames, Lee J. 268, 344 Amundsen, Roald 327, 347 And Called It Macaroni–II (Zansky) 28 Andersen, Hans Christian 75, 336– 341, 358 Andy’s Atomic Adventures (PP and Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 122, 130, 245, 255, 259, 335, 342, C13 “The Animal World” (Classics Illustrated Junior) 252, 338–342 “Annabel Lee” (Poe) 320 “Annabel Lee” (Wilson) 284 “The Ant and the Grasshopper” (Classics Illustrated Junior) 252, 337 Antony, Mark 63, 67, 194, 333 “The Apache Wars” (Orlando) 258, 342 Appolonius of Rhodes 352 Arabian Nights (Berger) 39, 222, 230, 231, 318 Arabian Nights (Chestney) 37, 38, 66, 231, 246, 318, 334 Arbuthnot, May Hill 1 Archimedes 325 The Argonauts (British Classics Illustrated) 249, 352 Arkwright, Sir Richard 328 Army (World Around Us) 21, 171, 173, 264, 345 Arnold, Louis 144 Arnold, Matthew 319 Arnold, Dr. Thomas 55, 206 Around the World in 80 Days (Acc. Books) 355 Around the World in 80 Days (First, unpublished) 289 Around the World in 80 Days (Kiefer) 71, 326, 351, 359

367

Around the World with the United Nations (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 246, 335 Art Students League 27, 35, 105, 132, 169, 182 Ashe, Edd 18, 19, 265, 309, 317, 342, 343, 348 Astarita, Rafael 49, 89 Atelier Julian (Paris art school) 64 The Atlantic Monthly 112 Atlas 121, 133, 144, 174, 192, 207, 228, 254; see also Marvel; Timely The Atomic Age (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 176, 224, 259, 260, 342 Attucks, Crispus 273, 334 Austen, Jane 4, 136, 293, 355 Author biographies 111, 137 Avalanche! (Schrotter) 119 Avitabile, Albert 323 Avon 169 Ayers, Dick 228, 322 Bachleitner, Norbert 233, 315, 363 “Bad Men of the West” (Classics Illustrated filler) 329, 331 Bails, Jerry xi, 309, 310, 311, 314, 363 Baily, Bernard 94 Bakeless, John 87, 114, 115, 328 Baker, Kyle 284, 285, 353, 360 Baker, Matt 49, 58, 59, 60, 61, 87, 132, 307, 310, 322, 363; drawings of women 58, 59; training 58 Balboa, Vasco Muñez de 330 Ballantyne, R.M. 278, 352 Balto 263, 321, 344 Banneker, Benjamin 273, 334 “Barbara Frietchie” (Whittier) 321 Barbarossa, Frederick 334 The Barber of Seville (Famous Operas) 324 Barbie (doll) 1, 306 Barker, Martin 20, 310, 363 Barnes, Barbara 114 Barnes, John 354 Barnes, Pat 114 Bart, Lionel 194 Barton, Clara 330 Baseball cards 1, 306 Basehart, Richard 154 Basile, Giambattista 339 Bass, Jack 321 Bates, Esther Willard 119 Batman 3, 10 Batman (DC) 5, 286 Batman trading cards (Saunders) 210

368 Batt, David 316, 364 Battaglia, Dino 231, 232, 323 Battefield, Ken 17, 205, 324, 356 “The Battle of Tours” (World Around Us) 348, 349 Baum, L. Frank 251, 339, 358 The Beach of Falesá (Cameron) 146, 330 The Bearskin Soldier (Classics Illustrated Junior) 341 Beatles 267 Beaty, Bart 306, 316, 363 Beau Geste (Kiefer) 114, 334 Beauty and the Beast (Classics Illustrated Junior) 250, 336 Beauty and the Beast (Disney) 6 Beck, Charles Clarence 122, 124 Becker, Sam 342, 345 Beckwourth, James 273, 334 Beerbohm, Robert L. 309, 363 Beery, Wallace 78 Beethoven, Ludwig van 323 Bell, Alexander Graham 325 “The Bells” (Poe) 320 Ben-Hur (McCann, first painted cover) 214, 332 Ben-Hur (Orlando) 170, 171, 271, 332, 359 Ben-Hur (Oughton, second painted cover) 271, 332 Ben-Hur (Schrotter) 170, 335 Benito Cereno [The Slave Ship] (Melville, Joint European Series) 242 Benjamin Franklin (Hebberd/Schrotter/others) 2, 77, 102, 103, 119, 326, 350, 356 Benjamin Franklin (Kiefer cover) 103, 326 Benjamin Franklin (painted cover) 102, 103, 326 Benson, John 314 Benton, Mike 51, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 363 Beowulf (Acc. Books, unpublished) 293, 355 Beowulf (First Publishing/First Classics, Inc.) 283 Berenger, Tom 282 Berg, Cherney 312 Berger, Charles 39, 230, 231, 318, 341, 348 Berger, Richard S. xi, 290 Bergh, Henry 329 Bessemer, Sir Henry 324 The Best from Boys’ Life Comics 244, 268, 269, 343, 344 Better Publications (Pines) 171 Bewitched (Dell) 225 Bible Tales for Young People (Atlas) 254 Bierce, Ambrose 284, 353 Biggs, Geoffrey 210, 211, 265, 325, 333, 346, C12 Biggs, Stephanie 211 Billy the Kid see Bonney, William H. Binder, Jack 10, 51, 94 Binder Shop 10, 51, 57, 94 The Birth of America (Streeter, PP and Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 129, 255, 335, 342 Bissette, Stephen R. 310, 364 Bizet, Georges 324 The Black Arrow (Hicks) 44, 45, 47, 111, 322, 350, C1 Black Beauty (Cole, first painted cover) 208, 325, 350, 356

INDEX Black Beauty (Cole/Nodel/Addeo) 176, 198, 208, 222, 325, 350, 356 Black Beauty (Froehlich) 4, 77, 95, 325, 350 Black Beauty (Micale, second painted cover) 271, 325 “The Black Death” (Defoe) 349 The Black Tulip (Blum) 81, 82, 83, 116, 141, 301, 326, C4 The Black Tulip (British edition) 276, 278, 351 Blackhawk 192 Blackmore, R.D. (Richard Doddridge) 58, 137, 322, 350 Blackwell, Elizabeth 138, 324 Blatt, Dean 303 Blazing Combat (Warren) 171 Blazing the Trails West (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 178, 187, 198, 256, 258, 342 Bleha, Julie 354 Bloom, Abigail Burnham 354 Blue Beetle 10, 49 The Blue Hotel (Crane, Joint European Series) 242 Blue Ribbon Comics 128 Blum, Alex A. 3, 6, 7, 49, 50, 64, 75, 76 –88, 89, 91, 103, 113, 116, 120, 135, 141, 143, 153, 159, 173, 183, 188, 207, 216, 246, 247, 254, 284, 301, 324–333, 334, 336– 340, 342, 346, C4, C5; artistic training 76; drawings of women 78, 81, 87; Gilberton art director 88, 247; one of two dominant Iger Era Classics Illustrated artists 76; personality 88, 89; style 77 “The Boarded Window” (Wilson) 353 Boating (World Around Us) 219, 265, 347 “Bobby Thatcher” 309 La Boheme (Famous Operas) 326 Bolivar, Simon 11 Bomber Comics 49 Bonney, William H. (Billy the Kid) 259 Book of the Month Club 166 Boone, Daniel 258, 342 Boris (Classics Illustrated Junior artist) 341 Boris Gudenof (Famous Operas) 326 Bossert, Audrey (Toni) Blum 76 Bossert, William 83, 327 The Bottle Imp (Cameron) xi, 146, 301, 330 Bottom, Nick (character) 83, 139 “Bound by Rails” (Orlando) 176, 233 Bowdler, Thomas 165 Bowie, James 212, 331 The Boy Captain (unpublished) 238, 334 Boy Commandos 226 Boy Scouts of America 137, 268, 269 Boyette, Pat 289, 353 Boys’ Life 268, 269 Brady, Mathew 329 The Brain as an Organ (Wertham) 165 The Brave and the Bold (DC) 202 “Break, Break, Break” (Tennyson) 319 Brecht Forum 180 Brewster, Ann 51, 54, 264, 321, 345–347

“The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (Crane) 333, 334 Bridger, Jim 331 Bridgman, George 132 Bridwell, E. Nelson 198, 300, 361 Brigadoon 271 Briggs, Bill xi, xii, 20, 78, 131, 299, 309, 311, 312, 316 Briggs, Gladys 290 Brightboots (Classics Illustrated Junior) 225, 341 Bring ’Em Back Alive (Kiefer) 1, 75, 329 Bringing Up Father 10 Broderick, Patrick 293, 355 Brontë, Charlotte 96, 135, 232, 233, 292, 323, 350, 353, 356 Brontë, Emily 68, 135, 284, 325, 352, 353, 356 Brooks, Jeff 297 Brooks, Jon 297 Brother Jonathan 10 Brown, Dee xii Brown v. Board of Education 40 Browne, Dik 249, 250, 251, 268, 336, 337, 338, 344 Browne, Hablôt K. (“Phiz”) 68 Browning, Robert 250, 336 Bruce, Robert 332 Bruzenak, Ken 353 Brynner, Yul 143, 210 The Buccaneer (“Coming Next”) 141, 143, 188, 332 The Buccaneer (Evans/Jenney) 141, 143, 188, 189, 191, 332–333, 350 The Buccaneer (Saunders cover) 209, 210, 332–333 Buchan, John 114, 334 Buck, Frank 1, 75, 114, 128, 135, 157, 329, 331, 332, 351, 352 Buck Rogers 10 Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (comic strip) 203 Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) 138, 332 Buel, Stephen ix Buffalo Bill (del Bourgo) 133, 134, 329, 351, 356 Buffalo Bill (Künstler) C6 Bugs Bunny (Dell) 168 Buhle, Paul x, 297, 316, 363 Bulfinch, Thomas 322, 349 Bullwinkle 253 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 1st Baron Lytton 66, 91, 137, 227, 322, 352 Bumppo, Natty (character) 1, 32, 301 Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm 328 Buonarroti, Michelangelo 323 Burbank, Luther 323 Burns, Robert C. 100, 323 Burroughs, Edgar Rice 143 Burrows, Stephen 320 Busch, Jeffrey 288, 353 Buster Brown 10 Butler, David, Jr. 319 Byrne, Donn 55, 321 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 285 Caesar, Augustus (Octavius) 326, 333 Caesar, Julius 111, 169, 331 Caesar’s Conquests (Orlando) 3, 140, 169, 180, 254, 331, 349 Caesar’s Conquests (painted cover) C7 Calero, Dennis 353, 354 Califiore, Jim 354

California School of Fine Arts 144 Calkins, Dick 10 The Call of the Wild (Acc. Books) 292, 354 The Call of the Wild (del Bourgo) 2, 132, 328, 356 The Call of the Wild (Villagran) 289, 353 Cameron, Lou x, xii, 3, 59, 129, 131, 138, 144, 145–151, 152, 164, 173, 178, 198, 245, 246, 307, 312, 317, 319, 330, 331, 335, 342, 355, 357, 359, 363, 364; artistic training 144; career as comics artist 144; career as novelist 144; disagreements with Gilberton editorial department 148, 152; military experience 144; style 144; technique 146; wins Spur Award 144; wins Thomas Alva Edison Award 144, 152, 246 Camilla 49 Campbell, Elspeth 323 Campbell, Georgina 48, 318, 321 Campbell, Stan 204, 205, 332, 339, 345, 348 Candide (First, unpublished) 290 Caniff, Milt 107 The Canterville Ghost (British Classics Illustrated) 278, 352 Captain America 226 Captain Blood (Kiefer) 66, 113, 334 Captain Marvel 10, 111, 122 Captain Marvel 286 Captain Marvel Adventures 226 Captain Marvel, Jr. 94 Captain Tootsie 122 Captain Triumph 192 Captains Courageous (Acc. Books) 354 Captains Courageous (Costanza) 124, 330 Captains Courageous (Kipling) 292 Carmen (Famous Operas) 324 Carney, William 334 Carrell, Alexis 323 Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 76, 284, 324, 350, 353, 356 Carson, Christopher (Kit) 108, 258 Carson, David (Boy Scout) 269, 343 Carter, Henry A. 137, 363 Cartier, Ed 146 Carton, Sydney (character) 4, 35, 36, 37, 167, 169, 170 Carver, George Washington 273, 334 Case, Richard 353, 354 The Cask of Amontillado (Palais) 108, 109, 328, 354 Cassette Book Company 280, 281 Castle Dangerous (Campbell) 204, 205, 332, 350 The Catholic Guild 192 Catman Comics 105 Caupolican 225 “The Causes” (Glanzman) 260, 343 Cayne, Bram 356, 358 Cellini, Benvenuto 95, 231, 322–323 Cervantes de Saavedra, Miguel de 33, 319, 352, 354 Chabon, Michael 7 Chalif, Eric x Chalif, Lawrence x, 8, 305 Challengers of the Unknown (DC) 227

INDEX “The Champion of Rum Alley” (Crane) 348 “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (Tennyson) 319 Charlton Comics 107, 127, 128, 204, 225 Chatrain, Louis-Alexandre see Erckmann-Chatrain Chauvel, David 360 Chayefsky, Paddy 26 Check, Sid 342, 345 Chen Yu Wei 358 Chesler, Harry “A” 10, 64 Chesler Shop 61, 64 Chestney, Lillian (Zuckerberg) 37, 38, 39, 231, 299, 318, 320, 334; awards as commercial artist and book illustrator 39; style 38 Chicago Daily News 10 Chicago Sun 91 Chicault, Cecile 360 Chicot the Jester (Dumas) 133 “Childhood of Famous Americans” (Bobbs-Merrill) 221 “Children of the Slums” 139, 323 Children’s Choice Award 288 “The Children’s Hour” (Lipman) 20, 319 The Chimney Sweep (Classics Illustrated Junior) 247, 339 Choma, Christina 295, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359 Chopin, Frédéric 332 Christian Herald Magazine 254 Christie, Stuart 353 A Christmas Adventure (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 335 A Christmas Carol (Acc. Books) 292, 354 A Christmas Carol (Kiefer) 64, 65, 68, 92, 301, 324, 350, 356 A Christmas Carol (Staton) 289, 353 Churchill, Winston (American author) 188, 332 Churchill, Winston S. (British prime minister) 11, 188 Classics IllustratedE see Classics International Entertainment, Inc. Cincinnati Art Academy 76 Cinderella (Classics Illustrated Junior) 122, 249, 253, 336, 357 Citron, Sam 203, 204, 319 The Civil War (Nodel cover) 266, 267, 347 The Civil War (World Around Us) 176, 219, 227, 260, 266, 267, 347 Civil War Centennial 227, 260, 261, 266 Civil War trading cards (Saunders) 210 Claire Voyant (comic strip) 202– 203 Clark, Walter Van Tilburg 114, 153, 331, 355 Clásicos Ilustrados (Mexican series) 275 Classic Comics 1, 4, 6, 11–23, 26–28, 31, 33–35, 39, 40, 42–44, 49–51, 55, 57, 58, 76, 90–91, 94, 110, 137, 140, 141, 143, 146, 154, 222, 236, 240, 246, 259, 264, 273, 274, 275, 282, 289, 298, 299, 302, 303, 304, 309, 310, 317– 322, 335, 342, 363; change of name 4, 90–91; founding 11–12; improvement in artwork 49; issue

length 13; organizational changes 35; racial stereotyping 40–41, 55; reprinted editions 16; sent to GIs by Red Cross 16; uneven quality of early art 6, 17, 49; uniqueness 16 Classic Comics Gift Boxes 16, 143 The Classic Comics Index (Fisher) x, 303, 304 The Classics Collector xi, 300, 310, 312, 364 The Classics Collectors Club Newsletter 18 Classics Illustrated (Acc. Books Study Guides) 6, 103, 232, 233, 291–293, 353–355; critical apparatus 291, 292; digest-size format 291; “Original Editions” 293; quality of original artwork 293; quality of reproduced artwork 291–292; reasons for demise 293 Classics Illustrated (Australian series) 274, 275 Classics Illustrated (British series, original) 62, 140, 196, 238–239, 249, 349–352 Classics Illustrated (British series, second) 297, 359–360 Classics Illustrated (First Publishing/Berkely) 6, 283–290, 293, 353; contemporary design 283, 284; educational mission 283; prominence accorded artists 284; reasons for demise 290 Classics Illustrated (Gilberton-Frawley): assessment of artwork 6, 17; author’s introduction to 1; bias toward male authors 135–136; binders 6, 142, 143; biographies 55, 73, 87, 95, 103, 107–108, 133, 148, 158, 187, 254, 273; boom years 201; “boys’ books” 4, 135– 136; canonical status of works adapted 135–136; “Coming Next” ads 141, 142; competing series 16, 66, 113–114; complexity of series xi; cover price increase 112; criticism of series xi, 6, 17, 111, 165– 168; defense of series 167; discontinuation of open-book device 235–236; educational role 4, 6, 16, 93, 112, 130, 137–139, 244–246; efforts to trace history of series vii, 302–304; endorsements 15, 16, 92–93; foreign editions 274–279; haven for EC artists 168–169; historical accuracy 66, 68, 108, 147, 198; Hollywood connection 129, 188; “horror” issues 25, 42, 44, 54, 67, 69, 93, 94, 97, 100, 108, 166; “house style” 49, 50, 63, 153, 157; introduction of painted covers 112; issues serialized in Twin Circle 270; legal battle over secondclass mailing status 223, 238; minimalism 223, 229; most popular authors 135; name change of series 4, 90–91; nature of adaptations 4, 6; new editorial direction 223, 235–236; nudity in 46, 47, 73; 100th issue 120, 121; place in popular culture 1, 306; promotional items and premiums 143; readers’ responses 4, 5, 15, 16, 91, 92–93, 198–199, 299–301; reasons for demise 236, 238, 273;

