fairy tales Archive - Arie Kaplan

Archive for the ‘fairy tales’ Category

My Favorite Kind of Vampires

10/31/22

Happy Halloween, everyone! As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I used to draw one-panel gag cartoons. Like, professionally. Only for a handful of magazines, and really just at the beginning of my writing career. These days I mostly work as a writer, and I don’t draw that much, unless you count the rough thumbnail sketches I draw for nearly every project I work on. Which definitely counts as drawing. But I don’t often show those sketches to the people I’m working with (although sometimes, I do).

Anyway, since it’s Halloween, I thought I’d post one of the gag cartoons I drew back in the day. It’s called “Vampire Nerds,” and it was originally published in the October 2006 issue of Nickelodeon Magazine. (That was the Halloween issue, as if you couldn’t tell by the cover date.) Check it out:

Obviously, vampire nerds are my favorite kind of bloodsuckers, because I myself am a massive geek. (Which you could probably tell by the fact that I write graphic novels about mythical creatures, children’s book adaptations of famous sci-fi movies, TV scripts about fairy tale characters, and scripts for uber-nerdy video games. But I digress…)

I may begin drawing cartoons again (like, professionally), because I really miss it. If that does indeed happen, I’ll definitely mention it on this blog. So keep checking this space!

Creative Writing Life Podcast Interview

3/30/22

A few weeks ago, I was a guest on the Creative Writing Life podcast, where Justin Sloan & Paul Zeidman interviewed me about what it’s like writing books, games, & TV shows for kids.

You can check out the interview HERE.

Geek Girl Authority interview and John Wilkes Booth humor piece

2/16/22

Here are some things you might not know about me:

When I was a very young child, I thought The Count (from Sesame Street) was Jewish because he talked like my maternal grandmother.
When my daughter Aviya was a baby, I used to hold her horizontally and pretend she was a tommy gun and that I was using her to obliterate mobsters in the 1920s. See, her legs were the butt of the gun, and her arms were the trigger, and um…Please don’t call Child Protective Services.
One time, I formed a boy band with some of my fellow MAD Magazine writers. (Well, more of a “man band,” because we were all adults…technically.) We assigned roles to everyone, because the people in boy bands always have roles, e.g. the leader, the romantic one, the cute one, etc. My role? The sexy weirdo.
According to my wife Nadine, the other day I talked in my sleep. I got up (still asleep), stood by the foot of the bed, and yelled, “There should be more comedy concerts!” And I’d just like to say: Sorry, sleepwalking-and-sleeptalking Arie, there’s still a pandemic going on. So there are limits on live indoor entertainment for now!
Speaking of the pandemic, one of the things I’ve missed about the pandemic is attending comic book conventions in person. One thing I don’t miss? Being asked by random strangers whether I was cosplaying as Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters, which honestly has happened too many times for me to count. For the record: No, not cosplaying as anyone. This is just what I look like.

Now, I didn’t talk about any of those things when Rebecca Kaplan (no relation) interviewed me for Geek Girl Authority. But here are some of the things I DID talk about in that interview:

The “Beatles” story I wrote for the One Anthology to Rule Them All omnibus, published by The Daily Drunk
The Red Titan graphic novels I wrote for Simon & Schuster
“Charlie and Little Bo Peep,” the episode of Charlie’s Colorforms City I wrote for Netflix
Swamped by Croc, the Batman children’s book I wrote for Penguin Random House

Yup, I discuss all four of those writing projects in that interview, which you can read HERE.

Also, just in time for Presidents’ Day, I wrote a humor piece called “Other Catchphrases John Wilkes Booth Considered Before ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis!’” It was published on Weekly Humorist. Check it out!

Charlie’s Colorforms City – “Charlie and Little Bo Peep”

11/30/21

Last year, I wrote an episode of the Netflix animated preschool series Charlie’s Colorforms City called “Charlie and Little Bo Peep.” The episode is one of the “Classic Tales with a Twist” eps, which launched TODAY!

Here’s the official synopsis of “Charlie and Little Bo Peep”:

“Animal detective Charlie is on the case! He disguises himself and goes undercover to help Little Bo Peep solve the mystery of her missing sheep.”

As you may be able to tell from that logline, this episode combines two of my writerly obsessions, fairy tales and detective stories. I had a great time penning the script for this episode, and I think the finished product looks spectacular. (But then again, I’m a bit biased.)