Classics Illustrated to be launched in UK

This is spooky... on Sunday I was bemoaning the lack of newsstand comics in the UK aimed at early school age children and on Monday the following is announced...

The classic American series Classics Illustrated is returning to the UK in September, with the first issues of Classics Illustrated and Classics Illustrated Junior available in W. H. Smiths from 25 September. The new series will also be available at selected Borders and other high street retailers and independent newsagents. The new series is also being distributed in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Eire.

The new series will launch with two titles: The War of the Worlds aimed at 8-14-year-olds and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for younger readers of 5 to 8. The publisher is Classic Comic Store Ltd., run by Jeff Brooks, who has been a collector and dealer in Classics Illustrated for some time. The books are licensed from Jack Lake Productions of Canada who hold the copyright on behalf of First Classics Inc. Although reprinting the original books, the artwork has been digitally enhanced to give a fresh feel to both colour and quality of the graphics.

The books will retail at £2.99 and (for juniors) £2.50. Future issues will include Oliver Twist, Robin Hood, The Man in the Iron Mask, Romeo and Juliet and A Journey to the Centre of the Earth; the junior line will continue with The Ugly Duckling, Cinderella, The Pied Piper, The Sleeping Beauty, The 3 Little Pigs and Jack and the Beanstalk.

Jeff Brooks has said, "These classic novels have introduced several generations of children to the greatest characters in literature—Oliver Twist, Long John Silver, d'Artagnan, Quasimodo and Hamlet, to name just a few—and have fuelled their desire to read the original works.

"At a time when we see children reading less and our literacy rates are a great worry, the graphic novel has the potential to get reluctant readers engaged in these wonderful stories. We can see these being widely supported in schools as well and we have added new material to stretch the reader with discussion topics and a timeline of what was happening in the world when the book was first published."

It will be interesting to see how well this goes down in W. H. Smiths—will they rack the new titles with the comics or somewhere else? Will people looking for something for their children actually know the comic exists. Our local Smiths is a marvellous example of bad planning, with pre-school comics displayed on a shelf that's higher than the average 7-year-old is tall, stacked, overlapping, three deep so that you can never see what's behind the first row because the comics are so stuffed with free gifts and all come in plastic bags nowadays that they slump down on the shelf and become invisible. I had to look very hard to find a copy of the anniversary issue of the Beano because it wasn't obviously there on display. Other comics, including Commando, are stocked elsewhere in the shop, yards away from the junior titles.

Will it work? The Classical Comics line seems to have done well and has some excellent titles due and I must confess I'd hoped that Look and Learn could have done something similar with the strips we owned; I floated the notion in 2005 but it only got as far as buying some artwork for one of the strips (Oliver Twist) before other work got in the way and the idea didn't progress any further. I shall be watching the progress of Classical Comics and Comics Illustrated with great interest.

(* Classics Illustrated © First Classics Inc.)