AfterShock Comics have announced “Tales of Mother F. Goose,” a prestige format one-shot by writer Frank Tieri, artist Joe Eisma, colorist Matt Herms, and letterer Carlos M. Mangual. Due out in December, the comic features dark, crime-themed takes on classic fairy tales, and centers on Don Francesco Orca, aka Mother F. Goose. (“Orca means Goose in Italian. And yeah, his name is Francesco. What did ya think the F stood for?” Tieri says in the press release.)
The book features the Three Little Pigs as “gluttonous casino owners,” Little Miss Muffet as “a hard-nosed cop with arachnophobia,” the Three Blind Mice as “ocularly impaired assassins,” and Puss in Boots as “a feline-faced scumbag.” The “MFG versions” of the stories of Puss in Boots, the Three Little Pigs, and the Three Blind Mice will unfold as Miss Muffet and her partner Jack Horner interrogate the suspects in the murder of Georgie Porgie, a pimp who was apparently going to squeal on Orca.
The comic is a continuation of Tieri and Eisma’s story ‘Little Red Hood,’ from the AfterShock anthology “Shock,” which depicted Red Riding Hood as a drug courier, and introduced Orca as a powerful background player. Another story from the creative team, ‘Along Came A Spider,’ will introduce Detective Muffet before her appearance here, in October’s horror one-shot “AfterDark.” Despite the cover, Tieri reminded readers “everything is street level. There’s no magic, nothing supernatural… and yeah, especially no talking animals. Characters may bear characteristics of said animal but every character in these stories are human. Human scumbags in many cases, but human nonetheless.”
“Tales of Mother F. Goose” will be 48 pages long, and retail for $6.99. It will be released on December 8, with a Scarface-inspired cover by Joe Eisma with Mike Herms, and an incentive cover homaging Pulp Fiction by Amanda Conner with Paul Mounts. Check out the covers, an interior preview, and the full interview with Tieri below.
FRANK TIERI ON WHAT THE BOOK’S ABOUT — AND THE PRELUDE IN AFTERDARK THAT TIES INTO IT — AND WHY HE IS EXCITED FOR THEM TO COME OUT:“Basically both these projects expand on the world we set up in LITTLE RED HOOD — and they do it through the mob boss who is essentially the glue that holds all this shit together, Don Francesco Orca, our Mother F. Goose. (Orca means Goose in Italian. And yeah, his name is Francesco. What did ya think the F stood for? ;))
Orca was introduced in LITTLE RED HOOD where we saw he was the major player in this world and has his fingers in everything. This plays into TALES OF MOTHER F. GOOSE where there’s a murder– local pimp Georgie Porgie– who was apparently going to drop a dime on Orca. Detective Jack Horner and his partner, a certain Miss Muffet, have nabbed a number of suspects and through their interrogation we get our MFG versions of the tales of Puss-in-Boots, The Three Little Pigs, and Three Blind Mice. It’s actually a bit of a murder mystery as we find all these suspects have ties to Orca and it’s a question of who actually has the deepest ties of all and did the deed.
The ALONG CAME A SPIDER story in AFTERDARK, which hits stands in October, will act as a quasi-prelude to TALES OF MOTHER F. GOOSE. Here we find the aforementioned Muffet as she tracks down a serial killer known as the Spider. This is essentially Muffet’s origin story and we’ll see how and why she gets the tattoo she’s later sporting in MFG. It’s also a horror story and a rather disturbing one, especially if you’re a bit skeeved by spiders (and who isn’t?).”
FRANK TIERI ON SOME OF HIS (TV/FILM) INSPIRATIONS BEHIND CREATING THE BOOK:
“Here’s the thing– we didn’t set out to do any of this. Believe me, it’s not like I woke up one day and said I’m going to do fucked up versions of children’s fairy tales and ruin some childhoods, ya know? LOL
So, this all actually started when I was asked to do a short story for AfterShock’s SHOCK anthology. I decided to do a take on Little Red Riding Hood called LITTLE RED HOOD, sort of treating it like it was as if a guy like Quentin Tarantino or a Martin Scorsese or a Brian De Palma was telling the story. So with that in mind, in that version Red is a drug courier, Granny is a drug dealer and the Wolf was a rival drug dealer. Of note you’ll notice Wolf is not an actual wolf. That’s one of the main rules I set in with these stories– everything is street level. There’s no magic, nothing supernatural… and yeah, especially no talking animals. Characters may bear characteristics of said animal but every character in these stories are human. Human scumbags in many cases, but human nonetheless.
Anyway, our story of human scumbags proved to be one of the more popular ones in the anthology and Aftershock came to me and said, hey why not do more? Why not do other stories based in this universe we’ve created here? And thus… TALES OF MOTHER F. GOOSE was born.”
FRANK TIERI ON HIS FAVORITE FAIRY TALE OF ALL TIME:
“I won my school’s story telling contest in the third grade with Puss-in-Boots so I guess I’ve always had a fondness for that story because of it. In fact, it might have something to do with why I’ve included it, though our version– like all our retellings– is much more fucked up than the original.”