record series (M-G-M, Golden) 211, 212, regularity of panel design 157; reissued titles 198, 222, 239; reorder list 14, 139, 140, 141, 166, 237; scope of series 1, 6; termination of bimonthly publication 229; termination of new-title publication 236 Classics Illustrated ( Jack Lake Productions) x, 294–297, 357–359 Classics Illustrated (Papercutz) x, 297, 298, 360 Classics Illustrated DeLuxe (British) 349, 351 Classics Illustrated Deluxe (Papercutz) 297, 360 Classics Illustrated Educational Series 112, 335 Classics Illustrated Field Manual (Curtis) 315, 364 Classics Illustrated Giants 66, 292, 301, 302, 334 Classics Illustrated Junior (Gilberton, Frawley) 1, 4, 6, 76, 122, 125, 127, 128, 129, 143, 202, 204, 208, 209, 225, 231, 236, 238, 246– 254, 259, 270, 280, 336–342; adaptations of fairy tales 246, 251–252; adaptations of myths 252; increasing sophistication of scripts 252; multicultural titles 252; publication schedule 246; softened endings 247; visual simplicity 246 Classics Illustrated Junior ( Jack Lake Productions) 294–297, 357–359 Classics Illustrated Special Edition see Classics Illustrated Special Issues Classics Illustrated Special Issues (Gilberton) 4, 6, 19, 129, 133, 152, 155, 158, 171, 173, 176, 178, 187, 191, 199, 204, 207, 214, 216, 219, 222, 224, 227, 238, 246, 254–262, 266, 342–343; educational role 258–262; endorsements 254, 258 Classics Illustrated Special Issues ( Jack Lake Productions) 296, 359 The Classics Index x, 303–304 Classics International Entertainment, Inc. (Classics IllustratedE) 290, 291 The Classics Reader xii, 78, 131, 299, 312, 364 Classics Story Teller (Golden Records LP series) 212 Clay, Henry 329 Clemens, Samuel L. see Twain, Mark Cleopatra (Nodel) 139, 158, 198, 225, 333 Cleopatra (Poch cover) 333 Cleveland School of Art 192 Clinton, Bill ix The Cloister and the Hearth (Kiefer) 3, 5, 73, 136, 301, 326 Clovis Crawfish and the Orphan ZoZo 288 Clumsy Hans (Classics Illustrated Junior) 341 Coast Guard (World Around Us) 264, 346 The Cocoanuts (film) 9 Cody, William F. (“Buffalo Bill”) 133, 329 Coen Brothers 6

369 Cohen, Bobby 241 Cold War 255, 259, 260 Cole, Jack 107 Cole, Leonard B. xi, 6, 178, 183, 207, 208, 209, 210, 213, 225, 232, 251, 252, 259, 263, 269, 314, 325, 326, 333, 340, 341, 342, 344, 345, 356, 359, C9, C11; animal covers and interiors 207–208, 251; Gilberton art director 207–208 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 286, 353 Coll, Joseph Clement 192 Collins, William Wilkie 57, 78, 135, 210, 311, 321, 322, 325, 351, 352, 355 Colonial Press 9 Columbia Pictures 105 Columbus, Christopher 144, 152 Colver, Anne 213 Comic books: attacks upon 10, 165–166, 168; crime comics 57, 105, 107, 165, 167, 168; “Golden Age” 10, 17, 27, 55, 165, 182, 201, 226, 259, 283, 299; horror comics 25, 42–43, 93–94, 122, 166, 171, 173, 228, 288; origins 9–10; romance comics 4, 78, 135, 203, 226; “Silver Age” 226 Comics art shops 10, 17, 49, 51, 57, 94 Comics Code Authority 168 Comics Magazine Association of America 168 Commentary 167, 312, 364 Communications (World Around Us) see Through Time and Space Companion Library (Grosset & Dunlap) 127, 213 The Complete Guide to Classics Collectibles, Vol. 1 (Malan) ix, xi, 5, 304, 309, 310, 311, 315, 316, 364 The Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated, Vol. 2 (Malan) xi, 304, 309, 315, 349, 364 The Complete Life of Christ (EC) 254 Comstock, Anthony 165 Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur 32, 66, 87, 115, 135, 320, 322, 329, 330 “Concord Hymn” (Emerson) 137, 318 Condon, Deborah 354 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Acc. Books) 354 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Hearne) 50, 51, 321 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Sparling) 51, 202, 203, 321, 350 “The Conqueror Worm” (Wilson) 353 The Conquest of Mexico (Premiani) 6, 139, 219, 222, 224, 238, 267, 333, 352 Conrad, Joseph 2, 111, 185, 186, 292, 313, 332, 350, 353, 354 Conray Products 13 The Conspiracy of Pontiac (McCann) 214, 215, 216, 222, 238, 333, 352 The Conspirators (McCann) 214, 215, 216, 234, 333, 352, C10 “The Convicts and the Eagle” (Dostoevsky) 348 Cook, James 347 Cooney, John 88, 330

370 Cooper, James Fenimore 6, 21, 33, 47, 81, 107, 108, 124, 135, 178, 249, 289, 318, 320, 322, 324, 325, 326, 330, 349, 350, 351, 354, 355 Cooper, Peter 319 Cooper Union 27, 57, 58, 228 “The Cop and the Anthem” (Gianni) 353 Copernicus, Nicholas 328, 346 Corbino, John 27 Coronet (Curtis) 199, 238 The Corsican Brothers (Simon) 23, 24, 94, 141, 320, 350 The Cossack Chief (Miller) 229, 334, 352 Costanza, Peter 122, 123, 124, 127, 129, 225, 245, 246, 249, 255, 330, 331, 335, 336, 342, 359, C13; style 122 The Count of Monte Cristo (Acc. Books) 292, 293, 354 The Count of Monte Cristo (Cameron) x, 151, 152, 282, 310, 317, 349 The Count of Monte Cristo (Cass. Book Company) 280 The Count of Monte Cristo ( Jack Lake Productions) 355 The Count of Monte Cristo (Papercutz) 360 The Count of Monte Cristo (Ramsey/Lipman/Simon) 12, 19, 20, 21, 103, 137, 232, 310, 317 The Count of Monte Cristo (Spiegle) 289, 353 The Courtship of Miles Standish (Blum) 77, 92, 223, 328 The Covered Wagon (Nodel) 154, 180, 181, 331, 349 Cracked 228 Crandall, Reed 6, 17, 49, 107, 182, 191, 192 –195, 196, 225, 229, 239, 273, 313, 320, 321, 326, 334, 352, 355, 356, 357; artistic training and influences 192; collaborations with George Evans 192–196; struggle with alcoholism 196 Crane, Ichabod (character) 40, 158, 160 Crane, Stephen 119, 223, 242, 329, 333, 334, 347, 348, 351, 354 Crawford, Hubert H. 67, 253, 310, 311, 315, 363 Creepy (Warren) 174, 196, 221 Crime and Punishment (Acc. Books) 353 Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky) 292 Crime and Punishment (Edicão Maravilhosa) 277, C14 Crime and Punishment (original art) 106, 303 Crime and Punishment (Palais) 3, 104, 106, 109, 139, 166, 198, 282, 307, 328, 351 Crime comics see Comics Crime Does Not Pay (Gleason) 43, 105, 166 Crime SuspenStories (EC) 168 The Crisis (Evans) 143, 188, 191, 332, 351 The Crisis (Saunders cover) 209, 210 Crockett, David 1, 148, 331 Cromwell, Oliver (African American) 334

INDEX Crosby, Bing 188 “The Cross-Draw Kid” (Zansky) 28 Crossing the Rockies (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 171, 187, 214, 257, 258, 342 Cruikshank, George 43, 194 The Crusades (World Around Us) 19, 214, 224, 265, 266, 346 The Crystal Ball (Classics Illustrated Junior) 341 Curie, Marie Sklodowska 137, 322 Curtis Circulation Company 112, 113, 199, 238, 241, 242, 270, 275, 315, 364 Cuvier, Baron Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert 265, 346 Cwiklik, Gregory 87, 311, 363 Cyrano de Bergerac (Acc. Books) 293, 354 Cyrano de Bergerac (Baker) 285, 353, 360 Cyrano de Bergerac (Blum) 3, 83, 84, 114, 115, 129, 300, 327, 351 “D-Day” (World Around Us) 268, 347–348 Dai Cheng Song 358 Daimler, Gottlieb 327 Dale, Steve 320 Dallas Home News 91 Dalziel, Gilbert 9 Dana, Richard Henry, Jr. 51, 321, 349, 355 The Dancing Princesses (Classics Illustrated Junior) 76, 247, 249, 338, 358 Dane, Bob 303 Daniel Boone (Blum) 87, 115, 212, 226, 303, 328, 351 Daniel Boone ( Jack Lake Productions) 296, 356 Daniel Boone (Tallarico, second painted cover) 226, 271, 329 Daniels, Les 10, 174, 309, 311, 312, 313, 314, 363 Dante, Joe 281 Dantes, Edmond (character) x, 4, 20, 139, 152 Danton, Georges Jacques 264, 346 The Dark Frigate (Webb) 51, 198, 331, 349, 360 Dark Horse Comics 290, 310, 313, 363 Dark Legend (Wertham) 165 d’Artagnan (character) 1, 3, 11, 12, 16, 18, 100, 167, 190, 191, 205, 269 Darwin, Charles 265, 323, 331, 346 Daudet, Alphonse 331 Daugherty, Harry 118, 119, 328 Daugherty, James 119 David, Peter 353, 360 David, Sir Edgeworth 325 David Balfour (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 David Balfour (painted cover) C5 David Balfour (Palais) 2, 16, 104, 107, 108, 110, 157, 226, 303, 307, 328, 351, 355 David Copperfield (Acc. Books) 354 David Copperfield (Kiefer) 64, 68, 75, 91, 92, 324, 350 Davis, Charles H. 334, 335 Davis, Dick 334 Davis, Jefferson 266

Davis, Richard E. 330 Davis, Richard Harding 124, 137, 330 Davy Crockett (Cameron) 1, 2, 139, 143, 147, 148, 150, 152, 212, 301, 331, 352, 357 Davy Crockett (Disney) 1, 148, 271 Davy Crockett (painted cover) 2, 331, 352, 357 “The Dawn Men” (Evans) 262, 343 Day, Clarence 328 DC Comics 4, 122, 124, 168, 226, 300 The Deacon and Mickey 105 “Dead” (Wilson) 353 Dean, James 4 “Death and the Donners” (Nodel) 258, 342 “The Death of Captain Cook” (World Around Us) 349 “Death of the Dinosaur” (Williamson) 265, 346 DeCarlo, Mike 293, 355 Declaration of the Rights of Man 264 The Deerslayer (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 The Deerslayer (British painted cover) 278, C14 The Deerslayer (Zansky) 2, 12, 32, 33, 107, 240, 270, 271, 278, 282, 320, 334, 349, 355 Defoe, Daniel 37, 203, 278, 319, 349, 352, 353 DeFuccio, Jerry 313, 364 Delacorte, George 10 Delaney, Martin R. 334 DeLay, Harold 11 del Bourgo, Maurice 120, 131–134, 312, 328, 329, 330, 335, 356, 364; high standards 131; style 131 Delibes, Leo 326 Dell Comics 59, 110, 127, 129, 202, 203, 209, 225, 247, 255, 280, 289 Dell Junior Treasury 39, 280 Dell Magazines 243 Dell Movie Classics 59, 168, 196, 213, 278 Dell Publishing Company 10, 16, 21, 110, 168, 238, 280, 315 Demby, Emanuel 321 DeMille, Cecil B. 188 Dempsey, David 111 “Desert Treasure” (World Around Us) 348 The Desperate Act (Feuerlicht) 197 Detective Comics 6, 10 The Devil’s Dictionary (Wilson) 284, 353 Devine, Andy 128 Diaz del Castillo, Bernal 224, 333, 348, 352 Dickens, Charles 3, 6, 11, 35, 43, 68, 94, 135, 170, 180, 194, 284, 289, 291, 292, 318, 321, 323, 324, 335, 349, 350, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357 Dickinson, Emily 319 Dirks, Rudolph 10 Disbrow, Jay 341, 345 The Discoveries of Louis Pasteur (PP and Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 245–246, 255, 335, 342 Disney, Walt 1, 6, 23, 78, 110, 129, 147, 148, 168, 223, 271 Disneyland (television series) 147– 148

Ditko, Steve 228 Dix, Dorothea 323 Dixon, Charles 353 Doc Savage 11 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Acc. Books) 292, 354 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Cameron) 43, 114, 145, 146, 166, 167, 198, 201, 302, 307, 319, 349, 351, 360 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Cass. Book Company) 280 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Hicks) 6, 13, 42, 43, 47, 166, 319, 334, 349; first “horror” comic book 42 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (horror cover) 43, 93, 114, 319 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Kiefer cover) 93, 94, 319 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Künstler cover) 43, 114, 126, 319, C12 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Snyder) 284, 285, 286, 353, 360 Doctor No (British Classics Illustrated) 278, 352 Doctor No (Greek) 277, 278 Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge see Carroll, Lewis The Dog Crusoe (British Classics Illustrated) 278, 352 “Dog Heroes” (Classics Illustrated filler) 11, 322–328 Dogs (World Around Us) 129, 263, 264, 344 The Doll Princess (Classics Illustrated Junior) 340 Dominguez, Luis 62, 322, 348, 352 Don Carlos (Famous Operas) 327 Don Giovanni (Famous Operas) 137–138, 221 Don Quixote (Acc. Books) 354 Don Quixote (Canadian) 275, 319 Don Quixote (Künstler, first painted cover) 114, 126, 140, 319, 330, 352, C7 Don Quixote (Oughton, second painted cover) 271, 319 Don Quixote (Zansky) 28, 31, 33, 198, 222, 275, 302, 307, 319, 352, 354 Donahue, Troy 289 Donenfeld, Harry 10 Donizetti, Gaetano 325 The Donkey’s Tale (Classics Illustrated Junior) 204, 339 Doom Patrol 224 Doré, Gustave 304 Dorman, Isaiah 334 Dorscheid, Les 353 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 2, 4, 109, 111, 292, 306, 328, 348, 351, 353 Double Comics 9, 11 Douglas, Lord James 332 Douglas MacArthur: Young Protector (Morrow) 221 Douglass, Frederick 273, 293, 334, 355 “Dover Beach” (Arnold) 319 Downey, Bruce 355, 356, 357, 358, 359 Downey, Wayne 357, 358, 359 The Downfall (Cameron) 139, 147, 148, 149, 331, 352 Doyle, Debra 353, 354, 355 Doyle Dane Bernbach (advertising agency) 223 Doylen, Michael 353 Dracula (First, unpublished) 290

INDEX Dragonslayer 207 Dresser, Lawrence 115, 117, 118, 119, 327, 328 The Drummer Boy (Classics Illustrated Junior) 341 Dryden, John 238, 352 “The Duel” (Maupassant) 348 Dufranne, Michel 360 Duin, Steve xii, 310, 313, 314, 363 Dumas, Alexandre 3, 6, 12, 18, 19, 24, 81, 95, 100, 133, 134, 135, 137, 139, 152, 191, 205, 214, 221, 282, 289, 317, 320, 323, 324, 326, 330, 333, 334, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 360 duMaurier, George 335 Dutch, Dana E. 114, 334, 335 Dutton, Bill 1 Dylan, Bob 267 Eaker, George 329 Earhart, Amelia 342 “Early Hunters” (Kirby) 227, 348 Eastern Color Printing Company 10, 66 Eaton, Mal 268 eBay 303, 305, 306 EC Comics 21, 99, 107, 165, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176, 178, 180, 182, 183, 191, 192, 194, 196, 201, 225, 300 Eddy, Mary Baker 325 Edicão Maravilhosa (Brazilian series) 275, 277 Edison, Thomas Alva 322, 356 Editora Brasil-América Limitada 277 Educational Comics see EC Comics Edwards, Tommy Lee 354, 355 Eerie (Warren) 61, 174, 196 Eichmann, Adolf 261 Einstein, Albert 265, 323 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 246, 265, 319, 347 Eisner, Will 3, 10, 49, 76, 105, 157, 192, 287, 312, 363 The Elf Mound (Classics Illustrated Junior) 340 Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans) 6, 48, 135, 136, 292, 307, 316, 324, 350, 354 Elliott Publishing Company 9, 11, 12 The Elves and the Shoemaker (Classics Illustrated Junior) 339 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 137, 318 The Emperor’s New Clothes (Classics Illustrated Junior) 173, 230 The Enchanted Deer (Classics Illustrated Junior) 340 The Enchanted Fish (Classics Illustrated Junior) 129, 252, 339, 358 The Enchanted Pony (Classics Illustrated Junior) 251, 341, 359 The Encyclopedia of American Comics (Goulart) 309, 310, 312, 313, 314, 315, 363 “An End to Slaughter” (Kirby) 348 Eng, Fred 31, 38, 318 Entertaining Comics see EC Comics “An Episode of War” (Crane) 348 Eratosthenes 265 Erckmann, Emile see ErckmannChatrain Erckmann-Chatrain 173, 332, 349 Erhard (Classics Illustrated Junior artist) 341, 342

