I believe the experiment came to an end a year later—in November 2013—when Charley's War Book 16, taking the story up to March 1917, appeared. Over that year there appeared Kindle editions of Tales From The Mist (1 vol.), The Thirteenth Floor (2 vols.), Major Eazy (2 vols), Rat Pack (2 vols), Hook Jaw (1 volume) and Thunderbirds (5 vols).
Despite Riley's belief that the Classic Comics titles could attract two audiences, the series seems to have fallen squarely between the two: attractive to the (relatively small number of ) fans of the original comic who wanted to read these adventures on paper and younger warriors of the digital revolution who read digital books but were not drawn nostalgically to forty-year-old characters.
When the second wave of titles was launched in November 2012, Egmont accompanied the press release with four promo postcards featuring comics from their archive. It's a shame there was no attempt to publish any humour in digital form.
It was a shame that these came to nothing, but I think Egmont didn't really choose the best material they could have, give enough thought to who their audience might be, or consider the limitations imposed by the old UK comics format (the pages are an utter bugger to read on even a large e-reader screen).
ReplyDeleteI've found younger readers to be fascinated by the craftsmanship of the art in titles like Misty and Scream, while the stories were easy to follow and often hit touch-button elements (mermaids, pony drama, manipulative mean girls, etc), so I do believe Egmont have some highly lucrative material in their vaults just waiting to be fully exploited - but I think they need to put the work in and not just release things into the wild.