BUNDLES OF FUN AND WONDER!
In the 1960s,when it was “hit or miss” as to what title your local newsagents [in my case,Mina Road had Jarman’s -a shop with a glass fronted cabinet displaying toy soldiers and a rotating rack with comics!] might carry,there was was one publisher who offered us a mix of Atlas,Charlton,Marvel and other publishers’ strips….
….ALAN CLASS!
Yes,you could find the Silver Surfer,Avengers or even Daredevil intermixed with Captain Atom,Mercury Man,the Mysterious Traveller,Charlton war and horror as well as science fiction. I don’t think it occurred to us at the time that these characters came from different companies!
For a 1/- [5p] I had a good read on the long bus trip to Weston-Super-Mare in Summer-time. My gran and grand-dad weren’t stupid -they knew comics would keep a restless kid in check! One that always stuck in my mind was Paul Reinman drawn “THE LAST PATROL!” [Sinister Tales no.208];as I studied history and,for my own comics work,uniforms,I was amazed at Reinman’s uniform accuracy!
Bristol Bus Station was the best place to pick up copies,but that was on day trips. Normally,Jarman’s or a dark little newsagents in Sussex Place,where I got my Plastacine,would have copies.
Americans say to me:”But it’s all in black and white!!” I say “so what?” Most weekly comics,or titles such as The Purple Hood,Miracleman,etc., were in black and white in the UK! My brother,Peter,may have argued with me as to which was best -Marvel [my choice] or DC [his]- but we both read Class!
From the 1960s to the 1980s,Class published his titles,some strips reprinted in other titles later on,but it wasn’t until the late 1970s when Marvel realised it’s weekly comics were being out-done that they stopped Class from reprinting their strips! After all:weekly comic =a US comic broken into one part each week over,say,two months,but Class =full story in one issue….for less money!!
When I corresponded with Alan in the 1980s,after Denis Gifford put me in touch with him,he noted the distribution problem. He was delivering 1000 or so copies to W.H.Smith to distribute but after complaints that the titles were not appearing in shops,he discovered the copies had been sent away for shredding/pulping! Even placing an order with W.H.Smith was no guarantee that you’d get a copy -just your deposit back!
Of course,in the 1970s,Alan co-published the ALLY SLOPER “Nostalgicomic” and even a “Penny Comics of the Thirties” collector’s set with comic historian Denis Gifford.
I think that it was a sad day when Alan Class stopped publishing his titles. But the question remains -does his re-printing agreements with companies still hold?
Unless you were a kid in the 1960s/1970s,you’ll never understand the nostalgia of seeing these titles.
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[…] ComicBits has a warm and affectionate look back at the comics of Alan Class and those days as a kid in the 70s seeking out comics in whatever (often backstreet and dodgy-looking) newsagent you could find who had what you wanted. I know where they are coming from - I still remember regularly buying comics in a very dingy newsagent which was literally a hole in the wall - you walked into a garage door-sized opening with no door, just a shutter at night, all basement in style, no windows, a grimy bulb that predated the Second World War and could barely create enough illumination to dazzle a moth, dark, dusty, dirty, with the man behind the counter in the fingerless gloves and holey cardigan like something from Steptoe and Son, but oh, he had a great stash of all sorts of comics. And he was near my school. So yes, I know exactly what they mean about how it felt to find these sorts of comics in unlikely places when it was the mid 70s and you didn’t have a specialist comics store to hand. Four colour treasures. Or in the case of the Class comics, black and white treasures. Print this Story Send to a Friend […]