Esquire 112 Euclid 137, 328, 346 Evangeline (Blum) 77, 328 Evans, George xii, 3, 6, 89, 153, 164, 170, 173, 176, 178, 182 –190, 191, 192 –195, 196, 198, 201, 209, 213, 217, 222, 223, 225, 229, 234, 256, 258–261, 262, 263– 268, 273, 291, 307, 311, 313, 314, 317, 318, 320, 321, 324, 326, 331–334, 342–343, 344–349, 355–357, 359, 364, 365; affiliation with Gilberton 182–183; artistic training 182; career as EC artist 182; collaborations with Reed Crandall 192–196; commitment to historical fidelity 183, 186; completion of The Buccaneer 188, 191; dissatisfaction with The Rough Rider 187; drawings of women 186; love of airplanes 182, 191; relationship with Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht 186, 188, 191; reputation 182, 191; work on The Three Musketeers 190, 191 Evans, Mary Ann see Eliot, George Evans, Vince 244 Evory, Ann 312, 363 Exodus 255, 342, 344 Explorers 281 F-Troop (Dell) 225 Falcons of France (Nordhoff and Hall) 191 The Fall of the House of Usher (Geldhof ) 289, 353 The Fall of the House of Usher (Griffiths) 96, 97, 99, 323 Falvey, William D. x, 305 Famous Artists School 173 Famous Authors Illustrated see Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated Famous Authors, Ltd. (Classics Illustrated Junior) 114, 246, 253, 336 Famous Funnies 10, 254 “Famous Operas” (Classics Illustrated filler) 129, 137–138, 324– 328 Famous Stories (Dell) 16, 280 Famous Teens (World Around Us) 178, 205, 219, 226, 267, 307, 348 Fang and Claw (Streeter) 128, 331, 352 Fantastic Comics 76 The Fantastic Four (Marvel) 228 Far from the Madding Crowd (Hardy) 137 Faraday, Michael 323 Fasano, Jerry 251, 340 Fast Fiction 66, 113, 116, 280, 334 The Fate of the Jews (Feuerlicht) 197, 200, 313, 363 Faust (Acc. Books) 355 Faust (Famous Operas) 326 Faust (Nodel) 1, 6, 153, 155, 159, 160, 164, 199, 219, 223, 229, 238, 273, 334, C12; considered Gilberton’s greatest achievement 160, 219 Fawcett 76, 94, 107, 122, 124, 169, 182 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) 180 The FBI (World Around Us) 21, 214, 264, 345 The Fearless Prince (Classics Illustrated Junior) 341

Federal Reserve 164 Feeley, Gregory 354, 355 Feldman, Scott 321 Fennimore, Linda 293, 355 Ferguson, Howard (H.G.) 325, 334, 335 Fernandez, Joan 319 Festivals (World Around Us) 224, 265, 346 Feuerlicht, Herb xii, 197, 198, 199, 200, 313, 314, 365 Feuerlicht, Ira 199 Feuerlicht, Roberta Strauss xii, 5, 6, 137, 138, 153, 160, 162, 164, 178, 191, 197, 198, 199, 200, 208, 212, 217, 219, 222, 223, 224, 228, 229, 233, 234, 235, 238, 240, 246, 258, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 268, 283, 291, 300, 307, 313, 314, 315, 317, 357, 359, 361, 363, 364; attention to detail 148, 152, 164, 173, 198; career as writer 197, 200; character 197, 198, 199, 200; childhood poverty 197; commended in Congressional Record 199; controversy caused by The Fate of the Jews 197; death 200; editorial tenure 198–199; friendship with Isaac Bashevis Singer 199; hiring by William Kanter 198; impaired health after mugging 200; influence of Judaism in work 200; passion for folk dancing 198, 200; relations with artists 148, 152, 178, 198 Fiction House 49, 50, 51, 55, 58, 61, 63, 76, 105, 171, 182, 202 Fiedler, Leslie 306 Fields, Gary 353 Fight for Life (World Around Us) 226, 227, 267, 349 Fine, Lou 49, 203 Finn, Huckleberry (character) 3, 28, 33, 201, 250 Finocchiaro, Sal 127, 330 First Classics, Inc. xi, 221, 291, 294 “The First Fishes” (Torres) 262, 343 The First Men in the Moon (Acc. Books, not published) 355 The First Men in the Moon (Marvel) 280 The First Men in the Moon (McCann, first painted cover) 214, 332 The First Men in the Moon (Oughton second painted cover) 271, 332 The First Men in the Moon (Woodbridge et al.) 5, 174, 176, 188, 212, 332, 350, 355 First Publishing 5, 6, 147, 283–290, 291, 293, 294, 297, 304, 353 Fisher, Bud 10 Fisher, The Rev. George Thomas x, 303–304 Fishing (World Around Us) 178, 229, 263, 267, 307, 348 Fitch, Kenneth W. 6, 83, 87, 108, 114–116, 117, 132, 133, 137, 311, 325–330 Fitzhugh, Percy K. 268, 344 Five Weeks in a Balloon (King Classics) 280 Flagg, Montgomery 105 The Flame 49 Flamingo (Baker) 49, 59

371 Flamsteed, John 325 Flash (DC) 202 Flashman (character) 3, 55, 206 Flaxman, John 77, 83 The Flayed Hand (Simon) 24, 25, 299, 320 Die Fledermaus (Famous Operas) 327 Fleischer, Max 226 Fleming, Homer 55, 56, 57, 321, 323 Fleming, Ian 278, 352 Flessel, Craig 268, 344 Flight (World Around Us) 187, 204, 264, 345 “Flight Over Tokyo” (Sullivan) 137, 319 Flipper, Henry 334 Florence Nightingale: War Nurse (McCann) 213 The Flying Dutchman (Famous Operas) 326 Flynn, Errol 32, 75 Foley, June 354 The Food of the Gods (McCann cover) 216, 333, 352 The Food of the Gods (Tallarico) 225, 333, 352 For Gold and Glory (World Around Us) 187, 219, 227, 267, 268, 348 Forbidden Worlds 120 The Forever People (DC) 228 “Fort Sumter” (Kirby) 226, 227, 314, 343 Forte, John 49, 345 The Forty-Five Guardsmen (del Bourgo) 3, 133, 134, 141, 301, 330, 351 Foster, Hal 10, 73, 75, 107, 169, 191 The Four Seasons (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 335 Fox, Victor 76 “The Fox and the Stork” (Classics Illustrated Junior) 252, 337 Fox Features Syndicate 28, 49, 57, 105, 114, 169 “Fractured Fairy Tales” 253 Frankenstein (Acc. Books) 292, 354 Frankenstein (Marvel) 280 Frankenstein (Papercutz) 297, 298, 360 Frankenstein (Saunders cover) 209, 210, 321, C9 Frankenstein (Webb, Brewster) 13, 51, 52, 54, 94, 136, 264, 310, 321, 355, 359, 363 Frankfurt School 165 Franklin, Benjamin 103 Franks, Robert 152 Fraser, Ferrin 332 Frawley, Michael xi Frawley, Patrick 243, 270, 273, 315, 364; character 270; devout nature 270; efforts to rejuvenate Classics Illustrated 270, 273; “Frawley’s Folly” 273; ownership of other enterprises 270; publication of educational Negro Americans 273; purchase of Classics Illustrated 270; supporter of conservative causes 270 Frawley Corporation 5, 162, 226, 246, 253, 270, 271, 273, 280, 283, 290, 291, 294, 296, 302, 304, 316, 317, 336, 364 Frawley Group see Frawley Corporation

372 The French Revolution (World Around Us) 51, 158, 173, 187, 214, 264, 265, 346 Fricke, Paul 353 Frisky Animals (Star) 251 Froebel, Friedrich 327 Froehlich, August M. 77, 94, 95, 96, 205, 307, 322, 323, 324, 325, 334; distinctive style 94–95 The Frog Prince (Classics Illustrated Junior) 129, 338, 358 From the Earth to the Moon (Acc. Books) 354 From the Earth to the Moon (Blum) 88, 135, 329, 351 From Tom-Tom to TV (PP, unpublished, and Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 129, 255, 342 Frontline Combat (EC) 182 Fulton, Robert 323 The Funnies 10 Funnies, Inc. see Jacquet Shop Funny Folks 10 The Funny Little Woman 252 Gagarin, Yuri A. 261 Gagnon, Mike 356, 357 Gaines, Max 99, 254 Gaines, William M. 43, 168, 171, 173, 178, 182, 191, 192 Galilei, Galileo 324 Galland, Antoine 318 The Gallant Tailor (Classics Illustrated Junior) 202, 250, 338, 358 The Gallic War (Caesar, Commentarii de bello Gallico) 169, 331 Gannett, Deborah 334 Gartler, Marion 252 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 41, 310, 363 Gatling, Richard Jordan 326 Gaudino, Philip J. xi Gautier, Théophile 347 Geary, Rick 284, 297, 353, 360 Geggan (WAU artist) 348 Gehrig, Lou (“Iron Horse”) 138, 329 Geldhof, Jay 289, 353 George Washington: Boy Leader (Dresser) 117 Geronimo 258, 259, 333 “Gettysburg” (Glanzman) 260, 261, 343 Ghost Rider 228 Ghosts (World Around Us) 187, 219, 263, 265, 347 Giacoia, Frank 201, 202, 246, 250, 320, 337, 338, 355, 358 Gianni, Gary 288, 289, 290, 353 The Gift of the Magi (Gianni) 288, 353 “The Gift of the Plow” (Bulfinch) 349 Gilbert, Hamilton 12 Gilbert, W.S. (William Schwenck) 138, 321, 328 Gilberton Company ix-xi, 1–6, 12, 13, 16, 17, 21, 23, 25–28, 31–35, 37–40, 43, 44, 47, 49–51, 55, 58, 62, 63, 64, 66, 69, 71, 73, 76– 78, 81, 88, 89, 90–96, 99, 103, 107–110, 111–114, 116, 117, 119- 122, 124–130, 131–134, 135–137, 139, 141, 143, 144, 146–148, 152, 153– 155, 157, 158, 160, 162, 167–171, 173, 174, 178, 180, 182, 183, 186– 188, 191, 192, 194, 196, 197, 201,

INDEX 203, 205–212, 213–216, 217, 219, 221, 223, 224–229, 231, 232, 234, 235, 238, 239, 240–243, 244–247, 249, 251, 253–255, 258, 260, 261, 263, 264, 266– 269, 270, 273, 274, 276–279, 280, 288–290, 291, 292, 294– 296, 299–304, 306, 309, 310, 311, 313, 316, 317, 322, 327, 334, 335, 336, 342, 343, 344, 360, 361, 363, 364; legal battle over second-class mailing status 223; move to 101 Fifth Avenue 114; name 12; purchase and reorganization of 12–13 Gilberton World-Wide Publications, Inc. 274, 278 Gillray, James 9, 69 La Gioconda (Famous Operas) 327 Giolitti, Alberto 39, 127 The Girl of the Golden West (Famous Operas) 325 Glanzman, Sam 260, 265, 266, 267, 342, 343, 345–348, 359 Glaser, Milton 284 The Glass Mountain (Classics Illustrated Junior) 339 Glassco, Bruce 353 Gleason, Lev 17, 43, 105, 109, 166, 202 Glenn, John H. 219, 261 Glickman, Harry see Miller, Harry G. Glut, Donald F. 51, 310, 363 Goddard, Robert Hutchings 260, 346 Godwin, William 336, 357 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1, 4, 111, 158, 159, 160, 164, 223, 307, 334, 355 Gogol, Nikolai 111, 229, 334, 352 The Gold Bug and Other Stories (Blum/Wilcox/Palais) 83, 85, 108, 109, 119, 120, 166, 239, 281, 327–328, 351 “The Gold Rush” (Evans) 258, 342 The Golden Bird (Classics Illustrated Junior) 129, 338, 358 Golden Books 49, 125 The Golden Fleece (Classics Illustrated Junior) 247, 249, 339 The Golden Goose (Classics Illustrated Junior) 202, 250, 337, 358 The Golden-Haired Giant (Classics Illustrated Junior) 338, 358 Golden Records 212 The Golden Touch (Classics Illustrated Junior) 249, 338 Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Classics Illustrated Junior) 246, 247, 253, 336, 357 Goldklang, Louis L. 321, 322 Good Girl art 49, 51, 53, 58, 59, 60, 73, 87, 186 Goodan, Till 343, 345, 346, 348, 359 Goodman, Evelyn 23, 25, 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 42, 43, 194, 318–320 Goodyear, Charles 327 Gordon, Charlotte ix, xii Gordon, Edward 320 Gorgas, William Crawford 324 The Gorilla Hunters (British Classics Illustrated) 352 Goulart, Ron 67, 203, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 363 Gounod, Charles 326

Graham, Lorenz 152, 254, 255, 331, 342 Grant, Steven 286, 288, 353, 360 Grant, Ulysses S. 138, 188, 266, 329, 347 Graphic Classics 298 Graphic novels 5, 283, 297, 298 The Grasshopper Man (Little Folks) 49 Gray, Harold 10 “The Great City” (Diaz) 348 Great Expectations (Acc. Books) 353 Great Expectations (Geary) 284, 297, 353, 360 Great Expectations (Kiefer) 64, 68, 94, 140, 166, 296, 302, 323, 352, 356, 359, C3 Great Explorers (World Around Us) 219, 234, 265, 347 “Great Lives” (Classics Illustrated filler) 138, 323, 324, 325, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 342 Great Scientists (World Around Us) 174, 176, 187, 219, 224, 265, 346 Green, Alfonso 345 Green Arrow 111, 131 Green Lantern (DC) 3, 202, 203 Green Mansions (Blum) 86, 87, 112, 198, 328, 351 Green Mansions (Cole, second painted cover) 208, 328 Greenstreet, Sydney 78 Grendel (First Publishing/First Classics, Inc.) 285 Griffiths, Harley M. 96, 97–99, 232, 233, 292, 323, 324, 327, 334 Griffiths, Harley M., Jr. xii, 311, 364 Grimjack (First Publishing/First Classics, Inc.) 283, 285, 286 Grimm, Jakob see Grimm, Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm see Grimm, Brothers Grimm, Brothers ( Jakob and Wilhelm) 75, 251, 295, 297, 307, 336–342, 357–359, 360, 363 Guay, Rebecca 293, 353, 354, C16 Guimarães, Bernardo 277 Gulliver’s Travels (Acc. Books) 354 Gulliver’s Travels (Chestney) 38, 39, 141, 198, 222, 275, 299, 320, 349, 355 Gulliver’s Travels (Giolitti) 39, 280 Gulliver’s Travels (New Comics) 11 Gulliver’s Travels (Swift) 11, 315 Gunsmoke 259 Gutenberg, Johann 326 Ha, Gene 354 Haas, Raymond 11, 12, 13 Hagar the Horrible (Browne) 249 Hagedorn, Hermann 187, 342 Hagenauer, George 312, 363 Haggard, H. Rider 11, 69, 135, 329, 333, 334, 351, 352 Halasz, Laslo 153 Hale, Edward Everett 73, 137, 325, 352 Hale, Nathan 138, 329, 348 Hall, Charles Martin 322 Hall, James Norman 109, 114, 120, 135, 146, 191, 329, 330, 351, 352, 356 Hall, J.V. 1 Hall, Prince 334 Halleck, Henry 261

