reproduced in black and white with colour covers, and selling for 1 shilling. Each issue measured 235mm × 185mm (9" × 7"), slightly wider than the original American versions, allowing for all of the original cover art to be seen (which was cut in the originals). By the late 1960s, the company's standard 68-page format began to vary, with page counts ranging from 48 to 100 pages, and cover prices from 10p to 55p, with the company's six long-running titles settling for a while at 48 pages for 25p, before continuing an inexorable upward increase in price to 55p in the 1980s. Covers Across Alan Class Comics titles, the cover art ranged from only slightly adapted versions of the original comics from which the stories came to new covers, many produced from adapted pages or panels within the stories or pasted-up montages of various panels. Many of these covers were originally illustrated by classic comics artists of the time, especially Ditko and Kirby. Since the books were wider than the American originals, all the cover art was visible where American printings were cut-off. The reason for this was by the 1960s the width of American comics had shrunk, while artists continued to use the same size artboards. As a result, American covers from this era look cut-off while Alan Class covers didn't. Variations on these covers were often used more than once across the titles, as were the stories. Issue dating (or lack thereof) To complicate things further, none of the Alan Class Comics line had anything to identify their date of issue on the cover, (or inside the comic in many cases), and many were not even numbered. This was a deliberate company policy to extend the shelf life of the titles: Alan Class Comics often remained on the racks longer than dated issues from other companies. Additionally, it led Alan Class to devise a system to maximize profits: warehouse stocks of unsold comics were returned to him; these were later re-issued over a number of years' summer seasons to capture the market for reading material during the summer holidays. As Class said in an interview: Superheroes As well as monster, horror and mystery story reprints, many Alan Class comics featured superheroes. Early Marvel Comics tales of Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spider-Man by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko respectively, Giant-Man, Ant-Man and The Wasp, the Human Torch, S.H.I.E.L.D.