[crashryan]

In researching old newspaper strips I ran across mentions of a 1943 comic book series, Illustrated Stories of the Operas. There were four issues which adapted Carmen, Faust, Rigoletto, and Aida. I found slabbed copies of three of them on the Heritage Auctions site where they sold for $600 and up. Little information is available. Heritage has only Price Guide info. The GCDB says they were perfect bound with color covers (actually black plus one color) and black-and-white interiors. They sold for 25 cents. No page count or creator information is given.

Has anyone ever seen one of these comics? The publisher, Bernard Baily (creator of The Spectre) ran a comic art shop and was involved with a number of publishing ventures. His company published Cisco Kid, which we have on site. An adaptation of Faust appeared there under the "Illustrated Stories of the Operas" title but this is a six-pager and probably not from the 1943 comic. Baily seems to have been fixated on opera adaptations. In 1949 Editor and Publisher listed a newspaper strip, Stories of the Opera, with Baily's byline. Though offered by the Bell Syndicate it doesn't seem to have been picked up by any newspapers.

Anybody have info about these rarities?

[The Australian Panther]

in more recent times, P Craig Russel has gone in that direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._Craig_Russell

  Beginning in 2000, Dark Horse Comics published Russell's adaptation of Richard Wagner's operatic cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung as 14 comic books; in 2001, the series won two Eisner Awards: for Best Finite Series/Limited Series, and for Best Artist/Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team. The series since been published as a single-volume hardcover book.[15] He has adapted the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde into comic-book albums from NBM Publishing.[6]

[crashryan]

Yes, I've seen Russell's opera adaptations. Lovely work! There were a couple of opera adaptations from Italy (Othello and Aida) drawn by Pierre Frisano that were also quite nice. I'm interested in Bernard Baily's books partly because I want to know if the newspaper strip ever materialized and partly because the guy had such a wide-ranging career. I never cared much for his art, especially in his later days working on DC's second string weird magazines, but he sounds like a guy who was always hustling to find the next deal. He never quite connected, though. He did give us such fascinating characters as the evil Funnyman, Mr Lucifer, and Bertie Bat.

[cap12xx]

Hi there - yes, I uploaded to YOC yesterday Illustrated Stories of the Opera:  Faust.  Really great book.  Hopefully it is available in the next few days if it is not up already.

[Yoc]

Cap's book is now up for reading on DCM.
It's waiting to be approved by a staffer here on CB+

Many thanks to Cap for sharing this oddball book with everyone!

[Robb_K]

I just finished reading Baily's 20-page version of "Faust" on DCM.  I think the artwork is fabulous.  Did Bernard Baily draw it himself?  It's a very brief version, with a lot missing.  It would have been a lot nicer taking up most of a 36 or even 52-page book, rather than 17 of 20.  The full-colour front cover is very high quality.  The 25¢ price seems quite high for a mere 20 pages in 1948.  No doubt that scared away many potential purchasers.