Hamill, Pete 4, 309, 363 Hamilton, Philip 329 Hamlet (Acc. Books) 353 Hamlet (Blum) 1, 7, 85, 111, 114, 240, 329, 351, 356 Hamlet (Kiefer, Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated) 113–114, 335 Hamlet (Mandrake, First/Papercutz) 286, 297, 298, 353, 360 Hamlet (Moritz, second painted cover) 271, 329 Hampton, Bo 354 Hampton, Scott 354 Hanks, Tom 281 Hans Humdrum (Classics Illustrated Junior) 251, 340 The Happy Hedgehog (Classics Illustrated Junior) 208, 251, 341 Hardy, Thomas 137 The Hardy Boys (Papercutz) 297 Harris, Tony 354 Harrison, Harry 169 Harrison, Lou 354, 355 Hart, Ernest H. 263, 344, 345 Harte, Bret 73, 75, 325, 350, 355 Harvey, Robert C. 10, 309, 310, 363 Harvey, William 325, 346 Harvey Comics 17, 76, 105, 168 Haufe, John x, xi, 92, 114, 209, 237, 269, 296, 299, 300, 301, 303, 313, 314, 315, 316, 336, 342 The Haunt of Fear (EC) 43, 166, 171, 173, 182, 246 The Hawaiian Islands (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 246, 335 Hawes, Charles Boardman 51, 114, 124, 135, 331, 349, 352, 360 The Hawk 51 Hawkins, Jim (character) 78, 79, 210, 289 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 6, 96, 173, 252, 306, 324, 338, 339, 340, 350, 353, 354, 358, 360 Hayes, William C. 155 The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow (Berg, Nodel) 158, 312 Heames, David 51, 53, 321, 322, C2 Hearn, Lafcadio 252, 340, 342 Hearne, Jack R. 50, 51, 321 Heavy Metal 284 Hebberd, Robert 77, 102, 103, 326, 356 Heffelfinger, Charles 116, 303, 311 Heffernan, Helen 246 Heidi (Pendulum) 280 Hendrix, Howard 292, 354 Henry, Marguerite 117 Henry, O. (William Sydney Porter) 288, 353 Henry Clay: Young Kentucky Orator (Morrow) 221 Henry IV–Part One (Acc. Books) 293, 355 Henry IV–Part Two (Acc. Books, unpublished) 293, 355 Henry V (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 Henson, Matthew 273, 334 Henty, G.A. (George Alfred) 5, 135, 137, 138, 157, 158, 186, 196, 206, 229, 273, 307, 332, 333, 334, 350, 351, 352 “Hercules and the Wagon Driver” (Peltz) 340 Hercules Unchained (Dell) 196

INDEX “Heroic Dogs” (Evans) 263, 344 Herold, David 332 Herriman, George 10 Herschel, William 261 Heston, Charlton 79 Hi and Lois (Browne) 249 Hickey, Tom 255, 335, 338, 342, 359 Hickok, James Butler (Wild Bill) 138, 259 Hicks, Arnold L. 42 –47, 48, 49, 146, 291, 319, 320, 321, 322, 324, 334, C1, C2 Hicks, Yslan x, 94 High Adventure (World Around Us) 219, 226, 266, 347–348 Highest Reorder Number (HRN) 139–140, 302, 317 Hillman 131 Hillson, Gail 32, 35 Hippocrates 137, 325 Hit Comics 49, 105 Hitchcock, Alfred 51 “The Hitch-Hiker” (Evans) 265, 347 Hitler, Adolf 24, 261 Hoffman, Andrew Jay 292, 353, 354 Hogarth, Burne 174, 228 Hogarth, William 9, 69, 77, 107 Hole, William 117 Holiday 211 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 320 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. 223, 332 Holmes, Sherlock (character) 30, 32, 122, 202 Homer (Homeric) 1, 83, 96, 111, 112, 135, 327, 349, 351, 353, 354 “Homo Sapiens” (Nodel) 262, 343 Hooker, Joseph 261 Hoover, David 353 Hoover, J. Edgar 180 Hope, Anthony 69, 137, 327, 355 Hornell, David E. 300 Horror comics see Comics Horses (World Around Us) 207, 214, 263, 264, 345 Hough, Emerson 114, 154, 180, 331, 349 The Hound of the Baskervilles (Zansky/Kiefer) 30, 31, 32, 66, 322 The House in the Woods (Classics Illustrated Junior) 129, 254, 339 The House of the Seven Gables (Acc. Books) 354 The House of the Seven Gables (Griffiths) 91, 96, 98, 99, 324 The House of the Seven Gables (Woodbridge) 6, 173, 174, 324, 350 Houston, Sam 330 How and Why Wonder Books 262 How Fire Came to the Indians (Classics Illustrated Junior) 225, 252, 341 How Fire Came to the Indians ( Jack Lake Productions) 295, 359 How I Found Livingstone (painted cover) 330, C7 How I Found Livingstone (Trapani/Finocchiaro) 127, 128, 330, 352 Howarth, F.M. 10 Huckleberry Finn (Acc. Books) 353 Huckleberry Finn (Sekowsky, Giacoia) 137, 140, 201, 310, 320, 349, 355, 359

Huckleberry Finn (Zansky) 33, 34, 320, 330 C1 Hudson, W.H. (William Henry) 87, 137, 328, 351 Hudson News Company 241 Hudson River Artists Association 99 Hughes, Thomas 206, 323, 352 Hugo, Victor 23, 40, 49, 81, 95, 135, 158, 159, 160, 162, 176, 194, 318, 319, 320, 325, 326, 350, 351, 352, 354, 355 Humboldt, Friedrich, Baron von 327 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Acc. Books) 293, 354 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Canadian) 275, 320 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Crandall, Evans) 191, 192, 194, 320, 350, 355, 360 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (horror cover) 24, 94, 320 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Kiefer cover) 66, 166, 320 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (McCann cover) 216, 225, 320, 355 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Simon) 23, 24, 141, 299, 320, 349, 350 Hunter College 198 Hunting (World Around Us) 227, 267, 348 The Hurricane (Cameron) 146, 147, 148, 301, 330, 352 Huston, John 119, 154 I Can Draw series (Tallarico) 225 “I Hear America Singing” (Whitman) 320 Iger, S.M. “Jerry” 10, 16, 42, 44, 49, 50, 58, 64, 88, 92, 94, 103, 105, 119, 120, 127, 192, 310, 314, 363, 364; association with Albert Kanter 49; friction with Kanter concerning newspaper serials 92; partnership with Will Eisner 49; relationship with Ruth Roche 50; termination of arrangement with Gilberton 50 Iger Shop 10, 42, 44, 49–61, 76, 87, 88, 89, 94, 100, 103, 116, 119, 129, 131, 137, 192, 283, 299, 321, 326 Igle, Jamal 293, 355 The Iliad (Acc. Books) 354 The Iliad (Blum) 3, 83, 111, 327, 351 Illustrated Classics (newspaper series) 44, 76, 77, 91, 92, 311, 323, 324, 325, 328 An Illustrated Library of Great Adventure Stories 66, 334 An Illustrated Library of Great Indian Stories 301, 334 An Illustrated Library of Great Mystery Stories 334 An Illustrated Library of Great Romances (unpublished) 334 An Illustrated Library of Great Sea Stories (unpublished) 334 “An Imperfect Conflagration” (Wilson) 353 In Freedom’s Cause (Crandall, Evans) 191, 194, 195, 196, 272, 273, 334, 352 In Freedom’s Cause (painted cover) 272

In Re: Gilberton World-Wide Publications 223, 314, 315, 363–364 In the Reign of Terror (Evans) 2, 4, 138, 143, 186, 188, 198, 332, 350 The Incredible Hulk (Marvel) 228 Indianapolis Star 91 Indians (World Around Us) 264, 345 Infantino, Carmine 202 Infantino, Jim 345 Inge, M. Thomas 311, 364 Ingels, Graham 171, 172, 173, 187, 198, 205, 259, 263, 332, 342, 345, 346, 359; “Ghastly” reputation 171; modified Gilberton style 173; reclusiveness 173 The Instructor 92, 93, 244, 246, 253, 315, 363, 364 The Invisible Man (Acc. Books) 292, 297, 354 The Invisible Man (Biggs cover) 210, 211, 333, 352, 357, C12 The Invisible Man (Geary) 284, 353, 360 The Invisible Man (Nodel) 159, 160, 161, 278, 333, 352, 357, 359 Iolanthe (Famous Operas) 138, 328 Iorio, Medio 127, 128, 331, 357 Irving, Henry (actor) 67 Irving, Henry (filler writer) 320 Irving, Washington 40, 158, 288, 310, 312, 319, 351, 353, 354 The Island of Dr. Moreau (Vincent) 288, 353, 360 Island Publishing Co. 13 Ivanhoe (Acc. Books) 354 Ivanhoe (Ashe) 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 111, 137, 277, 310, 317, 334, 349 Ivanhoe (Blum) 11, 76 Ivanhoe (Lago) 289, 353, 360 Ivanhoe (Nodel) 3, 137, 154, 155, 156, 302, 307, 310, 317, 349, 359 Ivanhoe (painted cover) 289 Ivanhoe (Scott) 137, 167 Jack and the Beanstalk (Classics Illustrated Junior) 89, 247, 254, 336, 357 Jack Lake Productions, Inc. x, 5, 6, 79, 233, 239, 279, 294–297, 300, 316, 317, 334, 335, 352, 355, 357, 359 Jackson, Andrew 265, 347 Jackson, Ezra 61 Jackson, Jack 290, 314, 364 Jackson, Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) 266, 347 Jacobs, Joseph 336, 357 Jacobson, Betty 173, 332 Jacquet, Lloyd 10, 12, 17, 169 Jacquet Shop (Funnies, Inc.) 12, 16, 17, 18, 20, 26, 51, 57, 119, 120, 154, 202 James I 331 James, Jesse 331 Jane Eyre (Acc. Books) 233, 292, 293, 353 Jane Eyre (Brontë) 1, 137 Jane Eyre (Griffiths) 4, 96, 99, 136, 233, 323, 334 Jane Eyre (Kihl) 232, 233, 323, 334, 356, 359 Jane Eyre (Nodel, second painted cover) 162, 271, 323 Jane Martin 51 Jansen, Rolf 243 The Japanese Lantern (Classics Illustrated Junior) 251, 340

373 Jarve, Jaak ix, x, 294–297, 307 Jaws 289 “Jean Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans” (del Bourgo) 329 Jefferson, Thomas 265, 347 Jenner, Edward 328 Jenney, Robert (Bob) 188, 189, 333 Jensen, Michael P. x, 85, 311 Jerry Iger’s Famous Features 310, 363 “Jets Around the World” (Tartaglione) 260, 343 Joan of Arc (first painted cover) 136, 327 Joan of Arc ( Jeanne d’Arc) 3, 323 Joan of Arc (Kiefer) 72, 73, 75, 129, 136, 327 Joan of Arc (second painted cover) 271, 327 Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism (Feuerlicht) 197 Joe Versus the Volcano 381 John Paul II 207 Johnny Appleseed (Classics Illustrated Junior) 252, 295, 337, 357–358 “Johnny Appleseed” ( John Chapman, historical character) 330, 344 Johnny Jones 57 Johnson, Andrew 329 Johnson, Joe 360 Jones, Bill (William B., Junior) ix, 4, 306, 316, 364 Jones, Casey (artist) 333 Jones, George 222 Jones, Gerard 210 Jones, John Luther (“Casey”) 345 Jones, John Paul 331 Jones, Malcolm 297, 364 Jones, Marie W. 3, 4, 306 Jones, Stephen ix, x, xii, 115 Jones, Will x, xii, 173 Jones, William B., Sr. 1, 2, 5, 306 Jones, William B., Jr. (Bill) 295, 311, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359 Joshua (“Men of Action”) 333 Journal of Chemical Education 137, 312, 363 Journal of Popular Culture 5, 304, 309, 311, 315, 364 A Journey to the Center of the Earth (Acc. Books) 292, 354 A Journey to the Center of the Earth (Nodel) 155, 157, 212, 279, 332, 349, 357 A Journey to the Center of the Earth (Saunders cover) 209, 332, 357 Judgment at Nuremberg 261 Judy 9 Juilliard School of Music 153 Julius Caesar (Acc. Books) 291, 354 Julius Caesar (Cole cover) 208, 296, 326, 351 Julius Caesar (Crandall, Evans) 191, 194, 326, 350–351, 356, 359 Julius Caesar (Kiefer) 2, 63, 66, 67, 91, 92, 111, 129, 137, 170, 198, 222, 291, 326, 350–351 Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) 111, 311, 364 The Jungle (Kuper) 283, 287, 353, 360, C15 Jungle (World Around Us) 219, 265, 346–347 The Jungle Book (Acc. Books) 293 The Jungle Book (Blum/Bossert) 83, 300, 327 The Jungle Book ( Jack Lake Productions) 356

374 The Jungle Book (Nodel) 162, 271, 327, 359 The Jungle Books (Busch) 288, 353 Jungle Comics 49, 76 “Jungle Promise” (filler) 322, 356 Justice Crucified (Feuerlicht) 197, 200, 313 Justice League of America (DC) 202 Justinian 327 Kaanga 49 Kane, Gil 280 Kane, Hal (Hal Kanter) 320 Kanter, Albert L. xii, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 27, 35, 44, 49, 66, 88, 92, 93, 100, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 120, 121, 129, 130, 137, 164, 168, 188, 208, 236, 238, 240, 241, 242, 244, 246, 253, 254, 262, 269, 270, 273, 283, 289, 290, 293, 295, 298, 303, 304, 306, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 315, 335, 357, 358, 359, 364; business ventures 9; death 273; founds Classic Comics 13–14; immigration 9; marriage and family 9; “Papa Klassiker” 16; relationship with Jerry Iger 49; role as educator 5, 111–112; sells Classics Illustrated to Patrick Frawley 270; sense of humor 9; stroke 273; voracious reader 9 Kanter, Andrew 241 Kanter, Henry (Hal) xii, 9, 13, 35, 114, 116, 117, 130, 188, 255, 281, 309, 315, 320, 364 Kanter, James 241 Kanter, John (“Buzz”) x, 9, 112, 235, 240, 241, 242, 243, 315 Kanter, Maurice 9, 278 Kanter, Michael 9, 270, 303, 306, 311 Kanter, Penny (Selma Roslyn Lapin Kanter) 240, 241 Kanter, Peter 241, 243 Kanter, Rose Ehrenrich 9 Kanter, Saralea 9 Kanter, William Ehrenreich (Bill) x, 94, 112, 137, 160, 183, 198, 199, 201, 209, 222, 223, 231, 234, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 268, 278; “Cadillacs” and “Chevrolets” comment 160; Curtis Circulation affiliation 112, 241; move to England 238, 242; role in day-to-day operations 240; sense of humor 243; support for changing name of series 90, 240 Kaplan, Meyer A. 6, 35, 43, 132, 133, 137, 144, 146, 167, 170, 173, 198, 207, 208, 209, 247, 254, 269, 300, 312, 336; testimony before New York legislative committee 167 Karbiener, Karen 354 Karloff, Boris 51, 94 Katz, Leslie 322, 326 The Katzenjammer Kids 10 Kefauver, Estes 168, 182 Kelley, Raymond J. 223 Kells, Matt 357, 359 Kennedy, John F. 223, 260, 267 Kent, Rockwell 23, 24, 31, 57, 307 Kepler, Johannes 327, 346 Kernan, J.F. 105 Kidd, William 264, 333, 345 Kidnapped (Acc. Books) 354

INDEX Kidnapped (First, unpublished) 289 Kidnapped (Polseno) 127 Kidnapped (Webb, Heames) 2, 51, 53, 54, 79, 91, 92, 278, 323, 334, 350, 359 Kiefer, Henry C. 3, 5, 34, 39, 43, 49, 63 –75, 76, 77, 78, 85, 92, 93, 94, 100, 103, 111, 113, 120, 122, 127, 134, 153, 166, 176, 186, 194, 198, 216, 227, 244, 247, 284, 291, 300, 312, 319–330, 334–335, 356, C3, C13; artistic training 64; dominance in Iger Era 64; personality 64; style 66–68, 71, 75; work for Famous Authors 66 Kihl, H.J. 232–233, 265, 266, 323, 341, 343, 345–348, 356 Kildale, Malcolm 11, 12, 17, 18, 191, 205, 317 Kim (Acc. Books) 355 Kim (Orlando) 138, 140, 170, 332 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 136, 228 King Classics 280 King Features 280 The King of the Golden River (Classics Illustrated Junior) 202, 250, 337, 358 King — of the Khyber Rifles (Künstler cover) 126, 351 King — of the Khyber Rifles (Moskowitz) 1, 121, 130, 330, 351 The King of the Mountains (Nodel) 154, 278, 331, 350 King Richard and the Crusaders (Dell) 59 King Solomon’s Mines (Kiefer) 69, 121, 299, 300, 329, 351 King Thrushbeard (Classics Illustrated Junior) 340 “The King’s Ankus” (Blum/Bossert) 83, 327 The King’s Henchman (Famous Operas) 327 Kingsley, Charles 10, 23, 137, 319, 349 Kinney, James 344 Kinstler, Everett Raymond 258, 259, 265, 342, 345, 346 Kipling, Rudyard 83, 124, 135, 138, 170, 249, 278, 280, 288, 327, 330, 332, 353, 354, 355, 356 Kirby, Jack 6, 17, 57, 198, 207, 226, 227, 228, 260, 267, 295, 310, 322, 333, 341, 343, 348, 349, 359; collaborations with Dick Ayers 228; collaborations with Joe Simon 226; creation of Marvel superheroes 228; innovations in comics field 226; legendary status 228; ten days’ work on Last Days of Pompeii 160 Kirner (Classics Illustrated artist) 342, 345, 346, 359 Kirschenblatt, Shane 355, 356, 359 “The Klassic Komic Kid” (Zansky) 141 Klassika Eikonographimena (Greek series) 277, 278 Kleeman, Rita Halle 117 Klein, George 264, 345, 346 “The Knight of the Couchant Leopard” (Scott) 231, 348 Knights of the Round Table (Blum) 87, 88, 130, 223, 330, 351, 356, 359 Knights of the Round Table (Künstler cover) 126

