Recognizing the appeal of early comic books, Russian-born publisher Albert Lewis Kanter (1897–1973) believed he could use the new medium to introduce young and reluctant readers to "great literature".

[1] He created Classic Comics for Elliot Publishing Company in 1941 with its debut issues being The Three Musketeers, followed by Ivanhoe and The Count of Monte Cristo.

[citation needed] With the fourth issue, The Last of the Mohicans, in 1942, Kanter moved the operation to different offices, and the corporate identity was changed to the Gilberton Company, Inc. Reprints of previous titles began in 1943.

[citation needed] Classic Comics is marked by varying quality in art and is celebrated today for its often garish but highly collectible line-drawn covers.

[citation needed] With issue #35 in March 1947 (The Last Days of Pompeii) the series' name was changed to Classics Illustrated.

Classics Illustrated benefitted from nationwide distribution (thanks to an agreement with Curtis Circulation) beginning in late 1951,[2] and Kanter began promoting the series as an educational tool.

[citation needed] Of the original 169 issues of Classic Comics/Classics Illustrated produced in the period 1941–1969, the writers with the most representation included Jules Verne, with ten works adapted; Alexandre Dumas, with nine; James Fenimore Cooper, with eight; and Robert Louis Stevenson, with seven.

[5] In addition to the literary adaptations, each issue of Classics Illustrated featured author profiles, educational fillers, and an advertisement for the coming title.

The company lost its second-class mailing permit; and cheap paperbacks, Cliff's Notes, and television drew readers away from the series.

Other writers with multiple adaptations to their names included Ruth Roche, George Lipscomb, Annette T. Rubenstein, and Sam Willinsky.

[10] Other notable artists who drew multiple issues of Classics Illustrated included George Evans, Lou Cameron, Reed Crandall, Pete Costanza, L.B.

Lesser-known names with multiple credits include Rudy Palais, Arnold Hicks, Maurice Del Bourgo, Louis Zansky, August Froehlich, and Bob Webb, Jack Abel, Stephen Addeo, Charles J. Berger, Dik Browne, Denis Gifford, Roy Krenkel, John Parker, Norman Saunders, Joe Sinnott, Al Williamson and George Woodbridge.

Classics Illustrated Junior featured Albert Lewis Kanter's comic book adaptations of fairy and folk tale, myth and legends.

In 1953, Classics Illustrated Junior debuted with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; the line eventually numbered 77 issues, ending publication in 1971.

Notable artists included Angelo Torres, Bruno Premiani, Don Perlin, Edd Ashe, Everett Kinstler, George Evans, Gerald McCann, Graham Ingels, Gray Morrow, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers, Joe Orlando, John Tartaglione, Norman Nodel, Pete Morisi, Reed Crandall, Sam Glanzman, and Sid Check.

In 1988 First Comics partnered with Berkley Publishing to acquire the rights, and announced it was reviving the Classics Illustrated brand with all-new adaptations.

[11] In 1990 (after some delays),[12] Classics Illustrated returned after a nearly 30-year hiatus, with a line-up of artists that included Kyle Baker, Dean Motter, Mike Ploog, P. Craig Russell, Bill Sienkiewicz, Joe Staton, Rick Geary and Gahan Wilson.

In 1997–1998, Acclaim Books (the successor to Valiant Comics) published a series of recolored reprints of the Gilberton issues in a digest size format with accompanying study notes by literary scholars.

The Acclaim line included Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with art by Frank Giacoia; and The Three Musketeers, illustrated by George Evans.

Other reprints in this series were Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables.

The new modern adaptations were largely produced in France; Papercutz published 12 volumes – including The Wind in the Willows, Frankenstein, Treasure Island, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – from 2008 to 2014.

[19] In 2003, Toronto's Jack Lake Productions revived Classics Illustrated Junior, creating new remastered artwork from the original editions.

They had extensive experience in publishing from the 1920s, mainly in advertising – but also in children's books after 1936, when Κώστας Πεχλιβανίδης (Kóstas Pechlivanídis) finished his studies in the – then modern – printing techniques in Leipzig.

Having worked for years with offset printing, the Pechlivanídis brothers founded after the war the Εκδόσεις Ατλαντίς (Atlantis Publications) house in order to restart publishing children's books.

Classics Illustrated line, but instead was sold to DC Comics, which published it in 1963 as part of their superhero anthology series, Showcase.

In October 2012 (when issue 44 had been dispatched), Classic Comic Store Ltd no longer continued with a subscription service in the UK, because of the costs involved.

Current titles: Authorship is based on William B. Jones Jr.'s Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, second edition (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), Appendices A and B; as well as the information held by Michigan State University Libraries Special Collections Division in their Reading Room Index to the Comic Art Collection[55][56] as well as the Grand Comics Database.