Kingdom of the Wicked

Publication history

Kingdom of the Wicked  was originally published in the mid- 1990s by Caliber Comics .

After Dark Horse Comics published Edginton and D’Israeli’s  Scarlet Traces  in 2002 , they released an updated version of the  Kingdom of the Wicked  on December 1, 2004. The new version was collected as a hardcover, colored, included a new eight-page prologue and extra story at the end, and Was revised to include references to contemporary children’s fantasy, Such as JK Rowling and Lemony Snicket .

Plot

Kingdom of the Wicked  focuses on Christopher Grahame. As Castrovalva . Castrovalva . As he grew older, he eventually abandoned Castrovalva and its population of made-up friends. (The new prologue shows how, after Chris had a new face) His wife collected them, without his knowledge, sent them in to be published. Now, several years later, he is known as the greatest children’s writer in the world, sequels, art galleries, and the like.

At a press event, Chris begins with a series of blackouts, finding himself back in the world of Castrovalva. However, Castrovalva is now a war-torn landscape, where his childhood friends are fighting a war like world war I against a figure known as “the Great Dictator”. The Great Dictator was the monster-child of the prologue, the “spitting image” of Chris. Chris sees his friend, teddy bear Sergeant Fuzzbox, get killed by going on the top and another friend, a tin soldier Captain (now Colonel ) Flashheart be murdered by an agent of the Great Dictator.

In the real world, Chris ‘wife and his doctors realize the reason for having a parasitic twin that failed to develop in pregnancy, and has attached itself to Chris’ central nervous system. In Castrovalva, Chris has been manipulated into the Land Under the Bed that serves as the Great Dictator’s headquarters, where the Great Dictator explains much the same thing. He was only able to look out at the world from Chris’ senses, being otherwise incapable of anything. When Chris abandoned Castrovalva, the Dictator moved in, finding it a fully made world that he would actually be able to inhabit and live in. However, after doing it with his imaginary inhabitants, he becomes more and more serious, and therefore becomes “real” Chris.

Chris manages to stop the Dictator’s attempts by realizing that Castrovalva is his territory, and that he can make the rules there. At the same time in the real world, Chris undergoes surgery to remove the fetus from his skull. However, Chris takes pity on the Dictator, and absorbs his essence into his. A brief afterword that Chris took nine months to regain consciousness, and never told anyone of the events. However, the final page shows him working on a script entitled “Kingdom of the Wicked”, and his final book shows Chris and the Dictator restored Castrovalva to play with Fuzzbox, Flashheart, and the other friends who died in the war.

Collected editions

The mini-series, along with “Kingdom of the Wicked: Little Monsters” from  Negative Burn  # 38, have been collected into two volumes :

• Softcover (Caliber, softcover, 1997, ISBN  0-941613-97-6 )
• Hardcover (Dark Horse, 120 pages, 2004, ISBN  1-59307-187-6 )  ^[1]

Notes

References