Kraepelin, Emile 165 Krazy Kat 10 Krenkel, Roy G. 174, 176, 178, 332 Kubert, Joe 49 Künstler, Mort x, 125, 126, 127, 146, 311, 312, 319, 329, 330, 356, 365, C6, C7, C12 Kunzle, David 10 Kuper, Peter 287, 353, 360, C15 Kurtzburg, Jacob see Kirby, Jack Kurtzman, Harvey 31, 178, 318 Kushner, Dan 23, 39, 319, 320 Ladd, John 322 Ladies’ Home Journal 112 The Lady of the Lake (Kiefer) 71, 72, 92, 111, 326–327, 350 Lafargue Clinic 165 Lafayette Escadrille 191 Lafitte, Jean 143, 210, 329, 345 Lago, Ray 289, 353, 355, 360 Lake, Simon 325 Lakme (Famous Operas) 326 Lamme, Bob 77, 116, 117, 311, 326, 364 Landmark Books 261, 262 “Landscape” (Orlando) 171, 313 Lang, Fritz 109 Langley, Samuel Pierpont 327, 345 Lanier, Sidney 330 Lasky, Jessie L., Jr. 332 Lassie (Dell) 59 The Last Days of Pompeii (Kiefer) 66, 90, 91, 310, 322 The Last Days of Pompeii (Kirby) 139, 198, 222, 227, 228, 310, 322, 352, 359 “The Last Leaf ” (Gianni) 289, 353 “The Last Lesson” (Daudet) 331 The Last of the Mohicans (Acc. Books) 292, 293, 354 The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper) 139, 315 The Last of the Mohicans ( Jack Lake Productions) 296, 355 The Last of the Mohicans ( Jackson) 289, 290 The Last of the Mohicans (King Classics) 280 The Last of the Mohicans (painted cover) 3, 318, 334 The Last of the Mohicans (Ramsey) 2, 16, 20, 21, 259, 310, 318, 334 The Last of the Mohicans (Severin/Addeo) 176, 178, 179, 180, 208, 310, 318, 350, 360 Laughead, W.B. 337 Laughton, Charles 23 Lavery, Jim 119, 334 Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent 137, 324, 346 Lawrence, T.E. 138, 349 Lawrence of Arabia (King Classics) 280 Lear, Edward 253, 339–342 Lecar, Helene x, 191, 199, 200, 208, 214, 222, 223, 224, 233, 234, 235, 239, 241, 261, 262, 267, 279, 313, 314, 315, 364 Lee, Robert E. 261, 266, 347 Lee, Sheila Jackson 61 Lee, Stan 228, 280 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Acc. Books) 291, 292, 354 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Nodel) 158, 160 Leibniz (“Leibnitz” in Classics Illus-

trated No. 74), Baron Gottfried 326 Lent, Blair 252 Leon, John Paul 354 Leoncavallo, Ruggerio 325 Let’s Find Out About series (Shapp, Costanza) 124 Levin, Dan 40, 57, 319, 320, 322 Levy, Meyer 11, 12, 13 Lewis, Robert Q. 212, 253 “The Lewis and Clark Expedition” (Evans) 187, 258, 342 The Lewis and Clark Expedition (Nodel, Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 245, 335 Lidofsky, Eleanor x, 64, 66, 111, 112, 129–130, 137, 244, 245, 254, 310, 311, 312, 315, 326, 327, 328, 335, 365 Lidofsky, Leon J. 130, 245 Life in the Circus (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 246, 335 Life on the Mississippi (Twain) 324 “A Lightning Pilot” (Twain) 324 Lincoln, Abraham 133, 138, 158, 188, 265, 266, 322, 328, 330, 333, 335, 347 Lincoln Features 226 Lindbergh, Charles 182, 345 Linehan, Katherine 310, 364 Linnaeus, Carolus 326 Lins do Rego, José 277 The Lion of the North (McCann cover) 215, 216, 333, 352 The Lion of the North (Nodel) 157, 158, 159, 206, 333, 352 Lion Records (M-G-M) 211, 212 Lipman (Berg), Vivian 20, 317, 319 Lipscomb, George D. 324, 326, 328 Lister, Joseph, Lord 324, 349 Little Folks Books 49 Little Golden Books 49 The Little Mermaid (Classics Illustrated Junior) 247, 338, 358 The Little Mermaid (Disney) 6 Little Nemo in Slumberland 10 Little Orphan Annie 10 Little Red Riding Hood (Classics Illustrated Junior) 247, 336–337, 357 The Little Savage (Evans) 185, 186, 332, 349 Little Shop of Horrors 287 Little Women (Alcott) 136 Little Women (Golden Picture Classic) 136 Lives of the Hunted (Cole cover) 207, 208, 333, 352 Lives of the Hunted (Nodel) 157, 158, 333, 352 “Living on Land” (Torres) 262, 343 Livingstone, Rolland 39 –41, 291, 299, 318, 319, C1 Lohengrin (Famous Operas) 324 Lois Lane (DC) 125 London, Charmian K. 114 London, Jack 9, 83, 132, 135, 137, 242, 327, 328, 350, 351, 353, 354, 355, 356 Long, Laura M. 221 Long John Silver Seafood Shoppe 79, 283, 325 “The Long Voyage” (Morrow) 217, 267, 348 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 77,

INDEX 78, 135, 319, 321, 325, 328, 350, 356 Longstreet, James 261 Lopez, Ravil 293, 355 Lord Jim (Acc. Books) 354 Lord Jim (Conrad) 137, 292, 313 Lord Jim (Evans) 184, 186, 278, 332, 350 Lorna Doone (Baker) xi, 3, 4, 58, 59, 60, 132, 136, 307, 322, 350 Lorna Doone (second painted cover) 271, 322 Lorre, Peter 109 Loti, Pierre 352 Louis XIV 205, 333 Louis XVI 158, 264 Love, Nat 334 Loving You (film) 188, 281 Lucas, George 176 Lucia di Lammermoor (Famous Operas) 325 The Luck of Roaring Camp (Kiefer) 73, 325 Lynch, David 283 Lynch, William 331 Lyons, Dan 270 MacArthur, Douglas 319 Macbeth (Acc. Books) 293, 354 Macbeth (Blum) 89, 139, 140, 254, 331, 349, 357, 359 Macbeth (Kiefer) 113, 316, 334 Macbeth (Shakespeare) 315 MacLeod, Bob 144 Macpherson, Jeanie 188, 332 Mad (EC) 168, 169, 173, 182, 228, 242 Madame Butterfly (Famous Operas) 324 Madison, Guy 128 Magic (World Around Us) 51, 219, 265, 347, C13 The Magic Dish (Classics Illustrated Junior) 208, 251, 252, 340 The Magic Flute (Famous Operas) 325 The Magic Fountain (Classics Illustrated Junior) 202, 250, 338, 358 The Magic Pitcher (Classics Illustrated Junior) 339–340, 358 The Magic Servants (Classics Illustrated Junior) 338, 358 Mahler, Nancy 309, 365 Major League (film) 282 Malan, Dan ix, xi, 5, 6, 16, 266, 277, 304, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 343, 349, 364 Maleev, Alexander 292, 293, 354 Malory, Sir Thomas 330, 356 “Mammals, Men and Ice” (Williamson) 265, 346 Mamoulian, Rouben 42 The Man in the Iron Mask (Acc. Books) 354 The Man in the Iron Mask (Battefield) 198, 205, 281, 324, 350, 356, 359 The Man in the Iron Mask (Froehlich) 92, 95, 96, 324 Man o’ War 207 The Man Who Discovered America (Cameron, PP and Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 144, 152, 245, 246, 255, 335, 342 The Man Who Laughs (Blum) 81, 302, 326

The Man Who Laughs (Nodel) 159, 162, 163, 223, 326, 351, C11 The Man Without a Country (Kiefer) 73, 74, 78, 222, 325, 352 The Man Without a Country (McCann cover) 73, 216 , 325, 352 The Man Without a Country (Torres, Addeo) 176, 325, 352 Manco, Leonard 354 Mandrake, Tom 286, 298, 353, 360 “Manhunt!” (Ramsey) 21, 259, 342 Manning, Russ 110 Manon (Famous Operas) 111, 326 Marconi, Marchese Guglielmo 346, 347 Marie Antoinette 221, 264 Marilda and the Bird of Time (Schrotter) 119 Marines (World Around Us) 171, 205, 264, 345–346 Marrus, Jen 354 Marryat, Frederick 116, 117, 135, 137, 185, 186, 326, 332, 349, 351 Mars Attacks trading cards (Saunders) 210 Marshall, Thurgood 228 Marvel 133, 174, 192, 203, 206, 207, 226, 228, 280, 298; see also Atlas; Timely Marvel Classics Comics 280 Marvel Comics 6, 17 Marvel Illustrated 298 Marvin, Lee 144 Marvin, Ruth 144 Marx Brothers 9 Mason, Shirley 79, 311 Massenet, Jules 111, 324, 326 Massin, Arthur 90 Master and Man (British Classics Illustrated) 278, 352 The Master of Ballantrae (Acc. Books) 292, 354 The Master of Ballantrae (Blum, first painted cover) 303, 327, 351, C5 The Master of Ballantrae (Dresser interior) 117, 118, 239, 303, 327, 351 The Master of Ballantrae (Fitch script) 115, 117, 311, 327 The Master of Ballantrae ( JES cover) 351, C14 The Master of Ballantrae (Siryk, second painted cover) 271, 327 Master of the World (Morrow) 139, 219, 221, 229, 333–334, 352 Master of the World (painted cover) 235, 236, 333–334, 352 Masterson, Bat 212, 259 Mathewson, Christy 329 Maupassant, Guy de 24, 25, 223, 231, 320, 333, 334, 348 Maverick 259 Maxwell, Stanley see Zuckerberg, Stanley Maxwell Mayne, Colin 295, 357, 359, C16 Mazan 297, 360 McCann, Gerald 62, 69, 73, 207, 210, 213 –216, 222, 259, 260, 262, 265, 266, 319, 320, 322, 323, 325, 326, 328, 332, 333, 342, 343, 345, 346, 347, 348, 355, 357, 359, C10; drybrush technique 214; painted covers 215; personality 213 McCarthy, Joseph 165, 180, 245

McCay, Winsor 10 McCloud, Scott 10, 309, 316, 364 McClure Syndicate 11 McCormick, Cyrus 328 McCoy, Elijah 334 McLoughlin, Jim xii, 301–302, 306 McManus, George 10 Meade, George 261, 266, 347 Meadowcroft, Enid Lamonte 213 “Medals for Heroes” (filler) 240, 320 Der Meistersinger (Famous Operas) 326 Melville, Herman 6, 31, 32, 61, 62, 93, 135, 154, 201, 242, 284, 285, 306, 318, 322, 349, 352, 353, 354, 355 Melvin and Howard (film) 287 Memphis Public Library 305 Men Against the Sea (Palais) 5, 109, 120, 198, 329, 351 Men, Guns and Cattle (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 128, 187, 212, 214, 258, 342 “Men of Action” (Classics Illustrated feature) 223, 333, 334 Men of Iron (Schrotter/Dresser/Daugherty) 5, 118, 119, 198, 222, 328, 351 Mendeleyev, Dmitri I. 325 Merit 238 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Polseno) 127 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Pyle) 318 The Merry Wives of Windsor (Famous Operas) 326 Messer Marco Polo 55, 321 Metropolitan Museum of Art 76, 155 M-G-M (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) 251 M-G-M Records 211, 212, 253 Miami Herald 116 Micale, Albert 271, 325 Michael Strogoff (first painted cover) 321, 351 Michael Strogoff (Hicks) 44, 321, 351 Michael Strogoff (Nodel, second painted cover) 271, 321 Mickey Mouse (Dell) 247 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Acc. Books) 293, 353 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Blum) 83, 85, 139, 222, 328, 350, 356 Mignon (Famous Operas) 328 Military Comics 192 Miller, Harry G. (Harry Glickman) 61, 100, 103, 146, 292, 322, 323, 324, 325, 330, 331 Miller, Joshua 354, 355 Miller, Sidney 162, 209, 223, 229, 231, 236, 260, 267, 333, 334, 341, 348, 349 Milton, John 347 Milwaukee Journal 91 Minuit, Peter 333 Les Miserables (Acc. Books) 291, 354 Les Miserables (Livingstone cover) C1 Les Miserables (Livingstone interior) 39, 40, 277, 299, 318–319 Les Miserables (McCann, first painted cover) 216, 296, 319, 355 Les Miserables (Nodel interior) 40,

375 159, 162, 198, 222, 307, 319, 351, 355, 359 Les Miserables (Nodel, second painted cover) 162, 271, 319 Mission Impossible (Dell) 203 Mr. Midshipman Easy (Blum cover) 326, 351 C4 Mr. Midshipman Easy (Lamme) 3, 53, 77, 116, 117, 141, 275, 301, 326, 351 Mr. Midshipman Easy (Marryat) 137 Mister X (Motter) 286 Moby Dick (Acc. Books) 32, 354 Moby Dick (Edicão Maravilhosa) 275, 277 Moby Dick (Huston) 154 Moby Dick (King Classics) 280 Moby Dick (Melville) 137, 139, 201, 283 Moby Dick (Nodel) 2, 4, 154, 155, 201, 296, 310, 318, 349, 355, 359 Moby Dick (second painted cover) 271, 318 Moby Dick (Sienkiewicz) 284, 285, 353, C15 Moby Dick (Zansky) 12, 16, 26, 28, 31, 32, 93, 282, 310, 318, 334 Moede, Jade 355 Monsell, Helen Albee 221 Moon, Binah 357, 358, 359 Moon, Miah 357, 358, 359 The Moonstone (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 The Moonstone (Cole cover) 208, 209, 322, 351 The Moonstone (Rico) xi, 57, 198, 222, 307, 321–322, 334, 351 Moore, Alan 125 Moore, Demi 281 Moore, Scotty 314 Morales, Lou 348 Morbi, Ali 356, 358 More Fun 55, 63 More Stories by Poe (Acc. Books) 354 Morgan, Garrett A. 334 Morgan, Henry 264, 333, 345 Morgan, John Hunt 207, 261 Morgan the Pirate (Dell) 213 Morisi, Pete 348 Moritz, Edward 271, 273, 329, 330, 332, 333, 345 Morrow, Gray xii, 6, 153, 209, 217–220, 221, 222, 225, 229, 259, 260, 265, 266, 267, 314, 333, 334, 342, 343, 346, 347, 348, 365, C13; accurate rendering of characters in The Octopus 219, 221; dispute over Whaling 217; fast work on The Queen’s Necklace 221; professional respect for 217 Morvan, Jean David 360 Mosel, Arlene 252 Moses and the Ten Commandments (Dell) 255 Mosk, Berenice 332 Moskowitz, Seymour 32, 121, 122, 330 Mother Teresa 207 Motown 267, 283 Motter, Dean 286, 353 “A Mound of Ruins” (Classics Illustrated filler) 139, 322 Mousse, Marion 360 Moussorgsky, Modeste 326 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 137, 325, 328, 348

376 Much Ado About Nothing (Acc. Books, unpublished) 293 “The Mummy’s Foot” (Gautier) 347 Mundy, Talbot 1, 114, 121, 137, 330, 351 Munson, Wayne x, 299, 300, 316, 365 Murder Incorporated 57, 114 The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Hicks) 43, 320, 354 Murdock, William 322 Museum of Natural History (New York) 267 Musgrave, Steven 355 Mussolini, Benito 224, 326 The Mutineers (Costanza) 124, 331, 352 Mutiny on the Bounty (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 Mutiny on the Bounty (Kiefer cover) 296, 329, 356 Mutiny on the Bounty (Waldinger interior) 2, 120, 121, 212, 329, 351, 356, 359 Mutt and Jeff 10 Myers, Harry 347 Mysteries of Paris (Kiefer) 67, 69, 71, 94, 141, 166, 301, 323 Mysteries of Poe (Froehlich/Kiefer/ Griffiths) 66, 69, 94, 96, 97, 141, 166, 301, 323, 334, 350 Mysteries of Poe (Kiefer cover) 94 The Mysterious Island (Acc. Books) 354 The Mysterious Island (Webb/ Heames) 51, 53, 91, 307, 322, 334, 349 Mystery in Space 202 Nachison, Beth 292, 354, 355 Nancy Drew (Papercutz) 297 Nantier, Terry 297 Nantucket Artists Association 99 Napoleon 51, 137, 264, 317, 331, 346 Napoli, Vincent 334 Narrative of the Life of David Crockett 148, 331 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Acc. Books) 293, 355 Nassau Bulletin 6, 13 National Academy of Art 27, 96, 105 National Academy of Design 76, 153 National Arts Club 99 National Lampoon 284 National Maritime Museum, Greenwich 198, 317, 360 National Periodical Publications 11 Navy (World Around Us) 264, 345 Negro Americans–The Early Years (Nodel) 136, 162, 272, 273, 334 Nero 332 Neruda, Pablo 181 New Comics 11 New Fun 11, 63 The New Gods (DC) 228 New Heroic Comics 66 “New York City” (Kirby, War Between the States) 227, 343 New York Herald Tribune 10 New York Marxist School (Brecht Forum) 180 New York Post 91

