That was the first chapter. The second chapter is next. It is loosely related to the first, but this isn't some perfectly sequential masterpiece of order where every segue makes sense.
For the sake of trust building, the third chapter will follow the second. But then we will jump directly to chapter five, do you understand? No chapter four. Why? Because sometimes thing don't go like they should. This is an inescapable property of reality, which we all must learn to accept. There just isn't enough power in the universe for everybody to have all of it.
Anyway, the numbering structure will continue as normal thereafter. This was a charitable decision on my part, and we should take a moment to appreciate the fact that I did not explore the full extent of my power. And believe me, I could have. I could have made these chapters be any number I wanted. I could have invented a totally unrecognizable number system based on snake pictures. Shit, I could've called them all chapter 2 and refused to acknowledge that I did that.
But we are civilized, friendly people, and sometimes it is best to restrain ourselves.
When I heard Allie Brosh had a new book out, I got myself a copy the next day. Solutions and Other Problems is a lightning flash across my reality, momentarily illuminating things you'd forgotten were there and bathing everything in an aura of horror, triggering you to anticipate some heart-stopping clap of doom that doesn't come. But the lightning flickers and everything glimmers with eerie beauty.
One day the world ends, and the next morning you get up and get on with it. Wait, I don't think I'm talking about the book anymore.
But I laughed. Loudly. At children being weird, and relationships being weird, and cats being cats, and weird neighbours, and drug trips.
I actually didn't do a good job of reading the book as I zipped through in a haze of emotional despondency due to sleeplessness and overwork. I need to read this again.
The kid and I went to Montreal Comiccon the other week. I'd never been to a comiccon. In past years I've been in the area of the convention and was hugely entertained by the cosplay. Looked like fun.
And when we discovered Matt Smith would be there this year, it was decided. We had to go. Geronimo!
We bought tickets. It turns out that "The Hour of the Doctor" featuring Matt Smith was being treated as a separate event. So we bought tickets for that too.
Then I figured out how the rest of it worked: Book a timeslot to have your picture taken with Matt Smith, $110. Want an autograph? That's another $110. (I believe Smith commanded the highest price among the attending celebrities. Patrick Stewart, a mere $80.)
Sorry, kid. No upclose photos for us. We'd have to settle for hoping to be able to snap something candid.
But we reviewed the schedule and got excited. We'd make a day of it: start off with some Walking Dead cast members, treat ourselves to a nice lunch, wander around, see what there is to see, before settling in to be regaled by the Doctor's charm and wit.
And then the day was upon us.
Walking Dead event: cancelled.
But there was a lot to see. Comic book stores, more comic book stores, poster shops, costume shops, artists selling their comic or comic-inspired wares. Kiosks selling swords and chainmail. And a recruitment booth for the army reserves (really!). And more comic book stores.
Mostly, I'm kind of galled that we paid admission for the privilege of buying stuff. Most arts and crafts fairs don't even do that anymore — event organizers these days tend to waive admission fees and pass the costs of leases and rentals etc. onto the exhibitors.
Food onsite was also incredibly limited: $7 for a slice of pizza. With the anticipated turnout, I'd've thought more options than this would be made available.
I should have known, of course, that it's all about money.
To cap off the day, Matt Smith: cancelled.
And there were tears. He's her ultimate Doctor, after all. (To the point that she refuses to watch Capaldi — "he's sssoo ooolllld.")
Yes, our tickets for the special event are being refunded, but I can't help but wonder, in general, where all the money goes. Does it really go into the celebrities' pockets? I thought comiccon was all about the fans. Does it add value for a fan if the fan pays $100 for some artifact? Does it add value to fans knowing the celebrities aren't doing it for the fans, or for the love of the character, but for cold hard cash, that they're being paid off to perpetuate the myth of a given franchise? Of course it's about the franchise, and the franchise is about the money.
But it wasn't all bad. We had a great time just people-watching and identifying characters (there were Timelords!). Also, watching people try to raise Thor's hammer over their shoulders — "106 pounds of pure steel"!
