| Slot: |
Classics Illustrated 43 (O) |
| Item: |
Classics Illustrated 43 |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0916116012
|
Owner Comments
Classics Illustrated #43 is referenced in Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” (SOTI) on page 311. Wertham uses CI #43 as an example of his disdain for comic books that provide condensed versions of classic literature. From Wertham’s viewpoint, comic books that contain versions of classic stories deprive children of the benefits of reading and appreciating the true nature of classic literature. More specifically, with regards to Classics Illustrated #43, Wertham describes the comic as follows: “There is a comic book which has on its cover two struggling men, one manacled with chains locked around hands and feet, the other with upraised fist and a reddened, bloody bandage around his head; onlookers: a man with a heavy iron mallet on one side and a man with a rifle and a bayonet on the other. The first eight pictures of this comic book show an evil looking man with a big knife held like a dagger threatening a child who says: Oh, don’t cut my throat, sir! Am I correct in classifying this as a crime comic? Or should I accept it as what it pretends to be – Dickens’ Great Expectations?”Here again Wertham returns to the central theme of the SOTI – comic books lack redeeming value in that they are all essentially crime dramas that contribute directly or indirectly to misguiding youth. From Wertham’s perspective this analysis applies to both comic books that portray crime directly as well as those that do so with more subtlety such as those that masquerade as classic literature when, from Wertham’s point of view, they are actually crime based distortions of the classics.
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| Slot: |
Classics Illustrated 50 (O) |
| Item: |
Classics Illustrated 50 |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0223281008
|
Owner Comments
Classics Illustrated #50 is referenced in Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” (SOTI) in the text on page 37. Wertham found little redeeming value in comics based on classic literature. In general, on page 36 of the SOTI, he describes this class of comics as follows: “Comic books adapted from classical literature are reportedly used in 25,000 schools in the United States. If this is true, then I have never heard a more serious indictment of American education, for they emasculate the classics, condense them (leaving out everything that makes the book great), are just as badly printed and inartistically drawn as other comic books and, as I have often found, do not reveal to children the world of good literature which has at all times been the mainstay of liberal and humanistic education.” With regards to the Tom Sawyer story found in Classics Illustrated #50, Wertham describe it as follows: “An adaptation from one of Mark Twain’s novels has the picture of two small boys in a fight, one tearing the others hair, a scene not the keynote of Mark Twain’s novel. Inside, three consecutive pictures show a fight between two boys (‘In an instant both boys were gripped together like cats’) and the last picture shows one boy with a finger almost in the other’s eye (the injury-to-the-eye motif again).”I have included a scan of the fight scene as described by Wertham.
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| Slot: |
Classics Illustrated 55 (O) |
| Item: |
Classics Illustrated 55 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0330307014
|
Owner Comments
Classics Illustrated #55 is referenced in Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” (SOTI) in the text on pages 311-312.
Wertham was skeptical of the educational value of classic novels interpreted into comic books and describes Classics Illustrated #55 as follows “Elizabeth V. Brattig, a high school teacher, asked children as a class assignment to read the comic book versions of classics and then compare them with the original book. In the case of George Eliot’s Silas Marner the children laughed ‘at the droll discrepancies in the story and the incongruities in the illustrations’: ‘Silas is represented as senile and hoary, somewhat like the Ancient Mariner throughout’; ‘the flavor of George Eliot, the warm human touches, the scenes of matchless humor, had been completely ignored by the Classic Comics.”
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| Slot: |
Classics Illustrated 68 (O) |
| Item: |
Classics Illustrated 68 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
1970758010
|
Owner Comments
Classics Illustrated #68 is referenced in Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” (SOTI) in the text on pages 36-37.
Wertham believed that comic books based on classic literature debased the original work. He uses an example from Classics Illustrated #68 to emphasize this point “David Dempsey, writing in the New York Times Book Review, has said of the comic book Julius Caesar that it has ‘a Brutus that looks astonishingly like Superman. Our course will seem too bloody to cut the head off and then hack the limbs… says Brutus, in language, that sound like Captain Marvel…” and he notes that ‘Julius Caesar is followed by a story called ‘Tippy, the Terrier.’”.
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| Slot: |
Classics Illustrated 89 (O) |
| Item: |
Classics Illustrated 89 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
1220600009
|
Owner Comments
Classics Illustrated #89 featuring Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) with a full page black and white illustration of the comic’s cover with the caption “Pictures from a typical classic-comic”.
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| Slot: |
Classics Illustrated 128 (O) |
| Item: |
Classics Illustrated 128 |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0219230005
|
Owner Comments
Classics Illustrated #128 featuring Macbeth is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) in the text on page 102.
Wagner believed that educational comics, such as Classics Illustrated, had done little to improve the comic genre and often overemphasized violence. For example, on page 102, he described the stories of Hamlet and Macbeth as depicted in Classics Illustrated as follows “In Hamlet, for instance, I noticed that of the forty-four pages nine were of the ghost scene, while eight more were of direct physical combat (Hamlet himself goes about most of the time with a drawn sword). Six pictures show Ophelia slowly drowning. Hamlet, however did not seem to be, in text, quite so strictly corrected as Macbeth, the ‘classic’ (in all senses) comic of which Punch made so much”.
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