Preview: Midnight Massacre From Action Lab

Creators John and Ben Matsuya share: “MIDNIGHT MASSACRE combines all the fun of waiting in line at a theme park with a horde of marauding monsters! If you’re looking for a comedic romp about a girl who’s working the Halloween shift at the amusement park, wasting away her talents and her passions, that’s extremely specific of you… But also, exactly what MIDNIGHT MASSACRE is about! We’ve got the undead, punk rock, roller coasters, Halloween, thrills, romance, late stage capitalism, and maybe… just maybe a moral?”

They go on to talk about how relatable MIDNIGHT MASSACRE can be for readers, thanks to their protagonist: “I hope Amy strikes a recognizable chord with the readers and inspires them to shake up the system. Amy is a strong teenager coming into her own. The kind of teen we see a lot in our real world, but not enough in our media. She is intelligent, but discounted; she is postmodern, ironic, and smart, but like many in our millennial generation, she falls for the false narrative that she is incapacitated by circumstances out of her control. We want to connect with younger readers through the adventure and the world we create, but also with more sophisticated readers through our satire and comedy.”

They add, on a more personal note: “We have chosen to pursue creative endeavors, but following the recession we both took on jobs that put us in the stasis we describe (myself in a white collar workplace; my brother in the very same theme park position that Amy has). We’ve watched so many of our generation struggle to find work and acquiesce to the first open position, only to fall into a routine and see their dreams stunted by our economic reality. 

“We believe everyone who’s been in a job to “pay the bills” will feel an affinity with the struggles that Amy undergoes and take away the same message that she does: you aren’t just a cog. Be courageous. Follow your passion and fight for it. Don’t lose your sense of self and don’t let the system change you, change the system.”