And we did finally get to board the TARDIS. But this is the way to do it: The Doctor Who Society of Canada sponsored the props, and they'd take your picture for you for a donation (any donation) to the Montreal Children's Hospital. That's something I can get behind.
I discovered the Hyperbole and Half webcomic blog several years ago and thought it was one of the funniest things I'd ever read. No hyperbole.
And now there's a book: Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened, by Allie Brosh. Yay!
So I bought it for my other half at Christmas. (Am I the hyperbole, and is he the half? Are we together a hyperbole, and the child is a half? Half what?)
It's a tradition that I get him a graphic novel at Christmas (I wonder if he realizes that), and this year I thought the book should be funny, and this book is very funny, even though in tackling depression as a subject it's no less serious than the memoirs, journalistic experiences, and apocalyptic dystopias I've gotten for him in the past.
But I don't think he likes it. I can't tell if it hits too close to home to be funny or if it's too foreign to strike a chord. Maybe because he's not really a dog person (though, nor am I). After thumbing though it he told me, "It's very female."
?#!?
I really don't know what to make of his comment. I don't know what to make of him. (Do you?)
Anyway, I whiled away an afternoon with this book. It was far more enjoyable than vacuuming or doing laundry.
Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don't want to do. If I lose, I'm one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I'm going to win or lose until the last second.
It's funny (did I say that already?), and sweet. And it all sounds very genuine and sincere. And it reminds me of my own childhood, even though Allie's anecdotes are nothing like anything that happened to me as a child.
He says his name is Wolf, although he is not a wolf.
He is a hamster.
I tried to goad him into debate on the nature of our captivity, on the emptiness of life and our irrational will to live.
He burped, laughed and defecated in the food tray.
He is either mad or profoundly stupid.
I am crushed.
He sleeps again. Perhaps I shall do the same.
It is my only option.
Edward was a hamster who smoked, went on hunger strikes, questioned his existence. Edward loved and Edward lost. These are his scratchings, translated from the original Hamster.
This little hardcover book, illustrated with black and white sketches, full of hamster musings, was a lovely way to spend an hour and round out my year of Kierkegaard.
In case you hadn't heard, China Miéville now writes comic books. Smart, funny, weird comic books.
Art by Mateus Santolouco.
What's it about? Er. Hm. I'm about halfway and mildly confused (because I'm just not very comic-book-literate). But our hero (starts with "h"), Nelson, sums it up this way:
A few day ago I was just some guy. I'm still just some guy. Some guy working with his best friend's murderer to rescue an old lady superhero. To fight a supervillain and an angry void. And I am just some guy and I am terrified.
Kiki de Montparnasse is a graphic biography written by José-Louis Bocquet and illustrated by Catel Muller.
Kiki was, as I've always thought of her, the woman behind Man Ray, or the woman who inspired him, or, at any rate, the woman he most famously photographed. That is, I'd never given her much thought at all, but she was, of course, more than any of those things. Her name was Alice Prin, she was a model and an artist, and she lived a life.
This is actually a pretty thick book, more than 400 pages, which makes it probably the largest comic book I've ever read. And it's a biography — I don't read much nonfiction at all. So as an impulse purchase, it's a little out of character for me, but one I don't regret. That impulse speaks to how compelling both the artwork and the subject matter are.
The story covers the traditional chronological narrative trajectory of a life, from birth to death, and it's very Kiki-centric — there's barely a page where she's not present. That may sound like a stupid thing to say about a biography, but I mean by this that there are no asides or tangents to give historical or other context regarding events or personages that would have an effect on her life. We experience Kiki's life as she did, as it unfolded.
Kiki modelled for, and otherwise encountered, several historical figures better known than her: Modigliani and Picasso, Bréton and Duchamp, Cocteau (right), Hemingway. Thankfully the book includes biographical notes to help identify the faces and provide some background. There's also a timeline.