INDEX New York Public Library (42nd Street Library) 129, 199, 222, 234 New York School of Industrial Arts 169 New York Times 39, 111, 129, 197, 200, 233, 270, 310, 311, 313, 314, 315, 364 New York University 27, 35, 111, 165, 180 New York World 10 Newark Star Ledger 91 Newbery Award 51 News in Review–1953 (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 335 Newton, Sir Isaac 323, 345 Newton, Robert 78 Nexus (First Publishing/First Classics, Inc.) 283 Nicholas Nickleby (Schrotter, Jack Lake Productions) 296, 334, 357, 359, C16 Nicholas Nickleby (Schrotter, Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated) 119, 334, 335 Night of Masks (Morrow) 221 The Nightingale (Classics Illustrated Junior) 249, 337–338, 358 Nightingale, Florence 323, 346 Nights of Terror (British Classics Illustrated) 352 Nimitz, Chester 319 1954 — News in Review (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 246, 335 Noah Carr, Yankee Firebrand (Schrotter) 119 Nobel, Alfred 326 Nobel Prize 199 Nodel, Norman xii, 3, 6, 40, 51, 81, 89, 129, 153, 154 –164, 176, 180, 198, 201, 206, 207, 208, 209, 216, 217, 222, 223, 225, 231, 255, 258, 259, 261–262, 264, 265, 266, 267, 271, 273, 278, 284, 285, 291, 293, 307, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 317–321, 323–327, 331– 334, 335, 341, 342–343, 345– 349, 352, 355–357, 359, 364, 365, C11, C12; dominant freelancer 153; personality 153; style 153, 154, 157; technique 159, 164 Nollen, Scott Allen 311, 364 Nordhoff, Charles 109, 120, 135, 146, 191, 329, 330, 351, 352, 355, 356 Norris, Frank 207, 219, 314, 333, 352, 364 North, Sterling 10 Northwest Mounties (St. John) 59 Nothing but Trouble (film) 281 Norton, Andre 221 Nostradamus 331 “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (Twain) 266, 347 Novelty (Curtis) 51 Now Age Books Illustrated 280 Nowlan, Philip 10 Nyberg, Amy Kiste 312, 364 Nyoka, the Jungle Girl 61, 203 Obadiah, Rick xii, 283, 316, 365 Oberon, Merle 68, 284 The Octopus (Cole cover) 207, 333; C11 The Octopus (Morrow) 6, 218, 219, 221, 222, 225, 278, 333, 352 The Octopus (Norris) 221, 314, 364

The Odyssey (Acc. Books) 353 The Odyssey (Blum, first painted cover) 85, 112, 113, 327 The Odyssey (Griffiths) 1, 96, 99, 111, 112, 327, 349 The Odyssey (Marvel) 280 The Odyssey (Tallarico, second painted cover) 226, 271, 327 The Odyssey (Wilcox, unpublished cover) 120 Off on a Comet (first painted cover) 140, 273, 317, 333, 334, 350; iconic status 273, C8 Off on a Comet (McCann) 138, 213, 214, 333, 350 Off on a Comet (Moritz, second painted cover) 271, 273, 333 Offenbach, Jacques 328 Oja, Eva 358 “Old Ironsides” (Holmes) 320 “Old Timer Tales of Kit Carson” (Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Ames) 268, 344 Oliff, Steve 353 Olinsky, Ivan 132 Oliphant, David 280 Oliver! (musical) 194 Oliver Twist (Acc. Books) 291, 354 Oliver Twist (Crandall, Evans) 191, 193, 194, 229, 321, 349, 355, 359 Oliver Twist (Hicks) 43, 44, 49, 291, 302, 321, 349 Oliver Twist (Kiefer) 64 Olivier, Laurence 68, 284 Olson, Richard D. 309, 363 On Jungle Trails (Nodel) 157, 210, 332, 351 “The Open Boat” (Crane) 347 Orczy, Baroness Emmuska 293, 334, 355 The Oregon Trail (Kiefer) 2, 73, 75, 326, 351, 356 “The Oregon Trail” (Nodel) 258, 342 Orlando, Joe 6, 36, 37, 89, 168, 169 –171, 183, 201, 257, 258, 291, 307, 313, 318, 331, 332, 342, 345, 355; affiliation with Gilberton 169; death 171; EC experience 169; later career 168, 171 O’Rourke, John 53, 78, 81, 322– 326, 328 Osceola 324 Othello 6 Oughton, Taylor 271, 319, 322, 324, 325, 327, 329, 332, 356 Ouida (Louise de la Ramée) 132, 135, 137, 328, 351 “Our American Heritage” (Classics Illustrated filler) 330 The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Kiefer) 73, 75, 325 Outcault, Richard 10 “An Outline History of the Civil War” (del Bourgo) 114, 133, 329 “The Overland Mail” (Orlando) 258, 342 Overstreet, Robert M. (“Bob”) 302, 316, 365; Comic Book Price Guide 302, 305 Owsley, Patrick 353 The Ox-Bow Incident (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 The Ox-Bow Incident (Nodel) 153, 154, 331, 352

Paderewski, Ignance Jan 332 Page, William Tyler 320 Pagliacci (Famous Operas) 325 Paine, Lewis 332 Palais, Rudolph (Rudi, Rudy) ix, xii, 67, 77, 104 –109, 110, 120, 121, 122, 131, 157, 187, 307, 311, 322, 325, 328, 329, 330, 334, 356, 363, 365, C4; artistic training 104–105; influence of cinema 105, 109; significance of hands 109; style 104, 109 Palais, Walter 105, 110, 330 Papercutz (Classics Illustrated) 5, 6, 297–298, 360 PaperMate 270 Paradise Lost (First, unpublished) 290 Paramount Pictures 188, 255, 332, 342 Parents’ Magazine 10 Parker, Fess 1, 148, 226, 271 Parkman, Francis 73, 135, 214, 326, 333, 351, 352, 356 Parsifal (Famous Operas) 326 Pascal, Blaise 111, 326 Pasteur, Louis 349 P.A.T. (Producers Associates of Television, Inc.) 253 The Pathfinder (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 The Pathfinder ( JES, Le traceur de pistes) 278 The Pathfinder (Nodel, unfinished) 162, 321 The Pathfinder (Zansky) 33, 49, 167, 320–321, 334, 349 Paul Bunyan (Classics Illustrated Junior) 202, 250, 253, 295, 300, 337, 358 Paul Revere’s Ride (Costanza, PP and Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 245, 255, 335, 342 “Paul Revere’s Ride” (Longfellow) 321 P.D.C. (Publishers Distributing Corporation) 12, 35, 112, 241 The Pearl Princess (Classics Illustrated Junior and Jack Lake Productions) 295, 341, 359 Pearson, Bill 353 Peck, Gregory 154 Pecos Bill (Peltz, Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 259 “Pecos Bill” (Walsh, Classics Illustrated Junior) 337 Pee Wee and the Sneezing Elephant (Little Folks) 49 “Pee Wee Harris” (Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Fitzhugh) 268, 344 Pelleas and Melisande (Famous Operas) 327 Peltz, George 251, 259, 260, 264, 266, 340–343, 345–348, 359; style 251 Pendulum Classics 280 “The Peninsula” (Kirby) 227, 260, 343 Penn, William 76 Penny Press 243 The Penny Prince (Classics Illustrated Junior) 338, 358 The Pentamerone (Basile) 339 Peppe, Mike 202, 250, Perlin, Don 221, 228, 229, 333 Peroff, Alana 356

INDEX Perrault, Charles 251, 295, 336, 337, 357 Petit, Philip 360 Petránek, Michael x, 298 Phantom Lady (Baker) 58, 111, 166 Phidias 326 Pickering, Trevor 354 Picture Parade 88, 122, 127, 129, 130, 244, 245, 315, 317, 335, 342, 364 Picture Progress 4, 6, 129, 130, 144, 152, 154, 244–246, 254, 255, 263, 273, 317, 331, 335–336, 342; educational purpose 130, 244, 246 Picture Stories from American History (Simon, EC) 21 Picture Stories from the Bible (EC) 99, 254 The Pied Piper (Classics Illustrated Junior) 212, 249, 250, 253, 336, 357 Pike, Jay Scott 348 The Pilot (Blum) 53, 81, 111, 326, 350 The Pilot (McCann cover) 215, 216, 326, 350 “The Pimienta Pancakes” (Gianni) 289, 353 Pines, Ned 171, 205 Pinocchio (Classics Illustrated Junior) 212, 247, 253, 337, 357 The Pioneers (Oughton cover) 271, 322 The Pioneers (Palais) 104, 107, 270, 322, 334, 350, 356, C4 “Pioneers of Science” (Classic Comics, Classics Illustrated filler) 4, 111, 137, 223, 322–328, 342, 356 Piracy (EC) 192 Pirates (World Around Us) 51, 173, 214, 235, 263, 264, 297, 345 The Pit and the Pendulum (Froehlich) 94, 95, 323, 354 Pitcairn’s Island (Künstler cover) 126, 330 Pitcairn’s Island (Palais) 4, 104, 109, 120, 223, 330, 351 Pitz, Henry C. 192 Pizarro, Francisco 267, 333, 346, 348 Planet Comics 49 Plessix, Michel 297, 360, C16 Ploog, Mike 287, 289, 353 Poch (Cleopatra cover) 333 Pocket Books see Washington Square Press Poe, Edgar Allan 43, 69, 83, 95, 96, 109, 119, 120, 135, 231, 284, 311, 320, 323, 327–328, 351, 353, 354, 360, 364 Pokes of Gold (McCann) 213 Poling, Daniel A. 254, 255, 258 Polo, Marco 55 Polseno, Jo 127, 312, 330, 365 Poon, Yvonne 358 Ponce de León 329 Ponchielli, Amilcare 327 “Pony Express” (Orlando) 171, 257, 258, 342 “Pony Soldiers” (Ingels) 173, 259, 342 Pope, Alexander 345 Popeye 226 Popular Comics 10 Popular Teenagers 207 Porter, Jane 81, 135, 137, 326, 350

Portis, Charles 6 Potter, Harry (character) 206, 207 Potter, Jeffrey K. 353 Prager, Ron xii, 23, 50, 228, 310, 311, 314, 364, 365 The Prairie (Palais) 3, 77, 104, 105, 107, 325, 350 Pratt, George 355 Pratt Institute 35, 38, 96, 124, 125, 226, 228, 293 Prehistoric Animals (World Around Us) 174, 211, 219, 265, 346 Prehistoric World (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 176, 187, 235, 238, 262, 265, 343 Premiani, Bruno 6, 222, 223, 224, 225, 259, 262, 265, 266, 267, 314, 333, 334, 342, 343, 346, 347, 348 Prentice, John 174 Presley, Elvis 1, 188, 281 Prezio, Victor 255, 318, 342, 355, 359, C7 Price, Norman 78 Price, Vincent 221 Prichard, Pat 341, 342, 348, 359 Pride and Prejudice (Acc. Books, unpublished) 293, 355 Pride and Prejudice (Austen) 136 Priestley, Joseph 137, 322, 342, 346 The Prince and the Pauper (Acc. Books) 353–354 The Prince and the Pauper (Hicks) 44, 94, 166, 277, 321, 350 The Prince and the Pauper (horror cover) 94, 166, 277, 321, C2 The Prince and the Pauper (Kiefer cover) 94, 321 The Prince and the Pauper (Wilson cover) 210, 321, 350 Prince Valiant (Foster) 73, 169, 191 The Princess Who Saw Everything (Classics Illustrated Junior) 238, 246, 342 The Princess Who Saw Everything ( Jack Lake Productions) 295, 359, C16 The Prisoner of Zenda (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 The Prisoner of Zenda (Kiefer) 68, 69, 71, 75, 327 Prize 131, 226 Project Mercury 219, 260 Prommik, Kaarel 357 Prommik, Pärt 357 “The Psychopathology of Comic Books” (symposium) 165 Publishers Distributing Corporation see P.D.C. Puccini, Giacomo 324, 325, 326 Puck 10 Pudd’nhead Wilson (Acc. Books) 354 Pudd’nhead Wilson (Kiefer) 68, 198, 223, 328, 350 Pudd’nhead Wilson (McCann, second painted cover) 216, 328, 350 Pulitzer, Joseph 10 Punch 9 Pushkin, Alexander 278, 352 Puss-in-Boots (Classics Illustrated Junior) 249, 251, 337, 357 Pyle, Howard 118, 119, 127, 192, 318, 328, 330, 345, 349, 351, 355 “Pyramus and Thisbe” (Bulfinch) 322 Pythagoras 137, 326

Quality Comics Group 49, 76, 105, 192 Quantrill, William 329 The Queen Bee (Classics Illustrated Junior) 340, 358 Queen Margot (Dumas) 133 The Queen of Spades (British Classics Illustrated) 278, 352 Queens County Times 13 Queens Home News 13, 91 The Queen’s Necklace (Morrow) 220, 221, 334, 352 The Queen’s Necklace (painted cover) C9 Railroads (World Around Us) 263, 264, 345 “The Railway Train” (Dickinson) 319 Ramsey, Ray 19, 20, 21, 259, 317, 318, 334, 342, 345, 359 Randall, Maurice A. 353, 354 Random House 262 Rapunzel (Classics Illustrated Junior) 129, 338, 358 Raskin, Jordan 354 Raspe, Rudolf Erich 348, 352 The Raven and Other Poems (Wilson) 284, 353, 360 Raw 284 Raymond, Albert W. (pseudonym) 35 Raymond, Alex 107, 174 Reade, Charles 73, 137, 326 Reader’s Digest 166, 235 Reading (BSA Merit Badge Series) 137 Reading Comics (Wolk) 6, 309, 364 The Rebel (Dell) 202 “Reconstruction” (Evans) 260, 343 The Red Badge of Courage (Acc. Books) 354 The Red Badge of Courage (Crane) 137, 315 The Red Badge of Courage (First, unpublished) 290 The Red Badge of Courage (Huston) 119 The Red Badge of Courage (Oughton, second painted cover) 271, 329 The Red Badge of Courage (Schrotter) 114, 119, 133, 329, 334, 351 “The Red Planet” (World Around Us) 266, 347, 348 The Red Rover (Costanza) 122, 123, 124, 301, 330, 351 The Red Rover (Polseno) 127, 330 Reed, Carol 194 Reese, Ralph 293, 355 Reeves, Steve 227 Regents Illustrated Classics 280 Relf, Patricia 125 Remarque, Erich Maria 114, 132, 133, 328, 355, 358 Remington, Frederick 330 “A Retrieved Reformation” (Gianni) 289, 353 The Return of the Native (Hardy) 137 The Return of the Native (Pendulum) 280 Das Rheingold (Famous Operas) 138, 327 Rice, Anne 4, 309, 364 Richardson, Donna 3, 68, 309, 311, 364

377 Richardson, Mike 310, 313, 314, 363 Richardson, Tony 271 Rico, Don 57, 307, 321, 322, 334 Rigoletto (Famous Operas) 324 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ( Joint European Series) 289 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Motter) 286, 287, 289, 353 Rip Kirby 174 Rip Van Winkle (Busch) 288, 353 “Rip Van Winkle” (Irving) 40, 310, 364 Rip Van Winkle (Nodel) 158, 160, 310, 319, 351 Rip Van Winkle (Oughton, second painted cover) 271, 319 Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman (Livingstone) 39, 40, 41, 275, 300, 310, 319 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Shirer) 261 Rob Roy (Dell) 110 Rob Roy (Palais) 2, 110, 301, 330, 352 Robbins, Trina 310, 311, 364 Robert Fulton: Boy Craftsman (Dresser) 117 Robert Louis Stevenson School 180 Roberts, Wade xii, 283 Robespierre, Maximilien 138, 186, 187, 264, 332, 346 Robin Hood (Prezio cover) 296, 318, 349, 355, C7 Robin Hood (Saks giveaway) xii, 318 Robin Hood (Sparling) 180, 198, 202, 203, 310, 318, 349, 355, 359 Robin Hood (Zansky) 2, 13, 28, 29, 31, 32, 35, 66, 299, 310, 318, 334, 349 Robins, Clem 354, 355 Robins, Madeleine xii, 32, 103, 232, 291, 311, 316, 355, 365 Robinson Crusoe (Acc. Books) 354 Robinson Crusoe (Boyette) 289, 353 Robinson Crusoe (Cass. Book Company) 280, 281 Robinson Crusoe (Citron/Sultan) 203, 204, 310, 319, 349 Robinson Crusoe (McCann) 213 Robinson Crusoe (painted cover) 8, 319 Robinson Crusoe (Zuckerberg) 37, 66, 275, 281, 310, 319, 334, 349 Robur the Conqueror (Perlin) 221, 223, 228, 229, 333, 352 Roche, Ruth A. 6, 47, 49, 50, 51, 58, 321, 322, 323; improves Gilberton scripts 50; relationship with Jerry Iger 50 Rock ’n’ roll 1 “Rocket Engines” (Tartaglione) 260, 343 Rockets, Jets and Missiles (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 219, 232, 259, 260, 343 Rockne, Knute 138, 329 Rockwell, Norman 35, 105, 144 “Rocky Stoneaxe” (Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Eaton) 268, 344 Rocky the Flying Squirrel 253 Roea, Doug 100, 210, 211, 323, 325, 333, 345 Roebling, John A. 325 Roentgen, Wilhelm Konrad 324 Romance comics see Comics

