Q&A w/ Raven Gregory of Zenescope Entertainment

Already one of Zenescope Entertainment’s most prolific writers, this summer Raven Gregory takes it up a notch. In addition to writing every word of their big summer event, The Dream Eater Saga, he will also be launching his own creator owned property, Fly. Despite the crazy schedule, Mr. Gregory was nice enough to answer a few questions for me via email.

Grimm Fairy Tales: Myths and Legends has been a great read so far. It really comes across like an old fashioned horror film. Is that what you planned when you wrote the first arc?

We had always planned on Grimm Myths and Legends being a much darker take on the regular Grimm Fairy Tales flagship title. Having done the Wonderland trilogy I wanted to bring that same feel over to the new ongoing series, where readers could get a whole fleshed out story over a story arc that was a nice mixture of dark horror but still tied into the roots of the main series.

The initial story arcs have all been formatted in this new way so that not only can new readers jump aboard at any time and not be lost but long time readers will get the thrill of seeing the major pay off on where all this has been building since issue one of the main series.

You’re going to be a very busy man this summer writing all the Dream Eater saga books. Was the idea of writing the entire 12 issue storyline daunting?

Yeah, that was my idea. Having written over half of the series already I can look back and see my ego really had no idea what I was in for. It’s one thing to write a trilogy with characters you created but when it comes to the puzzle work of a crossover, of making all the beats fit, and that each character gets their time in the spotlight and actually matters to the development of the story, it is much harder than it looks on paper.

I’m so happy with how it’s coming out, but with each script that comes closer to the end, I can physically feel it getting harder and harder. But it’s the kind of thing you just have to do and make yourself get through so you can step back and really enjoy the story for what it is instead of everything that went into it which is really a lot of time, work, and thought into why what works, works, and why what doesn’t, doesn’t.

One of the Dream Eater books is a Wonderland one-shot. Was it fun to write these characters again?

I can’t tell you how much fun it was. After the trilogy ended I took a big step back and said I was done with Wonderland. I’m leaving while it’s still on top. It had a good beginning, middle, and end and the last thing I wanted to do was to keep writing the story until I wrote it into the ground. But the characters of that series are just so fleshed out, so real, that coming back to them was like seeing a good friend you haven’t seen in years.

There’s so much you want to know about where they have been, and what’s been going on in their lives that you don’t think about how much you took them for granted when they were in your life. All you care about is that they are back and that they are with you again and with the one-shot that was exactly how it felt. Calie is back and I couldn’t be more pleased.

For the other chapters of the story, such as Inferno and Salem’s Daughter, did you have to do any research to make sure you got the feeling of the characters right?

I’ve been the Executive Editor at Zenescope for quite a few years now (almost 5 I think) so I’m familiar with most of the characters. Mercy Dante (from Inferno) is actually a character I created many years back who Zenescope decided to give her own series to, so it doesn’t take much to get into each of these characters heads and see where the road takes them.

You’re new series Fly launches this summer. What’s the book about?

FLY follows the story of three teenagers who experiment with a drug called FLY that gives them the power to fly and how their experience with the drug effects each of them differently throughout their lives. I like to compare it to BREAKING BAD meets Smallville.

What else can we look forward to from you in the future?

I’ll be launching a new horror series through Zenescope that should be announced in the next month or so. It’s a book I’ve wanted to do for years and could very well be the darkest, yet most personal series, I have ever written. I don’t want to say too much until the book is announced but I think it’s the kind of horror series that has just been waiting to happen in comics and I have no idea why no one has done it before.

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Both Fly and The Dream Eater Saga will be in comic shops this summer.