PART TWO OF 'A TOUCH OF CLASS'...

Images copyright respective owners

In a previous post, I once mentioned a quote I'd heard on the radio which ran something like this: "The memories of childhood are without time and without end".  I've never been able to track its source so if anyone knows, please let me know.  The point is though, as folk of a 'certain age' will be all too aware, it's often difficult to remember exactly when and in what order things happened many years after the fact.  Sometimes it seems that I had one big Christmas when I was a kid because my memories of them all tend to blend together.  I have to rely on other factors to separate one from another - such as the date on a comic, what shows were on TV at the time, which alien universe was I off saving at that particular moment, etc.  (H'mm, wonder if they'll buy that last one?)

Why do I mention this?  Well, the above cover is one I remember from sitting on the bench beside the 'burn' which I referred to in part one of this 'series'.  At this late stage in the game, I can no longer recall if it was on the same occasion or an earlier or later one.  I was very much a creature of habit - trot along to the hospital shop, buy an ALAN CLASS comic (or three), stop at the bench by the burn on the way home to read it.  My first instinct is that it was the same day, but I can't be sure.  Does it matter?  Well, not to you it doesn't, but as you'll have noticed by now, these posts are somewhat self-indulgent exercises, allowing me to revisit my past and wallow in the nostalgia that it occasions.

SUSPENSE #150 (above) is a new 'add in' to this post, as I've only recently acquired it (November 2019), but I used to have it back in the '70s - though I'd forgotten until I saw it again on eBay.  Upon re-reading it, I immediately remembered some of the strips, which confirms the reliability of my memory when it comes to previous ownership.  Some good stories, though there's one with a plot so contrived and ludicrous as to defy belief and make one wonder how it ever got approved for publication.  Perhaps it was a choice between printing the strip or having blank pages, but I'm not sure that the latter option wouldn't have been an improvement.

The comic below is one I recall seeing in its original '60s incarnation on a visit to our previous neighbourhood to visit a friend of my mother, whose son had once hung around with my brother when we lived there some years before.  I even remembered the cover story - "I'VE GOT TO PROTECT NETTIE!", though it wasn't drawn by cover artist KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, but by PAUL REINMAN.  Alan Class regurgitated the same comics over many years, though the page count was cut over time, necessitating a reduction in content.

If I remember correctly, at the same time I first read this comic, I also read a story about a runner who raced DEATH every so many years in order to continue living. If he outraced Death, he won an extension until the next occasion.  (He was far older than he appeared, having lived way past his normal lifespan.)  However, Death had once almost caught him, leaving glowing skeletal hand-prints on his back.  I associate that story with the above issue, so I was disappointed not to see it when I bought the comic in the mid to late '70s.  Either it was dropped from later editions, or it was in another Class comic that I read back when I first read this ish - one without so memorable a cover (to me at least) as the one above, obviously.

(Update: I've since learned that the tale was entitled The MAN Who OUTDISTANCED DEATH, first seen in 1952 in STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES #4, published by FAWCETT.  It was reprinted in SPELLBOUND #62, an L. MILLER comic that was in the same format as the AC comics, which would explain why I thought it was one years later.  As Class later acquired Miller's printing plates and inventory, it may well have reappeared in an Alan Class title.)

I have no real memories of the above cover, apart from owning it thirty-odd years ago.  It could have been one I read as a child in the '60s, but nothing about it prompts a memory so I may well have been seeing it for the first time when I bought it back in the '70s.  It contains some nice DITKO stories, so it's well-worth having.  Anyway, that's enough tedious reminiscing from yours truly for the moment.  Hopefully, your own happy childhood or teenage memories have been stirred by reading about mine, so join me in part three for another look at some classic covers from Alan Class.

However, before you do, take a look at the other 'Johnny-come-lately' below - CREEPY WORLDS #191.  As with Suspense #150, I'd forgotten I once had this one until I saw it on eBay and its cover rang an instant bell with me.  My original copy may have been priced at only 10 or 15p, but it's the exact same in every other respect.  This comic contains the first GORILLA MAN tale, the sequel of which is printed in the mag that leads off this very post.  (Well, you know the old saying - 'the first shall be last, and the last shall be first'.)  Needless to say, I snapped it up, enabling me to add it here at long last, but hopefully you'll consider it well worth the wait.  Right, now you can go and visit part three.