378 Romberg, Sigmund 69 Romeo and Juliet (Acc. Books) 292, 293, 353 Romeo and Juliet (Evans) 16, 183, 186, 331–332, 349, 357 Romeo and Juliet (Kiefer) 335 Romeo and Juliet (Moritz, second painted cover) 271, 332 “Room for the Night” (Morrow) 266, 347 Rooney, Mickey 33 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 138, 265, 329, 347 Roosevelt, Theodore 256, 258, 265, 296, 330, 342, 347 Der Rosenkavalier (Famous Operas) 326 Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio 324 Rostand, Edmond 83, 115, 285, 327, 351, 353, 354, 360 The Rough Rider (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 187, 188, 199, 256, 258, 296, 342, 359 Rowlandson, Thomas 9, 69 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 21, 173, 214, 259, 342, 359 Rubano, Aldo 100, 101, 102, 103, 232, 324, C4 Rubén 360 Ruberoid Company 112, 335 Rubinstein, Annette T. x, 37, 169, 180–181, 313, 318, 331, 365 Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli (Dell) 280 Rugby 55, 206 Rumpelstiltskin (Classics Illustrated Junior) 247, 251, 337, 357 The Runaway Dumpling (Classics Illustrated Junior) 246, 252, 253, 295, 342 Ruskin, John 202, 250, 337, 358 Russell, Emily 353 Russell, P. Craig 287, 353, 360 Russo, Rene 282 Ruth, George Herman (Babe) 138, 328 Saalfield Publishing Company 10 Sabatini, Rafael 9, 66, 114, 334, 335 Sabin, Roger 9, 20, 309, 310, 363, 364 The Sacred and the Profane (Motter) 286 Saga of the North (British Classics Illustrated) 352 Sail with the Devil (British Classics Illustrated) 276, 278, 352 St. Clement 323 St. Columba 323 St. John, Archer 59, 207 Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Léon de 264, 346 St. Louis Post-Dispatch 91 Salem, Peter 334 Salicrup, Jim x, 297, 298, 307, 316, 365 The Salt Mountain (Classics Illustrated Junior) 251, 341, 359 Sands, Jim xi, 131, 303, 312, 364 The Saturday Evening Post 112, 211 Saunders, Norman B. 143, 207, 209, 210, 314, 321, 332, 333, 355, 357, C9 Savage, William W., Jr. 245, 315, 364 Sawyer, Michael (Mike) x, xi, 5,

INDEX 93, 116, 183, 191, 303, 304, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 364, 365 Scaramouche (Kiefer) 114, 335 The Scarlet Letter (Thompson) 287, 353, 360 The Scarlet Pimpernel (Acc. Books) 293, 355 The Scarlet Pimpernel (Lavery) 113, 334 Schaffenberger, Kurt 124, 125, 246, 315, 330, 337, 358 Schick 270, 315, 364 Schiller, Friedrich von 111, 329, 351 Schlegell, William von 132 School-Day Romances 207 School of Visual Arts 284 Schrotter, Gustav 77, 103, 118, 119, 170, 326, 328, 329, 335, 357 Schubert, Willie 353 Schuck, Arthur A. 269, 343 Schwartz, Delmore 306 Schweitzer, Albert 332 Scoggins, Loy 2 Scopino, A.J., Jr. 355 Scott, Bill 253 Scott, Keith 315, 364 Scott, Robert 346, 347 Scott, Thomas T. 47, 49, 321, 322 Scott, Sir Walter 3, 6, 12, 59, 71, 110, 135, 137, 154, 155, 204, 231, 283, 289, 317, 326, 330, 332, 345, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 360 The Scottish Chiefs (Blum) 2, 80, 81, 136, 326, 350 “Scouts in Action” (Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Stenzel) 268, 344 Scranton Art School 182 The Sea Wolf (Blum) 55, 83, 85, 139, 328, 350 Seaboard Publishers, Inc. 66, 113, 114, 120, 334 The Secret Agent (Snyder) 286, 353 Secret Agent Corrigan (Secret Agent X-9) 174, 192 Seduction of the Innocent (Wertham) 94, 103, 111, 121, 166, 167, 168, 311, 364 Sekowsky, Mike 201, 202, 246, 250, 255, 320, 337–340, 355, 358 Sergeant Stony Craig (Streeter) 128, 312 Seton, Ernest Thompson 135, 157, 207, 208, 238, 333, 351, 352 Seurat, Georges 105 “Seven for Space” (Morrow) 219, 260, 343 Severin, John P. 21, 178, 179, 180, 256, 258, 318, 342, 355 Severin, Marie 207 Sewell, Anna 95, 135, 157, 208, 325, 350, 356 Shakespeare, William 1, 2, 4, 6, 67, 83, 85, 89, 111, 113, 114, 129, 135, 137, 139, 170, 186, 194, 254, 286, 292, 293, 297, 306, 311, 326, 328, 329, 331, 334, 335, 349, 350, 351, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 360, 364 Shane, Nat 324 Shanley, John Patrick 281 Shapp, Charles 124 Shapp, Martha 124 Shaw, Robert 289 Shaw-Russell, Susan 357, 358, 359

She (Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated) 113, 334 She (New Comics) 11 Sheena, Queen of the Jungle 49, 51, 61 Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft 51, 135, 136, 321, 354, 355, 360 Shelter Through the Ages (Kiefer) 66, 112, 244, 335, C13 Shepard, Alan 219, 261 Sherlock Holmes (comic strip) 202 “Shiloh” (Evans) 260, 343 Shirer, William L. 261 The Show of Violence (Wertham) 165 Showcase (DC) 162, 226, 278 Shwartz, Susan 353, 354, 355 Sick 228 Siebert News Agency 3 The Siege of Sevastopol (unpublished) 238, 334 Siegfried (Famous Operas) 327 Sienkiewicz, Bill 284, 285, 353, C15 Sienkiewicz, Henryk 111, 173, 332, 350 The Sign of the Four (Zansky) 33, 320 Silas Marner (Acc. Books) 292, 354 Silas Marner (Eliot) 136, 137, 292 Silas Marner (Hicks) 6, 44, 47, 48, 324, 350 Silly Hans (Classics Illustrated Junior) 339 The Silly Princess (Classics Illustrated Junior) 252, 341 Silly Willy (Classics Illustrated Junior) 202, 252, 340 Silver, Long John (character) 78 “Silver Age” see Comics Simon, Allen 20, 21, 22 –25, 194, 299, 317, 319, 320, 322, 334, 343, C1 Simon, Bill 212 Simon, Fred 360 Simon, Joe 226 Simple Kate (Classics Illustrated Junior) 251, 340 “Sinbad the Sailor” (Berger) 231, 318 Sinclair, Upton 283, 287, 353, 360 “Sing a Song of Sixpence” (Classics Illustrated Junior) 252, 336 Singer, Isaac Bashevis 199 The Singing Donkey (Classics Illustrated Junior) 204, 340 Sinnott, Joe 340 Siryk (Classics Illustrated artist) 271, 327 Skelton, Red 321 The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (Irving) 310, 364 Slater, June 320 The Sleeping Beauty (Classics Illustrated Junior) 122, 249, 253, 336, 357 Smalls, Robert 334 Smith v. Hitchcock (U.S., 1912) 223 Smith, Edesse Peery 213 Smith, Sherwood 354 Smith, Wendell 328 Smith, William 265, 346 Snow-White and Rose Red (Classics Illustrated Junior) 339, 358 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Classics Illustrated Junior) 88, 246, 247, 336, 357

Snyder, John K., III 284, 285, 286, 287, 353, 360 So Far, So Funny (Kanter) 309, 364 “So Proudly We Hailed” (del Bourgo) 328 Socrates 331, 334 Soldiers of Fortune (Schaffenberger) 124, 125, 315, 330, 352 Solomon, Chad 357, 359 Somervell, Lt. Gen. Brehon 320 The Song of Hiawatha (Blum) 77, 296, 325, 350, 356 Sørensen, Øystein x, 211, 215, 259, 315, 365 South Sea Girl (Baker) 58 Southey, Robert 336, 357 Space (World Around Us) 214, 264, 345 “Space Conquerors” (Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Stenzel) 268, 344 Space Stories and Sounds (Lion LP) 212 Sparling, Jack 198, 202, 203, 318, 321, 355 Spider-Man 228 Spiegle, Carrie 353 Spiegle, Dan 289, 353, 360 Spies (World Around Us) 187, 227, 267, 348–349 The Spirit (Eisner) 49 The Spirit Horses (Cameron) 144 Spitfire Comics 17, 49 Spur Award 144 The Spy (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 The Spy (Hicks) 44, 46, 47, 91, 324, 349 Spy James 334 Squatront! 300 “The Squaw” (Crandall) 196, 313 Stafford, Charlotte 253 Stanley, Henry Morton 127, 330, 352 Star Comics 207 Star Raiders (DC) 168 “The Star-Spangled Banner” (Hickey, Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 342, 359 The Star-Spangled Banner (Hickey, PP and Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 246, 335 Star Spangled War Stories 133 Star Wars 176 State of New York Joint Legislative Committee to Study the Publication of Comics 167, 312 Staton, Joe 289, 353 Steacy, Ken 147 The Steadfast Tin Soldier (Classics Illustrated Junior) 250, 337, 357 Stein, Marvin 345 Steinmetz, Charles Proteus 322 Stenzel, Al (Alsten) 268, 344 Stern, Bill 212 Stevenson, Augusta 117 Stevenson, Fanny Osbourne 137 Stevenson, Robert Louis 3, 10, 11, 16, 42, 43, 47, 49, 53, 78, 108, 115, 117, 127, 129, 135, 137, 146, 253, 271, 283, 284, 285, 289, 292, 310, 311, 319, 322, 323, 325, 327, 328, 330, 336, 337, 338, 350, 351, 353, 354, 355, 356, 360, 364 Stewart, Bhob 313 Stiskin, O.B. “Bernie” x, 234, 249, 270, 273, 315, 365

INDEX Stockley, Grif ix, xii Stoker, Bram 196, 355 Stokes, Manning 322 “Stone Soup” (Classics Illustrated Junior) 252, 338 Stories by Famous Authors Illustrated 66, 113–114, 119, 120, 133, 170, 243, 244, 280, 296, 316, 329, 334–335, 357; acquisition by Gilberton 114; quality of adaptations 113–114 “Stories from the Bible” (Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Flessel) 268, 344 “Stories from the World of Sports” (Classics Illustrated filler) 138, 328, 329, 330 “Stories of Early America” (Classics Illustrated filler) 328, 329, 330, 331 Storm, George 11 Stormy Foster 105, 192 Story, J.C. 259 The Story of a Bad Boy (Kiefer) 63 The Story of America (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 129, 152, 255, 296, 342, 359, C13 The Story of Flight (Costanza, PP and Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 245, 255, 335, 342 “The Story of Great Britain” (Cameron, Classics Illustrated feature) 138, 147, 331–332 The Story of Inflation (Nodel) 164 The Story of Jesus (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 89, 254, 255, 263, 295, 342, 359 The Story of Jesus (Prezio cover) 255, 342, 359 The Story of Jesus (“Three Camels” cover) 254, 255, 342 The Story of Money (Nodel) 164 The Story of the Commandos 49 “The Story of the Magic Horse” (Chestney) 38, 231, 318 Stover, Holly 356 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 41, 135, 310, 319, 349, 354 Strange Adventures (DC) 202 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson) 42, 310, 364 Straparola, Gianfrancesco 336, 337 Strauss, Johann 327 Strauss, Mike 303 Strauss, Richard 326 Strauss, Roberta see Feuerlicht, Roberta Strauss Streeter, Lin 128, 129, 144, 153, 225, 246, 255, 264, 331, 335, 337, 338, 339, 342, 345, 358, 359 “The Strongest of Vikings” (Tallarico) 226, 348 Stuart, Charles Edward (Bonnie Prince Charlie) 16, 328 Stuart, Jeb 330 A Study in Scarlet (Künstler cover) 126, 330, C6 A Study in Scarlet (Moskowitz) 121, 122, 198, 223, 277, 330 A Study in Scarlet (Zansky/Kiefer) 30, 32, 33, 66, 322 Sue, Eugene 69, 137, 323 Sullivan, Sir Arthur 138, 328 Sullivan, Michael 137, 319, 320 Sultan, Charles 203, 204, 319 Summer Fun (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 246, 335

Sundel, Alfred 5, 6, 153, 159, 160, 176, 178, 182, 194, 207, 208, 209, 214, 217, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 229, 231, 234, 236, 238, 242, 262, 267, 268, 310, 312, 313, 314, 315, 318–323, 325–326, 333–334, 348, 365; favorite subjects 235; role in selection of later titles 222 Sunn Classics (television films) 283 The Sunrise Times 13 Superman (DC character) 3, 10, 111, 122, 167, 264 Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? 125 Sutter, John 328, 333 La Svengali (Trilby) (Schrotter) 119, 335 Swamp Thing (DC) 168, 286 Swan, Curt 125 Swayze, Marc 122, 311, 365 Swift, Jonathan 11, 39, 320, 349, 354, 355 Swiss Family Robinson (Kiefer) 67, 246, 323, 350, C3 Swiss Family Robinson (Nodel) 323, 350, 356 Swiss Family Robinson (Storm) 11 The Tale of the Body Thief (Rice) 4 A Tale of Two Cities (Acc. Books) 292, 353 A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) 1, 137, 309 A Tale of Two Cities (New Comics) 11 A Tale of Two Cities (Nodel, second painted cover) 162, 271, 318 A Tale of Two Cities (Orlando) 169, 170, 180, 183, 270, 307, 310, 318, 349, 355, 360 A Tale of Two Cities (first painted cover) 4, 318, 349, 355, 360 A Tale of Two Cities (Zuckerberg) 16, 35, 36, 37, 66, 293, 310, 318, 334, 349 Tales from the Crypt (EC) 168, 169 Tales from the Crypt (Papercutz) 297 Tales from the Great Book (Famous Funnies) 254 Tales of Hoffman (Famous Operas) 328 The Talisman (Kiefer) 71, 198, 223, 330, 351 The Talisman (Künstler) 126, 330, 351 The Talisman (Scott) 59, 231, 348 Tallarico, Tony 225, 226, 246, 252, 267, 271, 327, 333, 341, 347–349, 359 Tambone, Rudy xi, 336 Tannhauser (Famous Operas) 325 Taras Bulba (Gogol) 229 Target Comics 11, 57 Tartaglione, John 206, 207, 260, 265, 323, 333, 342, 343, 345– 347, 359 Tarzan (comic strip) 10, 73, 174, 326 Tarzan films 37 Taylor, Deems 327 Taylor, Gary 311, 364 Technicolor 270 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 283 Teen-Age Temptations 59 Teglbjaerg, Lars x, 71, 305, 311, 365 The Tell-Tale Heart (Wilcox) 119, 120, 328, 354

The Ten Commandments (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 155, 156, 162, 188, 255, 296, 342, 359 Tenniel, John 77 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 319 Terry and the Pirates (comic strip) 192 The Texan 59 Thais (Famous Operas) 324 Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Commission 187, 258, 342 “There Was an Old Man with a Beard” (Lear) 253, 339 “These Brave Fields” (Glanzman) 266, 347 The 39 Steps (Lavery) 114, 334 “This Is the Place” (Nodel) 258, 342 This Month (Gilberton) 199, 235, 238 Thomas, H.C. 119 Thomas, Robert McG., Jr. 315, 364 Thomas, Roy x, 298 Thomas Alva Edison Award 102, 103, 144, 187, 245, 246 Thompson, Jill 287, 353, 360 Thorpe & Porter 242, 243, 278 The Three Fairies (Classics Illustrated Junior) 129, 339 Three Famous Mysteries (3 Famous Mysteries) (Zansky/Simon/Hicks) 24, 25, 33, 43, 94, 141, 166, 167, 168, 302, 320, 334 “The Three Fishers” (Kingsley) 319 The Three Giants (Classics Illustrated Junior) 341 The Three Golden Apples (Classics Illustrated Junior) 340 The Three Little Dwarfs (Classics Illustrated Junior) 340 The Three Little Pigs (The 3 Little Pigs) (Classics Illustrated Junior) 247, 336, 357 The Three Musketeers (Acc. Books) 354 The Three Musketeers (Cass. Book Company) 280 The Three Musketeers (Dumas) 100 The Three Musketeers (Evans) 140, 190, 191, 296, 307, 310, 317, 350, 355, 359 The Three Musketeers (Kildale) 2, 3, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 137, 140, 205, 236, 277, 310, 317 The Three Musketeers (painted cover) 191, 317 The Three Musketeers (Papercutz) 360 The Three Musketeers (Pendulum) 280 The Three Worlds of Gulliver (film) 39 Through the Looking Glass (Baker) 284, 285, 353, 360 Through the Looking Glass (British Classics Illustrated) 278, 352 Through Time and Space: Communications (World Around Us) 176, 224, 255, 263, 265, 347 Thumbelina (Classics Illustrated Junior) 129, 249, 337, 358 Thutmosis III 334 Tickle Tickle Tickle (Little Folks) 49 Tierney, Michael xii, 316, 365 Tiger Girl (Baker) 58 Tigers and Traitors (Nodel) 159, 334, 352