The artwork is black and white, not overly detailed, sketch-like, lively. It lightly skips across the decades of a vibrant Paris, and invites the reader to consider the nature of art, photography, dada and surrealism, love. Was Kiki modelling or whoring? Pitiable hanger-on or self-made feminist? A life of indulgence or artistic sensibility?
For a summary of Kiki's life in the context of her Paris, see the four-part blog series by Catel & Bocquet: At the crossroads of the world.
Some time ago I read a review by Rosecrans Baldwin: Pterrifying Pterodactyl Meets Sexy Detective. Thus was I introduced to The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. He writes:
The books are part adventure comic, part hardboiled fiction. They're terrific whodunits that conjure up all the precise atmospheric detail of, say, a Georges Simenon novel, but with twice the plot. And the artwork is striking, paneled like a comic but with historical grit. Here is Paris in its authentic beauty: rainy, crowded and bristling with characters who wear their neuroses like carnival masks.
And I was sold.
This graphic novel is recently available in English, but I figured, hey, I can read a French comic book. In French. I've done it before. So I did it again. Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-sec, tome #1, Adèle et la Bête, by Jacques Tardi.
What I like most about the story is how it combines some pretty disparate elements, all interesting in their own right: prehistoric creatures, seemingly supernatural powers, a feminist sensibility, early 20th-century Paris.
I'm a little fuzzy on some of the details, however, like who's the guy the pterodactyl swoops in to rescue from the guillotine. Not sure if that's the fault of my graphic-novel literacy, or my French. Doesn't matter, I'll read it again and figure it out.
In a weird coincidence, a few days after I brought the book home, my daughter watched the film adaptation at school (they have movie afternoon at the end of the month). From what she tells me, the movie has developed Adèle's back story and filled in many of the details. I look forward to reading about Adèle's further adventures.
There's a long, strong tradition of the bande dessinée — bédé or BD for short — in the French language. It's so much more than Tintin. I am awed by the range of material covered by this format — neither "graphic novel" nor "comic strip" or "cartoon" comes close to adequately describing the possibilities.
Bookshops in Montreal have big sections devoted to BDs, and my local bookstore is no exception. The floorspace devoted to BDs is larger than that for any category or genre (the non-genre of "general fiction" aside), and it's bigger than the English books section — although, to be fair, the BDs span genres and include some English editions. I always need to stop and look.
French BD readers surely are already in the know, but here are 3 fascinating-to-me bédés (and we won't even mention the Assassin's Creed series of French-language graphic novels) I recently stumbled upon in-store:
The author adapted his own book on the subject. It covers the period of August 27, 1941 — the day Austrian writer Zweig and his wife set foot in Rio — to February 22, 1942 — the day they died (suicide by drug overdose), holding hands.
The first of four volumes, Pablo recounts the daily life of a young Picasso in Montmartre, 1900–1912. Max Jacob, poet and Pablo's roommate, figures prominently as an influence.
3. Nietzsche, by Michel Onfray (text) and
Maximilien Le Roy (illustrations).
This volume follows Nietzsche's quest for happiness, in an attempt to rehabilitate his reputation and position him as a hero for our times.
I hope these books find English translators/publishers some day soon. In the meantime, I suspect I'll be splurging on the above titles anyway, in the interest of practicing my French.
Proud Beggars, by Albert Cossery, is a very funny book, and proved to be a delicious palate cleanser after having read a couple detail-intensive historical novels that went on a bit too long.
Written in 1955, Proud Beggars is surprisingly fresh, and in light of the Arab Spring, its revolutionary spirit can be viewed as relevant — not exactly prescient, but insightful into a simmering antiestablishment, life-affirming attitude.
It's set in Cairo, and in the second chapter there's a murder in a brothel. We know who did it — this is no police procedural or cat-and-mouse tale.
The story is about three friends, barely concerning itself with how they are implicated in the murder.
