Classics Illustrated Junior
| Classics Illustrated Junior | |
|---|---|
Cover, issue 507
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Famous Authors, Ltd. Gilberton Publications |
| Schedule | Monthly |
| Format | Ongoing series |
| Publication date | October 1953 — August 1962 |
| No. of issues | 77 |
| Creative team | |
| Created by | Albert Lewis Kanter |
| Artist(s) |
L.B. Cole Kurt Schaffenberger John Costanza Alex Blum Graham Ingels |
Classics Illustrated Junior is a comic book series of seventy-seven fairy and folk tale, myth and legend comic book adaptations created by Albert Lewis Kanter as a spin-off of his flagship comic book line Classics Illustrated.
Published by Famous Authors, Ltd. (The Gilberton Company, Inc.), the series kicked off in October 1953 with an adaptation of the Grimm Brothers' Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs illustrated by Alex Blum. The series' last original issue was The Runaway Dumpling, issue 577 of 1962. The series ceased publication in Spring 1971. Published monthly, issues cost slightly more than other comic books of the time with a 15 cent cover price rather than the usual 10 or 12-cents. Close to the end of publication in 1971, prices jumped to 25-cents. At its peak, in 1960, Classics Illustrated Junior's average monthly circulation was 262,000.
Issues included among their contents features such as comics adaptations of Aesop Fables (usually two to three pages), a limerick by Edward Lear, a Mother Goose rhyme, or poem from Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses (one page), and a one-page factual article about a bird, beast, or reptile. As the publisher allowed only in-house advertising in his books, the back cover interior sometimes offered a catalog of titles and a subscription order form. First editions included a "Coming Next Month" ad and a dot-to-dot puzzle on the inside front cover. The interior of the back cover featured a "Color this Picture with your Crayons" full-page line-drawn illustration of a scene from the tale. The exterior of the back cover often depicted a full-page color illustration from the tale. Artists included John Costanza, Kurt Schaffenberger, L. B. Cole and Graham Ingels. Unlike other comic book publishers, Kanter reprinted his titles regularly and the line was distributed abroad.
In 2003, Jack Lake Productions Inc., based in Toronto, Canada began remastering and republishing the entire Classics Illustrated Junior series.
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