Masque of the Red Death as an LBGTQ+ feature-length science-fiction musical animatic? Count me in! Come for Edgar Allan Poe's gothic classic, stay for 21st-century gay revenge horror. It's by Wendy Pini, co-creator of Elfquest (previously at Boing Boing) and composer Gregory Nabours, based on her own earlier webcomic adaptation of Poe's brief yet brutal 1842 original.
An Edgar Allan Poe-inspired tribute to dark, romantic, gender-bending Japanese anime & comics that, for decades, have captured hearts internationally. True to the spirit of Poe's original horror story, Gregory and Wendy's theatrical reimagining is an LGBTQ+ 24th-century apocalypse tale featuring two hot male leads, young love, the rich behaving badly, science gone awry, and personal choices that lead to both tragedy and triumph.
Reviews on Amazon are ecstatic so far. Here's Wendy on the evolving, multi-medium production:
It all began with my love of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Masque of the Red Death – a Musical Thriller" started in 2008 as a weekly, Flash animated web comic. Out of that came a 400 page graphic novel. And out of that evolved a full-blown Broadway style musical with score by composer Gregory Nabours in the vein of "Jekyll & Hyde" and "Sweeney Todd." In 2022, I crafted a feature-length motion comic to demonstrate what the show could look like fully staged. Never did I dream this one-woman project, thanks to Steve Nunez, Danny Miller and the crew at Ascendent Animation, would wind up featured for rent and/or purchase on Amazon Prime
Masque of the Red Death [Amazon]