The novel starts with Gohar, who lives ascetically in a single room in a slum. He wakes to find it flooded and determines that the best course of action is to do nothing and wait for a miracle. But he's freaking out, so finally he makes a run for it, and only once he's well away from the building does he realize he's left his drugs behind, but he's too freaked out to go back. He spends the rest of the day affected by paranoia and hallucinations and sudden clarity and withdrawal, trying to track down his dealer. He dreams of finding passage to Syria where he can spend his days frolicking through fields of hashish. He gave up his professorial gig at the university some time ago; his literary talent now earns him some coin at the brothel, for to "write the love letters of illiterate whores seemed to him work worthy of human interest."
Yeghen is (he seems to think) a very ugly man, which quality is deemed to be central to his character, that of romantic and poet — a popular poet, a populist poet, giving the people voice in the people's own language. He makes his living by dealing drugs and, no doubt, engaging in other nefarious activities.
El Kordi is a revolutionary in his head, but by day he plays the role of government clerk:
It was eleven in the morning. Seated behind his desk in the Ministry of Public Works, El Kordi was growing bored watching the flies buzz about. The large room, lit by high windows and containing several desks behind which other clerks were labouring, was as odious to him as a prison. It actually was a sordid kind of prison, where one was in eternal contact with common-law prisoners. El Kordi would have accepted being in prison, but in a private cell, as a political prisoner. His rancor against such overcrowding derived from noble, aristocratic instincts of which he was not at all aware. He was embittered by the lack of privacy that became intolerable in the long run. How could he reflect at ease on problems of universal importance in front of these dusty, congealed figures devoted to unending slavery? To protest against this injustice, El Kordi abstained from practically all work, intending thereby to show his disapproval and his spiritual independence. But since no one noticed his protest, he grew bored.
[...]
From his chair, he distractedly contemplated his sorry colleagues and thought he saw the chains of slavery everywhere. These constraints imposed on his freedom several hours each day made him extremely sensitive to the sorrows of the oppressed masses of the universe. He stirred in his chair and sighed loudly. Some of the slaves, seriously occupied with their work, raised their heads and gave him a look full of incomprehension. El Kordi answered these sad looks with a kind of aggressive pout. He despised all of them. The revolutions would not be carried out by this wretched breed. They'd been there several years — how many, no one could say — rooted to their chairs, covered with dust, with their mummified faces. A veritable museum of horrors. At the thought that one day he might be like them, El Kordi shivered and felt like leaving at one. But then he told himself that it wasn't yet a decent hour to go, and so he stayed on quietly being bored.
Besides the motley trio, the investigating police inspector is himself quite a character, a man of peculiar habits and aspirations. He rounds out the novel's absurdities and brings it to a perfect close.
Along the way, adding to the rich tapestry of impoverished Cairo life: Yeghen's mother ("She was skilled in the art of distilling sadness; she spun misery like a spider its web."); the consumptive whore El Kordi intends to save; and Gohar's limbless beggar-neighbour and his jealous wife.
Despite the material poverty of the surroundings, there's a freedom of spirit and life-is-beautiful vibe throughout the book, and it's more than implied that such joie is absent among the oppressors, and only through relinquishing bourgeois extravagances can one know what is truly important. Of course, so many ideas are turned upside down in this book; ironically, the dead whore's life isn't given much value at all — she's of no consequence, just a casualty of the revolutionary ideas of a few self-important, if beggarly, men. So it seems Cossery is mocking the life-is-beautiful attitude as much as he's embracing it. Either way, it's something to smile about.
Has anyone read X'ed Out, by Charles Burns? Can you explain it to me?
I wish I'd known that this story was incomplete and was only the first part of a serial. On its own it's a bit slight, and I don't see what the big deal is over it. The story elements are part David Lynch, part William S. Burroughs — trippy and unexplained. Visually it pays homage to Tintin, but beyond that I don't see how referencing Tintin adds to the story. Maybe Burns intends a stronger parallel to be drawn in the next 100 pages, but I don't see it yet.
