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Dark comic

21.11.08 Caroline Horn

Chris Wooding Malice (Scholastic, February, pb, £6.99, 9781407103945) Age 11+
Malice, the latest title from Chris Wooding, comes encased in an eye-catching 3-D cover out of which looms an ominous character that looks like he has stepped straight out of a comic, which, indeed, he has. In the story, "Malice" is a comic that is marketed by rumour and word of mouth. The rumour among children is that if they repeat a certain rhyme, "Tall Jake, take me away", they will be taken away by Tall Jake (the character on the cover) into the comic world of Malice. As the story unfolds, that is what happens to a group of children, some of whom survive while others do not. The survivors determine to seek out Tall Jake and destroy him to prevent other children entering the world of Malice—although they also acknowledge the pull that Malice has over them. The world offers an excitement and adventure that their own safe lives at home do not.

Author Chris Wooding describes his genre as "modernist fantasy". "There was a big horror boom in the '80s and I liked its originality and what you could get away with. This kind of fantasy isn't about elves and dragons, it's a much more relevant style of fantasy like ‘Nightmare on Elm Street' where you have the inevitability of dreams and falling asleep.

"Malice wasn't about horror to start with but an underground comic driven by the power of rumour. However, as nothing fuels a rumour like fear, I decided that it had to be a frightening comic. Some of the characters do die but kids books have moved on in the past 10 or 15 years and children can spot it if you are stepping around issues and being coy, although these deaths are always kept "off camera". I always maintain that you should be willing or able to kill off a main character; the reader should never believe that a character is "safe" because of their position in the novel.

"I have a great affection for comics and I think that people underrate comics as a genre. We relate comics to the main super-heroes but it's a great medium through which all sorts of stories are told. Before I started Malice I had written a graphic novel for Scholastic, called Pandemonium, which is still in development, so I had comics on my mind and thought, why not fuse together- comic and text?

"It had to be done in such a way that the comic was not a gimmick, it had to be in-tegral to the book. I decided that the reader would come to realise that anything you see in the comic pages can be seen by other characters in the real world. It means you can keep track of the main characters via the comic but the ‘baddies' can also track the children via the comic pages.

"I think that Malice does have a certain attractiveness. Our  everyday world can be very boring for children and people can be very cynical about our world and aspects like the media and the lies of politicians. Malice is horrible but it is honest and it offers the possibility of real adventures. Given the choice, I might have done the same as one of the main characters, Seth, and opted to stay in the world of Malice rather than coming back to the real world."

Authors Caroline Horn Profile Scholastic Chris Wooding

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