Saturday, September 26, 2009

The Phantom Cancelled in Italy



Italian website Comicus has just announced the imminent cancellation of the brand new monthly series "The Phantom: L'Uomo Mascherato,"published by Eura Editoriale.
The decision to cancel the series was apparently the result of low sales.
Issue #6 (on sale October 25, 2009) should be the last of this series.
I'd like to read some of your comments on these sad news. I will add mine, afterwards.

3 comments:

  1. Uhm... di fronte alla dura legge del mercato, non si può far altro che chinare il capo.

    L'unica cosa che mi lascia perplesso è il fatto che si decida di chiudere (per sempre) una pubblicazione dopo appena sei uscite.

    Nell'annucio fatto da Comicus.it, si lascia intendere che si possa trattare di uno stop momentaneo, ma credo che una simile manovra non avrebbe senso e, soprattutto, non servirebbe a risollevare le sorti di Phantom in Italia.

    Peccato.
    E io che speravo, prima o poi, di leggere le tue storie in italiano, Sal...

    Pierluigi Rota

    ReplyDelete
  2. In hindsight, it might have been better to begin with more recent stories in color, and when fans are used to Team Fantomen's style of Phantom stories bring in more classics (possibly in a separate series in b/w like this series). But these are complaints I have heard from people who actually bought the issues - the big problem is to reach out to the people who didn't buy anything. The Phantom has been out of the spotlight for a long time, and younger fans have maybe never heard of him. It would require more PR to make new readers aware of him. There has been some speculation that Eura can publish the Phantom in their anthologies, maybe this is what they should have begun with.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Really sorry for the cancellation of the series... as i wrote in my blog this could have something to do with the lack of interest of both the younger readers and the older ones, with the former simply refusing the format as a whole and the latter judging it too weak for a real "collector's series" series. Hate to see the Ghost Who Walks walkin', though: the quality of the material spoke for itself and a little bit more faith from the publisher might have done the trick.

    ReplyDelete