Casting an exclusive look at an often overlooked but important part of British comics history, comics fan Nick Neocleous has launched a modest Kickstarter for a new book, Secrets of the Unknown… Alan Class.
A full colour book on the life and comics publishing career of Alan Class, featuring newly written memoirs by Alan especially for it, the Kickstarter already looks well on the way to achieving its £1000 target.
Nick is aiming to get the book in early December and, hopefully, ship out before Christmas. On offer are a regular edition of the book, and a signed and numbered edition, autographed by Alan Class himself.
From 1959 to 1989, Alan Class published a wide range of comics, distributed throughout the UK. They included memorable titles such as Creepy Worlds and Sinister Tales, all reprinting huge amounts of American comics strips, all reaching a mass market thanks to a combination of cheap cover price and distinctive format. For many, they offered British fans their first exposure to many an American superhero, and are fondly remembered today.
Alan’s comics featured reprints from most of the major US companies, Marvel, Atlas, ACG, Tower and Charlton.
“Many collectors have grown up with fond memories of these comics which featured countless comic strips in many genres,” Nick notes. “But for many years, no one actually knew who Alan Class was. Was he even a real person – or just a publishing house name?”
Now the story can be told. Nick Neocleous interviewed Alan several times and the results of those interviews have been combined with many pages of newly written memoirs by Alan to create this book.
“Alan goes into detail about publishing comics in the 1960s and beyond,” Nick explains. “There are also details of all the distributors that carried his comics and many more facts and data, some of which dismisses false ‘facts’ that were previously thought to be true.
“The book also contains many full colour cover reproductions including all his number one issues and lots of rarities and oddities.”
Alan was the first person, for example, to obtain rights to reprint Fantastic Four issue 1 back in 1961. In the book, he relates the unfortunate story of what happened to the copy they gave him.
“The written memoirs are newly written by Alan Class specifically for this book, they’re not reprints from anywhere else,” Nick explains. “Alan is fully involved in this project and is delighted to see it come to fruition.”
Nick Neocleous has collected comics his entire life. He published the comics fanzine Graphic Eye, and, more recently three issues of his own comic Strange-Weird. He has also worked on many trading card sets including Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Vampirella, Doctor Who, The Prisoner, X-Men Archives, Marvel Premier 2014, Mars Attacks Heritage! Mars Attacks Uprising and many more.
• Check out Secrets of the Unknown… Alan Class here on Kickstarter
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The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics, Comics, Creating Comics, Crowd Funding Projects, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, US Comics