I'd be interested to see how the whole story plays out — what's with the hive, and the lizard creatures? — but the first volume by itself was pretty disappointing.
Graphic novels, comic books, whatever you want to call them, have never really been my thing. I've always been open to them in theory, but was never particularly drawn to them as a genre.
I use the word "genre" deliberately because it highlights a major misconception about what comic books are, one I was guilty of in the past, and one that is slowly being overcome in the literary establishment. Graphic novels are not a genre unto themselves; the term describes a format, like book, movie, painting, article, that delivers some kind of narrative (hence the "novel" part). I have over the years read in the form of graphic novels: adventure stories, fantasies, journalistic reportage, science fiction, historical memoirs, love stories.
My other half has always been a big fan of Daniel Clowes. This Christmas I gave him a handful of Clowes's latest, and since nobody gave me any books for Christmas this year (what the fuck?!), I've taken to reading over his shoulder.
Saturday morning I managed to squirrel away on my own with Mister Wonderful. Dark comedy romance? It's an evening in the life of a divorced middle-aged man out on a blind date. It's funny, perceptive, sweet. The night's events are visually depicted, but the meat of the story is Marshall's internal running commentary. In this way we also get glimpses into his past, learning how he came to be the man he is today.
But one night about three months ago, I was "befriended" by a strange woman. We wound up spending a crazy, sleepless weekend together. It was sort of like "Breakfast at Tiffany's," except in this version, Holly Golightly is an unstable, crank-snorting sociopath. It wound up costing me $800, my grandmother's earrings and a laptop, but such is the price of transformative human events, I suppose.
Clowes is a keen observer of behaviour. We miss a lot of Natalie's chitchat because Mister Wonderful is too busy thinking about having to pee but this not being a good time to go pee. Her emotional confessions are interrupted by the waitress. He grumbles about the rich party-goers and insults them in his head. It's all very human.
I'm learning that reading graphic novels requires a certain kind of literacy; one review notes some of the artist's techniques:
He makes judicious and creative use of comic book devices: three dimensional words to symbolize emotional distress; a little floating man to represent Marshall's superego; text in word balloons running off the side of a panel or obscured by inner-thought boxes; vignettes drawn in cartoony style to depict imagined consequences; flashbacks tinted a rusty orange.
The first volume, A Sea of Troubles, set the stage, bringing to life the premise that Shakespeare's creations have taken on a life of their own and are grappling with some metaphysical complexities. Are they bound by Shakespeare's quill (and what exactly is the nature of that bond), or is their will entirely free (and if so, where does that leave Shakespeare)? The plot is a question of resolving the balance of power — the bloodlustiness of Lady Macbeth and her demonic minions and the treachery of Richard III on the one hand, with Juliet, Othello, and Hamlet leading a kind of uprising against a meaningless existence on the other, essentially in defense of Shakespeare's honour.
This second volume see these factions do battle in an ultimate confrontation. But it's not all war. I was swept up in the love story: Romeo is alive after all. Will Juliet go back to him, or will she move forward with Hamlet?
Shakespeare turns out to be an alcoholic recluse wallowing in his own existential crisis. Hamlet has searched him out.
"Amazing. These people believe you their creator and yet thou art merely a drunkard. They deserve better. For this ale-soaked form deserves not my pity, nor even my scorn."
"Careful, Prince. I was not asked to be their — or your — maker. But know this: I most assuredly can unmake thee."
While the first volume stands for the novelty of its premise, I enjoyed the sequel even more for the strength of its story.
The video clip that follows features an interview with Kill Shakespeare's creators. It provides some insight on what went into its making, but it also gives you a taste of the story and the wonderful artwork.
There's some talk of adapting this work for film. Personally, I'd love to see this turned into a TV series: the Kill Shakespeare universe is wide open for countless potential adventures.
