Last updated: December 2, 2010 4:33 pm
Sarah Murphy — The Cord (Wilfrid Laurier University)
WATERLOO, Ont. (CUP) — Shakespeare’s plays have been performed for centuries, and not once did his characters try to kill their creator — until now.
A new graphic novel series pits Shakepeare as a mysterious wizard, who must fend off the attacks of villains like Iago and Lady Macbeth, with the help of some of his famed protagonists– including Hamlet and Othello. The war is on, and in the pages of a graphic novel, it is sure to be bloody.
Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col created the series after graduating from Wilfrid Laurier University and launching successful careers in broadcast journalism and the music industry, respectively.
But when the pieces of their inventive entrepreneurial venture fell into place, this was all thrown to the wind and Kill Shakespeare was born.
Described by McCreery as a “trans-media project,” Kill Shakespeare incorporates mediums such as graphic novels, films and video games to retell the story of some of the Bard’s greatest heroes and villains.
The seventh issue of Kill Shakespeare was released last week and the co-creators held an event for the release at a comic book store in Waterloo.
The project first originated with a screenplay written by McCreery and Del Col. Del Col explained the inspiration behind the story, saying, “The title Kill Bill came up, we thought instead of trying to track down David Carradine, we’ll try to track down Billy Shakespeare.”
Prominent characters include some of Shakespeare’s most beloved protagonists like Othello, Juliet, Hamlet and Falstaff, pitted against villains like Richard III, Lady Macbeth and Iago to name a few.
McCreery elaborated on the broader concept of the series, “We’ve pitted them against each other on a quest where they can either save or kill a mysterious wizard named William Shakespeare.”
Discussing the appeal of such a story, Del Col noted that Shakespeare still has an overwhelming place in cultures all over the world and claims that Kill Shakespeare’s goal is “to get people excited about Shakespeare in a whole new way.”
He continued, “This is definitely not your high school English teacher’s version of Shakespeare. It’s younger, it’s kind of edgy and dark, it highlights the bloody violence and the action-adventure, but we also have the love, romance and comedy.”
The pair has been surprised by the response from their fan base, especially the “tweenage” girls.
“Anthony’s very excited about casting Robert Pattinson in the feature film,” McCreery joked.
Kill Shakespeare really took off in the fall of 2008 when McCreery and Del Col made the decision to invest in the project full-time, leaving behind jobs at the Business News Network and managing artists like Nelly Furtado and K-Os.
For anyone interested in an introduction to the series, the first two installments are available for free on iTunes.
“We’re business grads who are writing a comic book, which for a lot of people would have been too big a jump,” said McCreery, but for these two Laurier alumni it’s a jump that seems to have worked out just fine.
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