Posted by jdanddiet on Aug 23, 2010 17:49 (Aug 23, 2010 17:49)
I recently saw a big pile of Alan Class comics in a charity shop which brought back some memories. The Class "A" series of comics were very popular in the Eighties when I was growing up and mostly consisted of re-prints from American comics, packaged up and sold under an emotive banner. Titles included "Sinister Tales", "Uncanny Tales", "Astounding Stories" and "Secrets of the Unknown" and contained around six to eight stories per issue. This represented good value for money as they generally sold for 10 or 15p, not much pocket money even 25 years ago. As these stories could be very expensive to track down in their original form, The Class "A" as they were known, tapped into a fat gold seam full of intriguing classic stories.
For a Star Wars obsessed twelve-year old, all the stories had a quaint fifties/sixties feel to them and were almost always in black and white, despite the glossy covers. The writers were also of good quality, with Stan Lee himself a regular name, although often they (and the artists) were not credited. Scenarios varied from horror to science fiction, with odd goings-on always guaranteed. Many issues also included purely text stories, but if I'm honest, when I was a kid I rarely read these, concentrating on the adventures with pictures instead!
What's interesting in reading these again is how familiar they seem. Many of the themes and twists are still being used today, in books or movies and they were also a testing ground for early superheroes with characters such as Mandrake (a mysterious magician with real magic powers) and The Jaguar, a man bestowed with amazing animal powers. The strips did vary in quality of course, with some twists not working particularly well, or coming out of the blue as the writer ran out of ideas.
Here's some of the notable stories I recalled as I flicked through the issues I picked up:-
"The Green Thing" (Secrets of the Unknown 159): Written by comics legend Jack Kirby, the Green Thing is a two-part story that shows the common fear of technology that pervaded much of Sixties science fiction. A botanist injects a weed with an experimental miracle drug and watches it turn into a malicious Swamp Thing-like creature.
"Come Back, Cynthia" (Astounding Stories 114): A heart-wrenching, evocative tale of lost love that has a twist reminiscent of a certain 1999 movie starring Bruce Willis...
"I am a Robot" (Sinister Tales 134): another Stan Lee creation laden with technofear as a scientist creates a powerful robot which is inevitably used to further man's greed.
"The Needle Swings" (Secrets of the Unknown 150): one of the many anti-communist strips, this time set in East Germany and concerning a partisan lie-detector machine.
"A Small Matter of Time" (Amazing Stories of Suspense 148): in a story remarkably similar to the plot of the video game Command & Conquer Red Alert, mysterious agents attempt to change the course of history by eliminating a certain dictator...
"The Phantom City" (Astounding Stories 115): A rare western story about an elusive golden city.
"The Monster in the Iron Mask" (Amazing Stories of Suspense 149): A standard monster story, notable for it's main character's similarity to Dr. Doom. Drawn by Jack Kirby (funnily enough!)
Even for reprints, slowly and surely these comics are becoming harder to track down, so for that warm sixties paranoia-fuelled glow, I earnestly suggest you seek out the Class "A"!
