Tags:books, comics, edgar allen poe, elfquest, yaoi
Deb Aoki, who writes About.com’s manga blog, recently chatted with Elfquest creator Wendy Pini about her online yaoi adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. Plague victims and man-love - yummy!
Here’s a brief excerpt:
Q: How long have you been thinking about doing this story?
Wendy Pini: I first floated out the idea about three years ago, at an anime convention in Chicago. I was in artists’ alley with a bunch of other young, female doujinshi artists.
They knew that I was a professional artist, but they didn’t know about Elfquest so much. I asked them what they thought of an “R-rated” or X-rated” yaoi version of Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, and they all squealed! With just that description, they knew that they’d be getting gothic romance and dark, sexy erotica.
I’ve never been adverse to doing adaptations of other people’s stories. I did a graphic novel based on the Beauty and the Beast TV series some years back, and really enjoyed that. Borrowing an idea and expanding on it is one of my favorite things to do.
So their reaction led me to think that this will work, as long as I can get Masque in front of that audience. I had a lot of work to do for my deal with DC Comics, but when that relationship ended, I was able to start on Masque.
Q: Has it been challenging to write for a new generation who has different tastes, interests and life experiences than yours?Wendy Pini: With Masque, I don’t see myself as writing for a younger generation so much. I don’t think about that. I’m happy when I hear that women in their fifties are reading it too, because that’s my generation.
But if someone in their twenties sees it, well, it’s for them too. It’s for young women who are looking for something more than the typical high school yaoi manga story. It has more character development, more reasons why the characters get into their relationship.
The good news: Akira Kurosawa’s final script, a film based on Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death” but set in Russia, will be getting the anime treatment in 2010. Kurosawa was working on getting the script produced when he died in 1998, but it was shelved after he passed away.
