The Three Musketeers, Issue #1, by Alexander Dumas, Classic Comics published 1941, illustrated by Malcolm Kildale Ivanhoe, Issue #2, by Sir Walter Scott, Classic Comics published December 1941, illustrated by Malcolm Kildale The Count of Monte Cristo, Issue #3, by Alexander Dumas, Classic Comics published March 1942, illustrated by Ray Ramsey. The Last of the Mohicans, Issue #4, by James Fenimore Cooper, Classic Comics published August 1942, illustrated by Ray Ramsey. Moby Dick, Issue #5, by Herman Melville, Classic Comic published September 1942, illustrated by Louis Zansky and Harvey Kurtzman. Classic Comics was the brainchild of Albert Lewis Kanter (1897-1973), a Russian immigrant who perhaps was never totally fluent in English. That gave him idea to reduce the world's greatest literature into comic book form so that he would have an easier time reading it. It is not clear if this was intention but what actually happened is that school kids stopped reading the original books and read the Classic Comics instead. When I was a kid and the teacher assigned a book report, I would run out and buy the Classic Comic Book and base my report on it. Even college and university students were known to do the same thing.
