Comics UK

Lew Stringer wrote:The books British 1950s Sci-Fi and Horror Comic Books and Great British Fantasy Comic Book Heroes provide more info on the comics we're talking about. Well worth it if you can afford them

I agree. Sadly, the second of those was a bit outside my price range but nobody with an interest in British black & white comics from the 1950s should be without a copy of the second one. It's one of those books that seem to turn up fresh treasures every time you browse through their pages!

- Phil R.

I think we did the comic world a favour with those B&W reprints because black and white art is very much valued by a lot of people. When the original art isn't available for the Essentials/Showcase collections they have to use black and white scans of the colour pages which look very muddy. Although I do remember later Alan Class editions looking rather grey and washed out. As if the photocopier was low on toner.

stevezodiac wrote:I think we did the comic world a favour with those B&W reprints because black and white art is very much valued by a lot of people. When the original art isn't available for the Essentials/Showcase collections they have to use black and white scans of the colour pages which look very muddy. Although I do remember later Alan Class editions looking rather grey and washed out. As if the photocopier was low on toner.

Yes, I think by then he was reprinting from his own reprints so the quality deteriorated with every re-issue.

The earlier ones have excellent reproduction though. There's a certain rough and ready appeal to those Alan Class comics. You can often see the paste up marks around the new bits he added to the covers, or around the logos, etc. And if he reprinted a continued Marvel story he'd often just slap THE END on the last panel because the next issue would feature something totally different! It gave a weird finality to the fate of some Marvel heroes and was all part of the charm of those comics.

I knbow there are collectors of those reprints - my three have attracted bids on the first day plus a message from a US buyer asking if I will sell to overseas bidders. But I prefer not to.

stevezodiac wrote:I knbow there are collectors of those reprints - my three have attracted bids on the first day plus a message from a US buyer asking if I will sell to overseas bidders. But I prefer not to.

Some of them go for crazy prices. I'm holding onto mine for now as I really like them.

Some of the early ones are very rare indeed. The last I heard there didn't seem to be any surviving copies of one of the EC reprints!

philcom55 wrote:Some of the early ones are very rare indeed. The last I heard there didn't seem to be any surviving copies of one of the EC reprints!

I don't have any of those but I've seen the 1960s Alan Class comics on eBay for £15 to £30 each which seems bizarre for reprint comics. (Although I don't know if they all sold for that.)

The books British 1950s Sci-Fi and Horror Comic Books and Great British Fantasy Comic Book Heroes provide more info on the comics we're talking about. Well worth it if you can afford them:


I have a copy of both these books and are a joy to read , if you are into old British comics put them on your Christmas list,as for the Alan cass comics these were a Saturday treat when I was younger , I always pick them up when I see them for sale at bootsales etc , to this day I still have not seen to this day the comics that noman and lots of others come from.

Re-igniting this old thread, here's some more covers for you - https://downthetubes.net/?p=108169