Talk to amusement park cast members and they’ll give you a variety of answers as to their experiences working with the public and portraying fictional characters. While there are obviously folks who love their jobs bringing joy to children and adults alike, like any employment, it has its drawbacks. Long hours, cranky attendees, stifling costumes–all part of the gig. However, what if the job had hazards beyond heat exhaustion and pukey children–like murder?
That’s part of what’s explored in Murder Kingdom, a new comic series debuting this Wednesday from Mad Cave Studios. From the creative team of writer Fred Van Lente, artist Chris Panda, and letterer Becca Carey, and with a main cover by Paulina Ganucheau, Murder Kingdom follows strange goings-on in Storybook Kingdom, a Florida theme park, as cast members are systematically picked off one by one by a pyscho killer inspired by Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Can cast princess Tanith help locate the killer before the thematic murderer picks off all of her coworkers? That’s the crux of Murder Kingdom and the fun of the jolly juxtaposition of mirth and murder!
Mr. Van Lente spoke with me recently about the idea behind Murder Kingdom, his favorite of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, working with the creative team, and the genre-bending nature of the comic.
I’ve been following Fred Van Lente’s writing for years and he’s such a versatile and talented writer. Every new project is so different and so tightly told and Murder Kingdom looks to follow that pattern.
FreakSugar: What can you tell us about the conceit of Murder Kingdom?
Fred Van Lente: Once upon a time a time in a faraway land called Florida, there was a theme park called Storybook Kingdom. It may not have been as famous or popular as that other Florida theme park with a fairy tale theme, but still, the guests and employees—excuse me, “cast members”—were relatively happy. But then, one day, a masked psycho starts offing cast members in the gruesome manner of the original Grimm Brothers tales! And when park authorities seem to care more about covering up the murders than stopping them, one such cast member, Tanith, takes it upon herself to figure out who the killer is before she becomes the next victim.
FS: Where do we find Tanith and the rest of the cast at the beginning of the book? What can you tell us about the emotional climate of the park, before and during the crisis?
FVL: Tanith, our hero, is a lowly roller coaster operator when, much to her surprise, she gets dragooned into becoming a costumed princess when the regular Briar-Rose (Sleeping Beauty to you and me) goes down. This “Cinderella Story” quickly becomes a Cinderella Nightmare, though, when costumed characters start getting offed in thematically appropriate fashion. But time is money (you’ve seen Jaws, right) and the park refuses to shut down, so it’s up to Tanith to warn everybody.
FS: The book is genre-bending and genre-melding. What is the genesis of the book? How did the idea come about?
My first couple prose novels, Ten Dead Comedians and The Con Artist, were murder mysteries with a pop culture bent, and I originally I conceived of Murder Kingdom as another of those. It’s so visual, though, I realized it would be so much better as a comic, and I’m so glad Mad Cave agreed with me.
FS: I feel like that the original Grimms’ Fairy Tales, while so enthralling, get pushed to the side in pop culture in favor of more sanitized versions. What do you think that we lose when we don’t learn about the Grimms’ tales?
FVL: Well, I mean—this is the first line of the comic, so it’s not like I’m being subtle about this—the reason there’s so much gore, starvation and cruelty in those stories is that they were trying to teach kids about the harshness of the real world. That transition from childhood to adulthood can be a painful one, and the stories can be seen as dry-runs for that. We live in a modern world that has a terror of hardship—even though, ironically, horror remains an incredible popular genre. Maybe if kids weren’t so coddled so much when they’re young they wouldn’t be such rabid consumers of gore and murder as adults? [laughs]
FS: Following up on that, what are some of your favorite Grimms‘ tales? Or murder mysteries and slasher yarns?
FVL: The grimmer the better when it comes to Grimms’ tales for me. There’s a really obscure one, “The Girl Without Hands,” that may have inspired one of the main characters of Murder Kingdom. Chris Panda does a great job retelling it in “rubber-hose” animation style from the B-grade cartoon studio that owns the park, so I won’t ruin it and ask you to check it out for yourself in issue #3.
FS: Your portfolio is broad and varied. What kind of creative muscles does Murder Kingdom allow you to flex that your other work doesn’t?
FVL: I have rarely done a straight-up horror book. I’ve done horror-adjacent stuff, like Marvel Zombies and Weird Detective, but this is just an old-school giallo, the Italian film genre that was inspired by Psycho. Your Jasons and Michaels don’t really do much for me (though Halloween remains an all-time fave), but I like the way the Italians like Mario Bava or Dario Argento mix in the murder mystery with the murder spree. My favorite giallo is probably…one of the last ones, Argento’s Opera, which is just bonkers.
FS: Chris Panda seems like a perfect fit for the book. What has the collaboration process been like with Chris and the rest of the creative team?
FVL: Yeah, he has been fantastic. He has absolutely gone above and beyond the call of duty, designing not just the entire park, all the realms and rides (my personal favorite: “Dracula: The Ride”) and all the characters like Tricky Dicky, Storybook Kingdom’s coyote mascot. And the man can draw a mean stabbing! With an emphasis on “mean.”
FS: What are you reading right now?
FVL: I am actually reading full for the first time the Morrison New X-Men run, for inspiration for an as-yet unannounced series. I love Morrison but I am not a big X-Men fan, so I’ve avoided it ’til now, but it is predictably fantastic.
FS: Do you have any projects you’d like to talk about coming down the road?
FVL: I will have a few things announced at New York Comic Con, I think. Tom Fowler and I just successfully Kickstarted our comics history of RPGs, which you can actually still pick up on the Kickstarter page. (Check out our interview with Mr. Van Lente about the project here!) And I am writing Valiant’s big fall crossover event Resurgence, so definitely check that out too!
FS: Is there anything you can tease about what we can expect to see in Murder Kingdom?
FVL: Fairy tale characters getting murdered in spectacular ways. What more could you ask for?
FS: If you had a final pitch for Murder Kingdom, what would it be?
FVL: Fairy tale characters getting murdered in spectacular ways! No, really, what more could you ask for?
Murder Kingdom #1 goes on sale this Wednesday, October 9, 2024, from Mad Cave Studios.
From the official issue description:
You must be this tall…to DIE!
Once upon a time, in a strange land called Florida, a masked psycho starts murdering cast members of the Storybook Kingdom theme park in ways identical to the gory original Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Princess-turned-detective Tanith is the only person who can unmask the killer before she and her friends are all Dying Unhappily Never After!
Toon-themed terror from six-time New York Times bestselling writer Fred Van Lente (Marvel Zombies), artist Chris Panda (Chocklit Shoppe of Horrors: Night Shift, Rom: First Strike), and letterer Becca Carey (Radiant Black, Golden Rage).