Nevertheless, a contract had been agreed with John Brown's company GE Magazines to publish a magazine based on the series so in October 2005, the first issue of Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet appeared in newsagents.
Considering the poor treatment the TV series had suffered it won't surprise you to hear that the magazine didn't fare too well. Only six issues were published. However, I for one felt it was a few notches above the usual licensed titles of recent years and deserved to succeed.
Any editor putting together a licensed comic these days will often have to do their best with limited resources and material. What editor Will Potter did with the New Captain Scarlet mag was to use screen grabs of the TV episodes to produce photo strip adaptations. Depending on the grabs, and the limitations of condensing a 20 minute story into an 11 page strip, the results were varied but on the whole suitably dramatic and engaging.
The rest of the 28 page issues were taken up with pin ups, character profiles, vehicle data, puzzles and suchlike. The designer of the magazine, Tom Moore, did a very good job with it.
Sadly issue 6 was the final issue and it ended with quite a downbeat message telling the readers that the Mysterons had won!
As licensed titles go, New Captain Scarlet was one of the better ones of this century so far. While I appreciate that the budget couldn't cover originated comic strips I'd have preferred it if the photo-strips had used screen grabs from different episodes to create new stories (as I'd done with Egmont's CiTV Tellytots mag a few years earlier). Still, Will and his team did a fine job on the mag and the six issues are a nice collectors item for any enthusiast of Gerry Anderson memorabilia.
By the way, Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet is still available on DVD. Well worth buying if you haven't seen it.
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