Alan Class Comics was a British comics publishing company that operated between 1959 and 1989. The company produced anthology titles, reprinting comics stories from many U.S. publishers of the 1940s to 1960s in a black and white digest size format for a UK audience. During the 1960s and 1970s, these reprints were the main medium through which British children were introduced to American monster and mystery comics, as well as most non-DC or Marvel superheroes.
The various Alan Class titles contained reprints of stories originally from such U.S. comics publishers as Timely, Atlas (and their later incarnation, Marvel Comics) American Comics Group (ACG), Charlton Comics, Archie Comics (and their Red Circle Comics and MLJ imprints), Fawcett Comics, Lev Gleason Publications, and Sterling Comics, as well as King Features comics and newspaper strips. Included in these reprints were many early mystery, superhero, and monster stories by artists such as Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby that are now regarded as classics of the 1950s and early 1960s.
Although Alan Class put out more than 25 titles in all, the company's six core titles — Astounding Stories, Creepy Worlds, Secrets of the Unknown, Sinister Tales, Suspense Stories, and Uncanny Tales — lasted almost the entire publishing history of the company.
History
Alan Class (born in London, England, 21 July 1937) began as an importer of remaindered copies of American movie, romance, and detective magazines for UK distribution. (After World War II, the U.K. was intent on promoting homegrown publishers, and thus banned the direct importation of American periodicals.)
To avoid the cost, supply, and importation difficulties he had encountered, in 1958 Class set up a publishing business, Alan Class and Co. Ltd, to produce his own magazines, and entered into an agreement with an American comic and comic strip syndication company for the rights to reproduce U.S. comic books and strips under their control for a U.K audience. (Coincidentally, in 1959, the U.K. lifted the previous ban on importing foreign publications.)
The company's first offering was the one-shot Race for the Moon (1959), anthologizing Harvey science fiction reprints. Other one-shots and short series followed, and in the summer of 1962, the first of the Alan Class core titles, Creepy Worlds debuted; followed shortly thereafter by the debut of another long-running title, Secrets of the Unknown. Core titles Suspense Stories and Uncanny Tales debuted in 1963, Sinister Tales in 1964, and finally Astounding Stories in 1966.
In 1963, Alan Class bought the inventory of L. Miller & Son, Ltd., a UK publisher since the 1940s that had also reprinted many U.S. comics in black-and-white format. This purchase included the asbestos printing plates from which Miller had produced their comics. However, it is unclear what inventory titles this gave Alan Class. Many of the companies that Miller had published material from, such as Charlton and Fawcett, had already been reprinted by Class; and most of the Fawcett superhero material in which Miller had specialized — Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr. and the rest of the Marvel Family especially — were not reprinted as a result of the long-running legal case between National/D.C. and Fawcett over Captain Marvel.
Alan Class Comics lost the right to its leased Marvel Comics characters after 1966, when Odhams Press began publishing its Power Comics line in January 1967, and licensed the Marvel Comics superheroes for their own titles. There was some overlap, with both companies reprinting Marvel superhero stories for some time. The available reprint material was reduced even further when, sometime between 1968 and 1971, King Features Syndicate sued Alan Class over publishing rights to its titles and characters, including The Phantom. As a result of this diminution of the accessible stories, by the early 1970s the Alan Class titles began to issue more and more reprints of material already printed in earlier issues.
Demise and legacy
By the late 1980s, slow sales and distribution problems, combined with the rise of the specialist comic shop and the decline of newsagent purchases, together with the easy availability of new U.S. comics and back issues, signaled the end of the line for the business. As Class himself said, "The reality was ... costs were escalating, sales were falling — Marvels were on everybody's wish-list, and my comics were at 55p which I didn’t feel could be increased — enough was enough!"