I read this back in early December, but for various reasons haven't had the opportunity to post about it (or spend much time on the Internet at all) till now. It's a happy coincidence that since then, I've read David Snodin's Iago, another extrapolation of the life of a Shakespearean character beyond Bill's script (I'll write more about this novel later). It certainly complemented my reading of the comic, giving me a fuller appreciation of Iago — a character I know very little about (I've never read or seen Othello) — and how he fits among the villains in Shakespeare's world, and helped keep this comic book alive in my mind.
This to say: you don't need to know any Shakespeare at all to enjoy Kill Shakespeare, but (as with anything, I guess) the more you know, the richer it is.
As much as we are sceptical of the translation of Tintin to the big screen, we are eager to see it. But for various reasons, it will have to wait a little while.
Myself, I have only a passing acquaintance with the intrepid young reporter. So by "we" I really mean my daughter, her father, his mother, her brother, and so on.
Being surrounded by Tintin as I am, there's nothing to do but grab an album off the stack: Le Crabe aux pinces d'or, in which we are first introduced to Capitaine Haddock.
I read this in French, and while I didn't get all the words, I got most of them. In fact, the most entertaining aspect of the story was the stream of insults Capitaine Haddock would let forth.
And it turns out rather well, I think. The Doctor finds the TARDIS, Amy is cured of recombinant yersinia pestis, children thought lost to the serpentine of the Dread Tower are restored to their families, and the galactic tourist industry is well on its way to recovery. (Sorry if I spoiled it for anybody, but really, these resolutions are rather obvious from the start.)
What surprises, and thrills, me most about this SF franchise comic book experience is exactly how much these characters sound exactly how they're supposed to sound, saying exactly the sort of thing they would say. The whole thing was very cinematic, like I'd just watched an episode on TV.
Bonus: Helena's on page 14. So we all read happily ever after.
This selection was driven by my curiosity on two fronts:
1. I'm a fan of the Doctor Who TV series, and I wonder about the other aspects of fandom so many others engage in.
2. I wanted to try out the possibility of reading a comic book on my ereader.
It turns out that navigating a comic book on my Sony Reader is entirely possible. Once I opened the file (Adobe PDF format), the ereader presented an interface heretofore unseen by me. I've read novels in PDF and somehow the text is magically reflowed to accommodate my screen settings. In this case, the page dimensions and comic panels are, sensibly, preserved, but I'm able to zoom in and out and scroll up, down and side to side, much like when you read a PDF on your computer screen. The resolution is surprisingly good.
But the navigation quickly becomes tedious, and sadly, my ereader does not support colour, so I found myself flipping from ereader to laptop to appreciate the colour and to make sure I didn't miss any frames and was following them in the right order. So it's not exactly an immersive experience the way other ebooks are, or as is a printed graphic novel in hand.
As for the story, the Doctor and Amy travel to the year 7704 on the planet Caligaris Epsilon Six, a holiday world engineered to look and act exactly like a medieval fantasy. But the tourist industry isn't operating the way one would expect it to, and there are signs of biological contamination. Uh-oh.
Before surrendering to a lazy day, I thought I'd give it one last shot to get the kid active, even though I didn't much feel like it myself.
"How about we go shopping for a skirt, like you wanted?" "No!" "What if we hang out at the bookstore?" "Yes!"
She never ceases to surprise me.
So we went to the bookstore.
I thought about buying a copy of The Train (Simenon) for myself, seeing as how my electronic review copy is set to expire in a few days and I have to have this book on my shelf. But more than that, I wanted to browse, to discover something.
I opened a copy of Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, started reading it, and, three pages in, determined it was crap, or, at least, not for me, not today.
The Project's for me, of course, and I must say its first three pages were vastly more compelling than anything else in the store. Today anyway. It's been on that list in the back of my mind of books to watch for for some time, and it puts me in mind of that Doctor Who Episode, The Lazarus Experiment — I'm sure they have nothing to do with each other, but it's as valid a reason as any to choose one book over another.
Everything my daughter knows about Shakespeare she learned from watching Doctor Who. (And she's known it for a couple years already, since first that Shakespeare episode aired.)
