McFarland & Company (series)

Classics Illustrated

Description by OLDIES.com:

From 1941 to 1971, the Classics Illustrated series brought abridged, comics-style versions of literary masterpieces such as Homer's Odyssey, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Goethe's Faust, and Hugo's Les Miserables to millions of children and adults worldwide. Founded by Russian Jewish immigrant Albert Kanter, the series was the most successful publication of its kind and still inspires fond memories and passionate collecting today.

This book tells the story of Kanter's enterprise, from its beginnings at the dawn of comics' "Golden Age," through the anti-comics hysteria of the early 1950s, through the end of operations in 1971 and the unsuccessful attempts to revive the series in the 1990s. The careers and contributions of each of the artists are covered, with much information from exclusive interviews and correspondence with such illustrators as George Evans, Gray Morrow, Lou Cameron, Norman Nodel and Rudolph Palais.

Detailed appendices provede artist attributions and the contents of each issue in every Classics Illustrated-related series. More than 200 illustrations offer a generous sample of what drew millions of readers to "the World's Finest Juvenile Publication."