The cover and plot summary to The Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers Graphic Novel #14 have been revealed at Papercutz' (http://www.papercutz.com/hb/hb_covernovel14.html) website and the book can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com (http://www.hardyboyscasefiles.com/store/index.php?isbn=1597071137).
(http://www.hardyboyscasefiles.com/images/comingsoon/HBGN_014.jpg)
Scott Lobdell said in an interview last year that while he likes ATAC, he would also like to see the boys solve cases on their own. He did this in ''The Ocean of Osyria'', ''Opposite Numbers'', and ''A Hardy Day?s Night'', but the later two both had ATAC themed plots (e.g. mystery on the way to ATAC mission, saving the son of an ATAC mentor agent), so it looks like this story will be the first since book one, to be 'ATAC free'.
You have to remember that The Ocean of Osyria was also meant to be a bridge between the Hardy Boys Digests universe and the Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers Universe, and that Identity Theft was suppose to tell how Fenton Hardy set up ATAC, but it never told, and so far no one knows just how ATAC came to be.
http://www.papercutz.com/hb/hb_novel14.html (http://www.papercutz.com/hb/hb_novel14.html)
Here's the url to take you to the page that has the plot description, HardyBoysWiki takes you to the enlarged picture and no description.
Anyway, I wonder how hard it was to get this storyline past S&S.
Who knows, but a big hand for him doing it. Finally a non-ATAC book. I just hope its good, cause it sounds like Scott took a big publishing risk doing it. Time will tell...
Doesn't look too bad :D
In a way, the plot is sort of reminiscent of the old Hardy Boys Digest #102 Terminal Shock from June 1990. Of course, in that book a friend of the Hardy's was poisoned because he had seen some posts on a BBS, that he was the moderator of, between two crooks and the crooks had tried to bump him off.
A few years ago we discussed how if that book were every rereleased, it would have to undergo a major rewrite to update all the computer terminology, since nowadays 386 processors don't "burn" up the computer highway at 25 or 66 mhz. Instead, they are like an old person driving 50 on a 70 kph road.
When does it come out? ???
September 2, 2008
Thanks SkyWarp