Titan’s Hard Day’s Fright hits stores
Posted on December 17, 2005
After much anticipation, A Hard Day’s Fright has finally landed in North American stores. To celebrate, I’ve posted my interview with one of the creative staff behind Marvel UK’s Real Ghostbusters comics, Dan Abnett.
Now, here’s the break-down of the book. First off, it’s smaller than I thought. I had it in my head that they’d be more the size of the UK annuals or at least standard comic size, but the perfect bound book is, well, see the above photo.
Inside are 21 stories and five of Dan Abnett’s Spengler’s Spirit Guides (Ghosts, Demons, Ectoplasm, Spooky Noises and Lost Cities.) Absent are the short strips and puzzles originally printed, in favour of the longer stories.
It’s great to see these in print, available to a continent of fans who haven’t seen them before. However, I was surprised to see that the comics are literally reprints - they appear to be scans taken from the old comics. The colours have a muted quality you see when you scan old comic prints as well as a hint here and there of the moire patterns caused by scanning the small dots of ink used to colour the pages. Don’t get me wrong, they look nice, with only one page with a colour shift blurring (caused by the printing process) and if they were in fact using scans, touching up was likely done. I was just surprised that original art wasn’t used - perhaps they weren’t available. We do know that a lot of the original art sheets can be found on the collectors market for sale.
Whatever the case (I’ll stop being a publishing nerd now), for $8.95 this is an excellent way for young and old fans to get their hands on some (likely) new Ghostbuster tales.
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This may be a double post…so I apologise.
It’s actually better quality than the original prints, because of the higher quality paper. Really bad quality, were they.
For those of us in the U.S… Can we order that comic? or is it strictly a U.K. release?
If I can order, how can I do so. Where would I have to go?
I’m confused, the article says it is a North American release but everything else points to it being in the UK. Can the book be bought in the US?
What happened to the sequal to Ghostbusters : The Return? I thought it was supposed to be a trilogy. It’s been over a year since the novel was released?
Ok, here’s the thing, i have gotten 2 of them from amazon.com
i got both in time for xmas, (one for me and one for a kid i work with who i’ve “helped” discover Ghostbusters ^_^)
anyway they are pretty good and from the cover standpoint alone, good quality.
they still have some left, at the time i ordered mine, they had 2 left in stock, so maybe sometime soon, they will get new in.
hope this helps some.
Titan is a UK company and these books have been out there for awhile now - however, they are just recently available here in North America. You can buy them online through Amazon or through your local book or comic shop.
Peter, the print quality of these books is top notch - as you say, the paper is of the highest stock, but there is a tangible difference between these reprints and new comics, which, like I said, I think is because they’re using scans taken from the original comics, not the original comic art.
To answer a few questions: The Titan books are receiving release in both the UK and the US. They can be ordered from Amazon UK and US.
Ghostbusters: The Return is unrelated. That was an IBooks novel which will not be having any sequels because of poor sales.
Annoyingly, the ’straight reprint’ thing even extends to printing errors. A page layout error marred the “Down in the Dumps” where a few pages were printed in the incorrect order was reproduced in the Titan collection.
Thanks Ben, I lightly answered the US availability, because I’m cruel in my reinforcement that if people read PC regularly, they’re in the know. No Cole Notes for slackers! :P
I wouldn’t have known about the printing error unless you’d brought it up - I don’t have that issue of the original comic. It’s good to know however, as it just further confirms my suspicions.