Alan Class & Co. Ltd.
Alan Class Comics was a British comics publishing company established between 1959 and 1989 and owned by Alan Class, an editor from London, who began by importing American titles late in the 1950's but soon decided it would be easier to print his own comics in the United Kingdom. For that, he chose to arrange licenses to reprint various US companies' titles all along his publication activity representing a total number of 1.459 regular issues, plus some extra ones and some unnumbered ones. .
History
The Alan Class company was specialized in anthology titles, and during the sixties and the seventies,reprinted a large number of comics stories from American comics in a black and white publications.
In that way, Alan Class produced a range of titles with the more successful - namely "Creepy Worlds", "Secrets of the Unknown", "Sinister Tales", "Suspense Stories" and "Uncanny Tales" - topped 200 issues each.
These reprinted American comic strips, mainly from the 1940's to the 1960s, were concentred on a mix of supernatural, fantasy and sci-fi stories, with occasional superhero stories. Furthermore, Alan Class also published war, romance, western and sci-fi only titles, but these were more short-lived.
Each issue had 68 pages of black and white strips with very striking and colourful covers, a must for future collectors. In addition, at a time when original American comics (like "Atlas", "Marvel", "ACG", "Charlton" materials) were far less available for European readers, the Alan Class series presented a first way to know them, and that at good value for money.
It's worth to notice that Alan Class never dated his comics and that not necessary in keeping the strict monthly schedule announced. Without any problems of a date on the cover, there was always the possibility of repeat printings or even unsold warehouse stock appearing in the shops a few years after the original print runs.
Alan Class reprinted several Mandrake stories from the American "Mandrake the Magician (King Comics) series in some of his own series such as "Creepy Worlds", "Secrets of the Unknown", "Sinister Tales", and "Uncanny Tales".
However,it occured that Alan Class finally committed some copyright infringments as "King Features Syndicate" sued him over publishing rights to their original titles including the ones for Mandrake and and he had to stop the publication of that particular reprinted material.
Mandrake publications published by Alan Class Comics
Anthology appearances
| Title | Issues |
|---|---|
| Creepy Worlds | 10 (249 in total) |
| Secrets of the Unknown | 4 (249 in total) |
| Sinister Tales | 13 (227 in total) |
| Uncanny Tales | 9 (187 in total) |