What I realized is people were coming up with their kids and kids like the beautiful pictures from the adult books, but adult horror has to do with more existential horror. It has to do with things that scare us like dying, issues of faith, stuff that we’re contemplating but kids won’t even understand. It’ll go right over their heads because it’s not their experience at the time. I started thinking that little kids really shouldn’t be looking at that stuff and that’s how we ended up doing some young adult stuff. I had writers like Steve Niles and Louise Simonson doing it.
We don’t talk down to kids, but we do what’s age-appropriate to their fears. We wound up with 4-8 year-olds, 10-12 year-olds, and young adult stuff because every one of those ages encounters things they’re scared of – well, not the 4-8 year-olds, I’m not going to terrify a four-year-old, that’s not fair. [laughs]
But they want to be in with all the other kids on Halloween. They want to feel like they’re part of the pack. For them, we’ve got ghost bunnies and kinder, gentler stuff, like the haunted cat, that are safer for them, we don’t scare them. That becomes something where they’re around and they don’t get deprived and they’re part of the party.
You hit 8-12 year-olds and they’re starting to experience death, loss, parents getting divorced, and things like that. How do we empower them? Bad things happen in life, but what are the tools for getting out of it? How do you feel strong? That’s how we got things like The Grimms Town Terror Tales, which is like a modern-day Hansel & Gretel. Twins come home, the house is trashed with green goo all over, there is banging from the closet door, they think aliens have invaded, but it’s really Grubb the goblin and he shows them that their parents were actually demon hunters, that they have to be strong, and shows them the guns with the goo and all of that stuff. They become empowered and can handle the situation, it’s an empowerment.
We have another one called Fetch which is brilliant and based on Greek mythology. It’s about a little girl whose dog has died and she is determined to get him back. There is a substitute teacher who turns out to be a Greek goddess in disguise and also Odysseus, who’s a slacker and hasn’t been going after his quest to become immortal. She basically tricks Odysseus into giving her the key to a portal to the underworld where she goes to find her dog but, unfortunately, her little brother follows her through the portal. She has to take care of him as a cause bigger than herself.
There are cool things that allow these kids to feel empowered.