The Hardy Boys Adventures #1: Secret of the Red Arrow

[SkyWarp]

The Hardy Boys Adventures #1 Secret of the Red Arrow is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com in paperback, digital, and hardcover.  The cover art is now viewable as well.  The book is scheduled to be made available February 5, 2013.


Thanks to Ct Raihan of Facebook on the Hardy Boys Casefiles group for bringing the attention to the new cover.

[JoeHardyRocks]

Oh my goodness! I'm so excited!! It looks awesome!!

[tomswift2002]

Reminds me of the cover for "The Buried Age" from STTNG.

[SDLagent]

The Hardy boys in danger on the cover of a Hardy Boys novel?! We haven't seen that in years! Compared to the Undercover Brothers, this already feels a lot more like a classic Hardy Boys story. I like that the cover tells a story, gives you an idea of what the book is about, AND shows the brothers. A combination we haven't seen in a long time! Oh, yeah, and it's a painting instead of a photo which is also a nice change!

I'm not crazy about the graphic design, though. The typography is a little weird looking. The "B" looks upside-down and I have no idea what's going on with the "H". Were they trying for a Casefiles throwback or something? Squishing "ADVENTURES" probably wasn't the best idea either. "FRANKLIN W. DIXON" is in the same unbalanced font as the series title (which, despite my dislike of this font, makes sense) but the spacing makes it look like "FRANKLINW.DIXON". The italic font used for novel title is better than the other font but not noticeable enough to distract from this cover's rather weak typographic.

Overall, though, thanks in large part to the cover painting, I think this is a decent looking cover and a big improvement over recent Hardy cover design. It definitely suggests to the reader that this series will indeed live-up to the "Adventures" in it's name. However, it looks a little generic and I don't think it really stands-out among other similar looking juvenile/YA novels. The original Undercover Brothers design was actually more eye-catching.

[MacGyver]

While I don't care so much for the title font either, I do like the cover a lot. At least it actually depicts Frank and Joe Hardy, something we weren't seeing in the UB books for a while until they started getting the photoshoot models. But an actual painting for the cover is a nice throwback to the Original series and it's nice to see an enticing cover with The Hardy Boys in danger. As I mentioned on another thread, it's actually reminiscent somewhat to me of a similar scene in The Vanishing Thieves. The "H" in The Hardy Boys title is kinda cool as it reminds me of the 1980s Armada paperback design style, which I grew up reading a good bit as a kid. It could stand to be spaced out a bit more with the font, but overall it's not bad. It certainly is an improvement from the current UB covers. I just hope the storylines will get back to more of the classic feel as well.

[tomswift2002]

Well it's been over 10 years since the last action cover was released with "A Game Called Chaos" in March 2000.