The series premiered in 1941. Stopped in 1971 after 169 issues, but has been revived featuring partly new stories from 1997 to 1998 (62 issues).

Classics Illustrated is a comic book series featuring graphic adaptations of numerous literary, classic books. The novels were originally written by a string of famous authors from the Western hemisphere. The series was drawn by many artists; some stayed on such as Henry C. Kiefer and Alex Blum, while others went on to invent their own series such as Dik 'Hagar' Browne and Jack 'Captain America' Kirby.

The first 34 issues were published under the main title Classic Comics.