379 Tigers and Traitors (painted cover) 238, 334, 352 Time 165 The Time Machine (Cameron) 150, 152, 212, 277, 331, 349, 357, 359 The Time Machine (Wilson cover) 152, 210, 212, 317, 331, 349, 357, 359, C8 The Time of the Cave Man (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) 246, 335 Timely 57, 144, 168, 226; see also Atlas; Marvel The Tinder-Box (Classics Illustrated Junior) 339, 358 “Tippy, the Terrier” (Julius Caesar filler) 111, 326 TNT (Turner Network Television) 283 To the Stars! (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 176, 187, 227, 261, 343; educational aspect 261 The Toilers of the Sea (Froehlich) 92, 95, 301, 307, 325 The Toilers of the Sea (Torres) 176, 177, 234, 325, 352 Tolstoy, Leo 238, 278, 352 Tom Brown’s School Days (Fleming) 13–14, 55, 56, 57, 92, 323 Tom Brown’s School Days (McCann cover) 215, 216, 323, C10 Tom Brown’s School Days (Tartaglione) 138, 206, 222, 323, 352 Tom Sawyer (Dell) 16, 280 Tom Sawyer see The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for Classics Illustrated editions Tom Sawyer Detective (McCann) 213 Töpffer, Rodolphe 7 Topps 210 Torres, Angelo 174, 176, 177, 217, 222, 223, 261, 262, 265–267, 325, 332, 342, 343, 346–348; highly regarded by editorial staff 176 Toth, Alex 51, 231, 310, 314, 364 Tourneur, Maurice 79, 311 Le Traceur de pistes ( Joint European Series) see The Pathfinder “Tracks, Teeth and Bones” (Morrow) 265, 346 Tracy, Spencer 42 “Tracy Twins” (Best from Boys’ Life Comics, Browne) 268, 344 Trapani, Sal 127, 128, 129, 330, 331, 357 Treasure Chest 169, 192 Treasure Island (Acc. Books) 291, 354 Treasure Island (Australian Classics Illustrated) 274 Treasure Island (Blum) 2, 78, 79, 129, 325, 350, 356, 359 Treasure Island (Boyette) 289, 353 Treasure Island (Cass. Book Company) 280 Treasure Island (deLay) 11 Treasure Island (Dell) 16, 280 Treasure Island (Disney) 78, 129 Treasure Island (Long John Silver’s Seafood Shoppe) 79, 283, 325 Treasure Island (McCann) 213 Treasure Island (New Fun) 11 Treasure Island (Papercutz) 297, 360 Treasure Island (Stevenson) 10, 53, 78, 311, 364

380 Treasure Island (Tourneur) 79, 311 Treasure Island (Wilson cover) 210, 325, 350, 356, 359, C12 A Treasury of Victorian Murder (Geary) 284 Tristan and Isolde (Famous Operas) 325 Tropea-Wheatley, Doug 354 Trudeau, Edward Livingstone 326 True, Doreen 302 True, Raymond S. x, xi, 18, 139, 302, 303, 309, 310, 312, 316, 365 True Comics 10, 11, 203 True Grit (novel) 6 True Love Pictorial 59 Truman, Harry S. 319, 347 Tubman, Harriet 273, 334 Tukell, George 345, 348 The Turn of the Screw (Pendulum) 280 Turpin, Kathryn 283 Twain, Mark (Samuel L. Clemens) 3, 9, 33, 44, 51, 68, 69, 103, 127, 135, 201, 202, 232, 266, 287, 292, 314, 320, 321, 324, 328, 349, 350, 353, 354, 355, 360, 365 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Acc. Books) 354 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Gianni) 289, 290 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) (Kiefer) 2, 12, 51, 64, 69, 70, 71, 91, 229, 323–324, 349, 356, 359 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Nodel, second painted cover) 162, 271, 324 Twenty Years After (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 Twenty Years After (Burns) 100, 198, 222, 323 Twenty Years After (horror cover) 94, 100, 166, 323 Twenty Years After (Kiefer cover) 100, 166, 323 Twenty Years After (Roea cover) 100, 210, 323 Twilight Graphics 291–292 Twilight Man (First Publishing/First Classics, Inc.) 288 Twilight Zone (Dell) 196 Twin Circle 270, 280, 317, 318, 319, 320, 324, 326, 331, 339 Two-Fisted Tales (EC) 178 Two Little Savages (unpublished) 238, 334 “Two Merry Pranks of Till Eulenspiegel” (Berger) 231, 348 “Two Tales of Baron Munchausen” (World Around Us) 348 Two Years Before the Mast (Cass. Book Company) 280 Two Years Before the Mast (Webb, Heames) 3, 51, 52, 53, 166, 167, 198, 222, 321, 334, 349, C2 Typee (Acc. Books) 354 Typee (British Classics Illustrated) 62, 322, 352 Typee (McCann cover) 62, 215, 216, 322 Typee (Melville) 62 Typee (Whiteman/Whitman, Jackson) 61, 62, 92, 198, 222, 322 The Ugly Duckling (Classics Illustrated Junior) 247, 248, 336, 357

INDEX The Unbearable Lightness of Being (film) 287 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Acc. Books) 354 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (first painted cover) 40, 271, 320, 349 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Livingstone) 4, 39, 40, 41, 136, 319–320, 349 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (second painted cover) 271, 320 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe) 41, 310, 363 Under Two Flags (del Bourgo) 131, 132, 136, 139, 328, 351 Undersea Adventures (World Around Us) 178, 226, 227, 267, 348 Understanding Comics (McCloud) 10, 309, 316, 364 United Nations 130, 244, 333 The United Nations (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 176, 224, 262, 315, 335, 342, 343 United Nations (Picture Parade/Picture Progress) see Around the World With the United Nations Universal Pictures 51 Vadeboncoeur, Jim, Jr. xi, 59, 169, 231, 310, 365 “Valiant Lives” (Griffiths) 96 Valjean, Jean (character) 4, 39, 40, 159, 162, 167 The Valkyrie (Famous Operas) 325 Vallada, Christine 355 Vampirella (Warren) 196 Van der Loeff, A. 119 Van Doren, Carl 103 VanHook Studios 291 Verdi, Giuseppe 6, 138, 324, 325, 326, 327 Verne, Jules 3, 5, 44, 51, 69, 71, 88, 135, 138, 155, 159, 209, 214, 221, 228, 229, 238, 273, 279, 280, 283, 290, 292, 321–323, 326, 329, 332–334, 349–352, 354– 357; most popular Classics Illustrated author 135 “Vicksburg” (Kirby) 227, 260 Vigilante, Sylvester 258 Vikings (World Around Us) 178, 199, 224, 226, 235, 267, 348 Villagran, Ricardo 289, 353 Vincent, Eric 288, 353, 360 Virgil 238, 239, 278, 352, 357 The Virginian (Nodel) 1, 158, 159, 210, 333, 351 The Virginian (Roea cover) 210, 333 “The Voice of the City” (Gianni) 353 Voodoo 59 A Vote for Crazy River (The Meaning of Elections) 335 Wade, Mary Hazelton 76 Wagner, Anna 211 Wagner, Richard 138, 324–327 Waldinger, Morris 120, 121, 329, 356 Waldman, Ed 51, 331 Wallace, Lew 170, 332, 335, 350 Wallace, William 3, 81, 196, 332 “The Walled City” (Premiani) 224, 266, 346 Wallenstein, Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von 333 Walsh, William A. 89, 247, 248, 249, 252, 254, 264, 336–341, 342, 345, 347, 357–359; domi-

nant Classics Illustrated Junior artist 247, 248; style 247, 249 Walston, Frank 315, 364 Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories (Dell) 168 Walton, Izaak 267, 348 Wambi, the Jungle Boy (Kiefer) 49, 63, 67, 71 War Adventures 133 War Against Crime 171 The War Between the States (Biggs cover) 211, 343, 359 The War Between the States (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 19, 204, 207, 211, 226, 227, 260, 261, 266, 296, 343, 359 “War Drums” (WAU, Morrow) 266, 347 “War Leaders” (WAU, Kihl) 266, 347 The War of the Worlds (Acc. Books) 355 The War of the Worlds (Cameron) 147, 148, 212, 281, 307, 312, 331, 352, 364 The War of the Worlds ( Jack Lake Productions) 296, 357, 359 Ward, David S. 282 Ward, Jay 253, 315, 364 Ward, Lynd 22, 23, 24, 51, 57, 100, 307 Ware, Hames xi, 17, 19, 38, 51, 61, 64, 66, 67, 75, 77, 85, 119, 120, 127, 131, 133, 144, 169, 203, 229, 300, 303, 309–314, 336, 363, 365 Warner Brothers 32, 105 Warren, James 196 Warren Publishing 171, 221 Warshow, Robert 167, 312, 364 Washington, Booker T. 273, 334 Washington, George 138, 265, 323, 328, 335, 345, 347 Washington Square Press (Pocket Books) 238, 315 Waterloo (Blum cover) 89, 332 Waterloo (Ingels) 2, 172, 173, 198, 332, 349 Wayne, John 81, 144 We Were There at the Opening of the Erie Canal (McCann) 213 Weather (World Around Us) 263, 348 Webb, Robert Hayward 51, 52, 53, 54, 79, 131, 264, 307, 321–323, 331, 334, 355, C2; love of boats 51; robust style 51, 131 Wedgwood, Thomas 326 Wein, Len 355 Weintraub, Deena 334 Weird Fantasy (EC) 169, 174, 176 Weird Science (EC) 174, 182 Weizmann, Chaim 44, 321 Welker, Gaylord (Gay) 259, 342, 345 Welles, Orson 109, 331 Wells, H.G. (Herbert George) 135, 147, 152, 159, 174, 178, 216, 225, 229, 238, 280, 283, 284, 288, 292, 296, 331–333, 349, 350, 352–355, 357, 360 Wells, Stanley 311, 364 Wentworth, Peter 347 Wermuth, Arthur 319 Wertham, Florence Hesketh 165 Wertham, Fredric 1, 73, 94, 103, 111, 121, 129, 165–167, 254, 311, 312, 364

Wertheimer, Frederic J. see Wertham, Fredric Western Playhouse (Lion LP) 212 Western Publishing 192 Western Stories (Kiefer) 73, 78, 325, 350 Western Stories (Oughton cover) 271, 325 Westinghouse, George 324 The Westinghouse Story: The Dreams of a Man (Kiefer) 66, 112, 244, 335 Westward Ho! (Kingsley) 10 Westward Ho! (Simon) 22, 23, 24, 140, 303, 319, 349, C1 Whale, James 51 Whaling (World Around Us) 178, 217, 224, 263, 267, 335, 348 “What’s Wrong with Comics?” (ABC radio program) 165 Wheatley, Phillis 273, 334 Wheeler-Nicholson, Major Malcolm 10, 11, 55, 63, 76 When the Sleeper Wakes (unpublished) 238, 334 Whipple, Prince 334 The White Company (Blum) 87, 115, 116, 198, 223, 329 White Fang (Acc. Books, unpublished) 355 White Fang (Blum) 83, 114, 327, 351 Whiteman, Ezra 61, 322 Whitman, Maurice 61 Whitman, Walt 181, 320 Whitney, Eli 322 Whittier, John Greenleaf 321 Whittle, Frank 260 Whiz Comics 122 “Who Am I?” (Classics Illustrated feature) 4, 139, 141 “Who Knows?” (Maupassant) 333– 334 Wiater, Stanley 310, 364 Wilcox, Jim 119, 120, 328 Wild Animals I Have Known (Cole) 207, 278, 333, 351, C9 Wild Bill Hickok (Trapani, Iorio) 127, 128, 212, 330–331, 352, 357 The Wild Swans (Classics Illustrated Junior) 338, 358 Wilde, Oscar 278, 352 William Tell (del Bourgo) 133, 329, 351 Williams, Daniel Hale 273, 334 Williamson, Al 6, 174, 176, 178, 192, 196, 265, 332, 346 Willinsky, Samuel 73, 114, 286, 322, 323, 327–329 Wilson, Gahan 284, 353, 360 Wilson, George 152, 198, 210, 255, 321, 325, 327, 331, 332, 342, 356, 357, 359, C8, C12, C13 The Wind in the Willows (painted cover) C16 The Window (Kiefer) 335 “Windy Nights” (Stevenson) 253, 338 Wing Brady 63 The Wishing Table (Classics Illustrated Junior) 129, 339, The Wishing Well (Classics Illustrated Junior) 341, 359 Wister, Owen 1, 158, 333, 351 “Witches in Salem” (World Around Us) 349 Witek, Joseph 314, 364

INDEX With Fire and Sword (painted cover) C9 With Fire and Sword (Sienkiewicz) 137, 173 With Fire and Sword (Woodbridge) 173, 175, 332, 350 The Wizard of Oz (Classics Illustrated Junior) 202, 212, 250, 253, 339, 358 The Wizard of Oz (Dell) 280 Wolfe, Tom 260 Wolk, Douglas 6, 309, 364 The Woman in White (Blum) 78, 135, 136, 222, 325, 334, 352 The Woman in White (Collins) 78, 311, 363 The Woman in White (Roea cover) 210, 211, 325 Women and the Comics (Robbins, Yronwode) 310, 311, 364 Won by the Sword (Tartaglione) 206, 333, 351 A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (Hawthorne) 252, 338, 339, 340 Wonder Boy 49 “The Wonderful Earth Movie” (Lecar, Torres) 235, 262, 343 The Wonderful World of Fairy Tales (Lion LP) 211–212, 253

Wonderworld Comics 49 Wood, Wally 169, 226 Woodbridge, George 173, 174, 175, 176, 332, 346, Woods, Granville T. 334 Woody Woodpecker (Dell) 168 Woolrich, Cornell 335 Woolworth 2, 238 The World Around Us xi, 4, 6, 19, 21, 51, 112, 129, 133, 143, 158, 171, 173, 174, 176, 187, 191, 199, 204, 207, 210, 213, 214, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 238, 246, 255, 259, 260, 263–268, 279, 297, 304, 335, 344–349; educational role 265; impact of postal rulings 223, 267–268; range of topics 180; significance of The French Revolution 264 The World of Fanzines (Wertham) 165 “The World of Science” (WAU feature) 266, 348–349 “The World of Story” (WAU feature) 231, 266, 347–349 World War II 12, 35, 55, 96, 100, 137, 138, 143, 144, 270, 300, 345

World War II (Classics Illustrated Special Issue) 176, 187, 261, 343 World War 3 Illustrated (Kuper) 287 Worth/Harvey 76 Wotjkiewicz, Chuck 353, 354 Woudenberg, Emily 354 Wray, Bill 353 Wray, Sam 353 Wren, P.C. (Percival Christopher) 114, 334 Wright Brothers 323, 345 Wunder, George 192 Wuthering Heights (Biggs cover) 211, 325, 356 Wuthering Heights (Geary) 284, 353, 360 Wuthering Heights (Guay cover) 293, 354, C16 Wuthering Heights (Kiefer) 4, 64, 68, 135, 136, 198, 222, 325, 334, 352, 356, 359 Wyeth, N.C. (Newell Convers) 47, 78, 81, 115, 116, 211, 307, 311 Wyler, William 68, 170 Wyss, Johann 11, 323, 350, 356 X-Men (Marvel) 203, 228

381 “The Yarn of the ‘Nancy Bell’” (Gilbert) 321 Yarrish, Ralph 273 Yeager, Chuck 260, 345 The Yellow Kid 10 The Yellow Kid in McFadden’s Flats 10 Young, Leigh 358, 359 Young Franklin Roosevelt (Dresser) 117 Young Romance 226 Yronwode, Catherine 310, 311, 364 Yu Jing 358 Zansky, Jeanette xii, 26, 27, 28, 31, 34 Zansky, Louis 3, 16, 17, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, C1; artistic training 26, 27; career as artist 27, 28; personality 26; style 28 Zenger, John Peter 347 Zola, Emile 111, 147, 331, 352 Zuckerberg, Lillian Chestney see Chestney, Lillian Zuckerberg, Stanley Maxwell 35, 36, 37, 38, 203, 293, 318, 319, 334, 365 Zweifach, Ira 330, 331