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Dan Vado, president of comic publisher Slave Labor Graphics, told SCI FI Wire that its upcoming Haunted Mansion comic book takes its inspiration directly from the Disneyland ride on which it is based. "The book is the ride put together in comic-book form," Vado said in an interview. "Basically what we're trying to do is take all the classic elements of the ride and create a story that kind of fills things in." The first issue of the black-and-white Haunted Mansion is an anthology written by Roman Dirge and Serena Valentino. It sets the stage for an ongoing backstory of the mansion and its owner with intertwining stories of such Haunted Mansion residents as "The Ghost Host," "Madame Leota" and "The Bride," Vado said. "Basically the stories will deal with three basic elements of the Haunted Mansion story," he said. "It will deal with how the ghosts interact with each other, how they got to be where they are and how the Haunted Mansion got to be what it is. The mansion contains 999 ghosts, so that's 999 stories. We could be at this for a while." The alliance between Disney Publishing and Slave Labor Graphics, which has a reputation for daring material targeted at a decidedly non-Disney audience, would seem an odd one, Vado admitted. "Disney were very open minded," he said. "They saw the opportunity to get to an age group [teens and older] that they don't normally get to. When we first started sending in material for Haunted Mansion, there was some confusion by Disney about who should be looking at this stuff. But the publishing side got the idea that this was interpretive w**k and would not necessarily look like the stuff they've already done." The SLG creators had to keep certain things in mind when designing the comic. "If this was going to have the Disney name on it, obviously it wasn't going to have naked people running around or a lot of blood and guts," Vado said. "And the Disney people did ask us to put a rating on the book's cover. But at no point did they come back at us and say, 'No, you can't do that.'" Haunted Mansion comics hit retailers in October. As part of its licensing deal with Disney Publishing, Slave Labor Graphics will also publish books based on Tron, Gargoyles and Wonderland, starting next spring. |