[crashryan]

Great to see this scarce comic. It's an excellent production. The adaptation is decent and the art very good. I can understand why the project didn't succeed, though. At a time when comics were 48+ pages in full color for 10 cents, this was 16 single-color pages for two and a half times the price. I wonder if Baily was hoping for something other than newsstand distribution. Schools, maybe?

Link to the book: Illustrated Stories of the Operas: Faust

[Robb_K]

Great to see this scarce comic. It's an excellent production. The adaptation is decent and the art very good. I can understand why the project didn't succeed, though. At a time when comics were 48+ pages in full color for 10 cents, this was 16 single-color pages for two and a half times the price. I wonder if Baily was hoping for something other than newsstand distribution. Schools, maybe?

I think there is no doubt about that.  16 pages of comics has no chance to compete with 48, at 2.5 times the price of the 3X greater sized book.  It can only earn money by having a clientele with non-profit outside source financing (public and private donor supported).  That would include public and private schools and libraries, and youth organisations and recreation facilities.  Despite its high cost per unit, it would have appealed to those particular entities because of its high-quality, educational value, and moral values message.   That should hold for all the operas covered in this series.