She knows "To be or not to be," that he wrote comedies and tragedies, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," about the Globe Theatre, that he had a son Hamnet, who died, and that he wrote about witches. That may not sound like a lot, but it's enough to surprise grown-ups at brunch, and it's more than I knew at the age of 8 (it wasn't till grade 7 that I played the role of Polonius; although, there was that story we read in grade 2, about the girl who loved her father as much as meat loves salt, which sentiment was reason enough to disown her — oh, I loved that story). (Helena can also tell you about Charles Dickens, Vincent van Gogh, the destruction of Pompeii, and Madame de Pompadour, thank you, Doctor.)
This to say: I'm all for using popular culture as a vehicle to the classics. There's nothing so sacred about Shakespeare that a divide should be drawn to keep him unsullied. Let his blood mingle with the rest of our entertainments — let him be popular culture.
So I was thrilled to receive a copy of Kill Shakespeare, graphic novel, created and written by Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Cor, and drawn by Andy Belanger.
Think Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next world, only less tongue in cheek and populated exclusively by Shakespearean characters. The politics are of a more vicious time, and the characters' awareness that they are literary creations has a more metaphysically somber tone.
Kill Shakespeare, as you might divine by the title, involves a plot to kill Shakespeare.
As summed up in the foreword by Darwyn Cooke, "All of Shakespeare's 'creations' live in a kingdom ruled by their deity: the Bard himself. The good and evil forces within this kingdom are in a race to possess the Bard's mythical quill — the source of all power and life."
It starts off with a touch of Rosencrantz, a bit of Guildenstern (á la Tom Stoppard), and pirates! Then Hamlet's Act IV takes a different turn.
Before you know it, Hamlet agrees to do the bidding of Richard III, on the promise that his father be returned to life.
Oh, and, as the witches tell it, there's a prophecy about the Shadow King:
The father's gated shall open swing,
A welcome to the Shadow King.
The two shall clash and blood will pour,
And things that were shall be no more.
Soon enough, we encounter Falstaff (about which all I know is from the post-apocalyptic Mad Maxified version of Henry IV, part something, I saw staged, one high school field trip), and Juliet and Othello and Lady MacBeth, among others.
There's enough action, threats, blood, and double-crossing to equal any of Shakespeare's histories.
The artwork is expressive, but dark, almost unrelentingly so, like the pace, that I wish Hamlet might've dallied more with characters from the comedies. I suppose Shrewsbury is meant to reference Katherine, and there's a lovely Adriana, but if there were any further invocation of the Bard's lighter works meant to give respite, it was lost on me. (Also, I did have trouble keeping a couple of the characters straight, but then, I'm not a particularly practiced reader of comic books — or graphic novels, or whatever the preferred sensitive yet serious-while-unpretentious term of choice is these days.)
I'm not convinced the characters are true to the natures Shakespeare devised for them. I have to agree with Cooke in his encapsulation of Hamlet as "emo douche," and I'm not sure he'd really want his father back. And while Shakespeare's Juliet does show a great deal of strength and courage, I'm sceptical that she has it in her to rally the people behind her to rise up. (When I heard the people calling for Lady Capulet, I was sure they meant her mother.)
Also, I'm not entirely sure what the rules are: If you die in Act II or earlier, well, you're really dead, in this world too it seems. But if you don't die till the final scenes these new creators are OK with pretending those pages were never written. I mean: at what point are Shakespeare's characters plucked to populate this world? And what about Ophelia? But I guess Hamlet, at sea with R&G, beset by pirates, doesn't know about her yet.
So it may sound like I have a lot of little gripes with this work, but it's been a gripey kind of week, and I wouldn't take me too seriously on these points. The fact is: I ate it up, and I'm on the lookout for subsequent volumes.
It's original, and gives new life, and liveliness, to a set of dusty old names that not many people other than dead academics pay much attention to.
I can't wait till my daughter discovers this book on my shelf.
