Kill Shakespeare #2 – Review

By Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col (writers), Andy Belanger (art), Ian Herring (colors) and Neil Uyetake (letters)

The Story: Richard fights to keep control of Macbeth’s forces while Hamlet uses his newfound powers as the Shadow King of prophesy to lead Richard’s army closer to Shakespeare. Although they encounter some unexpected opposition, Hamlet manages to escape and continue his mission led by his new confidante and best friend: the honest, honest Iago.

What’s Good: I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You know how comic book geeks (myself naturally included) can talk for hours about “who would win in a fight?” Well, Shakespeare geeks (myself included again) do much the same thing; I remember one particular instance in which an upper division literature class I was a part of nearly came to blows over the issue of whether Richard III or Iago from Othello was the greatest villain/manipulator. (Iago is the correct answer, for those keeping score at home.) I say this so you understand that I’m in a doubly unique position to love and appreciate this book: both as a comic book fan who loves a great story, and as a Shakespeare fan for whom this concept is the literary equivalent of watching the Avengers come together for the first time. In other words, this book was almost literally made for me.

You’ll recall that I gave issue #1 a less than glowing review, and expressed some reservations about the quality of the writing. Thankfully, nearly all of the problems that seemed to be present in the first issue are absent from this one; the characters and their motivations are much more clear, the plot is more focused, and the action (and blood) has much more narrative weight. Also, in addition to simply being better characterized as a whole, these characters feel much more like the ones Shakespeare wrote than they did in the first issue. This is very gratifying to see, and makes the whole book much more enjoyable. After all, what good is it to tell a story about Shakespeare’s characters run amok if they don’t act at least a little bit like the characters they’re supposed to be?