Classic comic books are famous books of literature that have been rewritten as comics. Imagine seeing War and Peace in the form of a comic! Well, it is possible to do this and it makes the book easier to read when you have the pictures to go along with. It was a gamble that did pay off because while teachers didn't approve of children reading comic, they did approve of the illustrated versions if for no other reason than to introduce school children to the classics.
The earliest versions of the classic comic books were ones with lots of action and adventure, such as The Three Musketeers, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. The comics could not be compared to actually reading a novel and you couldn't do very much with the elements of a novel, but at least the children were getting the jist of exciting story lines.
When the classics were condensed into classic comic books a lot of the plot did get lost because the original book had to be condensed a lot to bring it down to the required number of pages for the comics. The classics became a part of comic book history because they were reprinted over and over again, even back as early as the 1940's. Some titles had many new editions each with new artwork that was better than the preceding issue. As companies sprung up that produced student notes to help them better understand the novels, the demand for the classic comic books waned and gradually publication stopped altogether.
Many adults today remember reading the classics in literature as comic books. The classic comic books are now collector's items and are much sought after by collectors. It is possible to find many of these titles online and for auction on Ebay. They are worth a lot of money because there are so few of them that survived.