Exclusive: Talking All Things Zenescope with Ralph Tedesco

Vice President of Zenescope Entertainment Ralph Tedesco chats with Victoria about the company’s sexy image, Sela Mathers rising from the dead and merchandising. He also breaks exclusive news to ComicNews.Info regarding Oz, Neverland and the upcoming mini series ‘Dante’s Inferno’!

In Grimm Fairy Tales #37 we saw Neverland and Oz introduced into your mythology. Any chance you can give me more information on what to expect from those worlds?

Wow. You jump right into it doncha? Grimm #37 revealed a lot in terms of what we have planned for the entire Grimm universe. With the Wonderland trilogy coming to an end this year after the release of Escape From Wonderland, we will naturally turn our attention to some of the other realms like Oz and Neverland. Just imagine what you saw with the Wonderland series applied to other classic and fantastical stories we all know. But we’ll be adding brand new dark, provocative and terrifying spins on the material that will also be different from what fans saw with Wonderland. These series will have a similar feel to what we’ve been doing with Grimm and Wonderland but we will also be taking them in different directions so readers don’t feel like their getting the same story over and over. We certainly don’t want to repeat ourselves so it’s a delicate balance between reinventing the mythology the way our fans have come to expect from us and also keeping it fresh and interesting by adding new twists.

Sela Mathers recently came back from the dead in GFT# 36 much to the delight of fans. Why was she killed off in the first place?

We needed to bring Belinda front and center for a little while and Sela needed to go and learn more about her place in the universe as well. Her sacrifice was essential to her growing in her role and learning from her past mistakes. Belinda kind of now has this false sense of security and she also might have gotten a little set in her ways so fans should be excited about the fact that the s**t is going to hit the fan pretty soon.

So you recently mentioned Dante’s Inferno to me. Can you elaborate on the subject?

No I can’t. Sorry… Kidding. Okay, here goes the long explanation. So the upcoming Grimm Fairy Tales #41 issue is actually a continuation of Grimm #29 King Midas, but I can’t say more about what the connection is between those two issues yet. At the same time Grimm #41 will also be a prequel to our next Grimm Fairy Tales spinoff mini-series which is entitled Dante’s Inferno which is set for a Fall release (the other Grimm spinoffs so far are all the Wonderland series and The Piper). Whew.. did you get all that? So I’m really stoked about Dante’s Inferno, it’s going to be a five issue mini and it’s a very trippy story that is loosely based on Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy but of course it’s updated and re-imagined with the Zenescope twists and turns. I guess a good way to describe it is sort of Jacob’s Ladder meets Resident Evil. It’s a secretive plot because there are a lot of surprises so I can’t say much more other than re-read Grimm 29 if you want to try to start figuring some things out.

Yeah, it’s going to take me a little while to figure out what you just said about Dante’s Inferno! Hell, it’s sounds interesting and I’m looking forward to it! Vampires are all the rage these days; think that’s a subject your company would like to put their own spin on?

Vampires seem to have been the rage forever. No vampire stuff in the works for us at all right now but I wouldn’t completely rule it out either. It just feels like so much has been done with them and as much as I love vampire films, books, etc. I just don’t know what new spin we could add to it at this point.

Some would argue that your image is a bit too sexy and border line porn. How much is too much and what do you have to say to your critics?

That is too funny. Kinda glad you asked this. I will stand on my soapbox for a minute here so bear with me. The “Borderline porn” thing has been thrown at us before which makes me laugh only because in reality, if you’re willing to look at it objectively, most of our images really are no worse than what you’d see on a cover of say a magazine like GQ or even a women’s magazine like Cosmopolitan. I mean take a look at some of the magazines you see in your supermarket checkout isle and you’ll notice girls wearing less on those covers than on most of ours. But yes I’ll agree our covers usually, but not always, have a sexiness to them and many of the women are scantily dressed but really these images are no worse than what most other comic publishers have done on their own covers and that includes Marvel and DC. I can pull up Wonder Woman or She Hulk or Catwoman images that are equivalent to ours in terms of their provocativeness but for whatever reason we get branded as being too racy or borderline pornographic by certain critics. In all honestly, I think those who go say that simply have an agenda or just want to brand us a certain way for whatever reason and are literally judging a book by its cover. But when they pick one of our issues up and actually read it, those same critics usually realize that these stories aren’t what they thought and very rarely if at all have anything to do with sex.

How’s the Zenescope Girl of the Month contest going? Do you plan to release a calender featuring all 12 winners for 2010?

After all that you’re asking me about more scantily clad women? Haha, yes we actually are considering a calendar or a special issue. It depends on a few things, one of them being the resolution of the photos we’ve received from our entrants and our winners. But if all goes well we’ll have something special for fans by early 2010. And Victoria, you’re always going to be known as Zenescope’s very first ever Girl of the Month.

Wow I just turned bright red from your last comment. *ahem* Thank you; I am honored to be your first Girl of the Month! Has the bad economy had any effect on your company?

It hasn’t been too bad. The biggest issue we faced was a cash crunch toward the end of last year and beginning of this year. But the industry shifted as we expanded our product line and certain books didn’t sell as expected so we took a bit of a hit but have been able to scale back and delay some things before it became a big problem. Sales are steady and we continue to generate a bigger and bigger fan base. We just hope positive word of mouth continues as it has. That’s obviously key for any entertainment company.

You just unveiled the stunning new Calie statue by CS Moore Studios and a string of other merchandise on your site. What other Zenescope merchandise do you have in the works?

I love Clay Moore’s work, he really knocked the Calie piece out of the park. We do have some more stuff planned with statues a bit down the road but I again need to be a little secretive on that end because details aren’t ironed out just yet. In terms of other merchandise, we licensed some of our stuff and started a T-Shirt line along with Ballzout, we’re also doing custom iphone and guitar hero skins, we’re delving into glassware and also hopefully expanding into boardgames and other things to that nature. We’re also going to have some of our comics available for download on iphone apps so keep an eye out for that very soon. Our images and properties do cross over into mainstream pretty well so we have a lot of ideas but it just takes time to get everything we want to do with merchandising out there.

Thank you so much for speaking with me! I may regret asking you this but is there anything you’d like to add?

Don’t be a smartass Victoria (laughs). Nope, that’s it. I’m spent.

So am I. Your answers were long. haha

For more information visit:

http://zenescope.com/

http://www.myspace.com/zenescopecomics

Last 3 posts by Victoria

• Talking with DC's Vice President of Sales, Bob Wayne - July 8th, 2009
• Tales from Wonderland: The Red Queen Review - July 3rd, 2009
• Escape from Wonderland #0 Review - July 1st, 2009

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