I don’t have much to say about this issue of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED–and I no longer have my copy, so I can’t present more than the cover. It was given to me by my Uncle Billy, my father’s brother, who had become aware of my interest in comic books and who had found it among his things, purchased back in 1959. The book was devoted to telling the historical exploits of Daniel Boone and his ilk in opening up the west and was no doubt inspired by the huge Davy Crockett craze set off by the Disney television movies. Honestly, I found it dull–but I kept it nonetheless. The fascinating parts of this issue to me were its age–it was for a very long time the oldest comic book that I owned, coming from before the Marvel Age of Comics had even started–and the fact that ti had cardstock covers that made it feel more like a book than a proper comic book. That, I think, was the idea, as CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED attempted to market itself as possessing strong literary values. In a time before Cliff’s Notes, the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED line (which was kept perpetually in print) formed the basis of innumerable kids’ book reports–those who couldn’t be bothered reading the actual prose source material.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 