The well- drawn Bard
Shakespeare has played pivotal roles in several comic books over the years.
A WRITER given the chance to fulfil his dreams of becoming a famous playwright. A bumbling author kidnapped by a supervillain and taken on a fantastic voyage. A mythical wizard/ god who is rumoured to have created the world with a magic quill.
These are all comic book characters who are actually different versions of one man: William Shakespeare.
Yes, Shakespeare has a presence in comic books as well, and we’re not talking about comic book or graphic novel adaptations of Shakespeare’s work here, but comics that feature Shakespeare as an actual character.
One of the most famous of these has to be in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series from the 1990s, where Shakespeare plays a small but crucial part, appearing in three issues in total – # 13 ( Men Of Good Fortune), # 19 ( A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and the final issue, # 75 ( The Tempest).
Dream first meets Shakespeare in Sandman # 13 in the story Men Of Good Fortune. The central focus of this story is actually Dream’s friendship with the immortal Hob Gadling, whom he meets in an inn every 100 years. During one of those meetings, he notices Shakespeare lamenting his own writing inadequacies to Kit Marlowe. Asking Gadling about the man, Morpheus is told that he is “crap”, and that Marlowe is the one who is the real playwright. Intrigued, Dream then approaches Shakespeare and offers him a deal: in exchange for fulfilling his dreams of becoming a great playwright, Shakespeare must write two plays for him.
These two plays are later revealed to be A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, which Gaiman reportedly chose for his stories because they were the only plays Shakespeare wrote that are considered to be original rather than based on “historical events or other people’s stories”.
The first is featured in Sandman # 19, in a story called A Midsummer’s Night Dream, naturally. In it, Shakespeare and his troupe perform A Midsummer’s Night Dream for an otherworldly audience comprising Morpheus and the denizens of the fairy realm, including its king and queen, Titania and Auberon. With artwork by Charles Vess, the story became the first ( and only) singleissue comic book to win a World Fantasy Award ( for Best Short Fiction).
It’s in the series’ final issue ( Sandman # 75) that Dream’s true intentions and the deal he made with Shakespeare are revealed. Told in the aftermath of the sad, long goodbye of The Wake after the death of Morpheus, it is a fitting epilogue to the series.
One could say that The Tempest encapsulates everything that is genius about Gaiman’s series. The fact that the final issue of such a seminal series is not even about the lead character but a long- dead English playwright, and that the seeds for this issue were planted almost four years in advance in issue # 19 of a 75- issue series, boggles the mind. That Gaiman could twist the story of Shakespeare around and make it work for his own masterpiece is one thing, but he also makes it so natural that Shakespeare, that famed writer of dreams and stories, should have a pivotal place in this series that is all about the Prince of Dreams and Stories.
Shakespeare also makes an appearance 1602: Fantastick Four in 2006, another series with indirect ties to Gaiman. It is the second of three sequels to Gaiman’s original Marvel 1602 series in 2003, in which he reimagines Marvel superheroes in the Elizabethan era. Here, mutants are called witchbreed, Peter Parker is called Peter Parquagh, and the Fantastic Four are the Four of the Fantastick ( Fantastick being the name of their ship).
In Marvel 1602: Fantastick Four, Shakespeare is a famous playwright for whom Ben Grimm is secretly working, and who is kidnapped by Doom to document his journey to the “end of the world”. The portrayal of the Bard in this comic isn’t exactly very flattering, though, as he seems to be bumbling around most of the time, and even steals lines from another character called Doris Evans.
Last but not least, we have Kill Shakespeare, a Harvey Awardnominated 12- issue series published by IDW Publishing. With cowriters Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery and Andy Belanger as artist, the series made its debut in 2010, and is like a mashup of characters and stories that were created by Shakespeare. Hamlet is the lead character who, after fleeing Denmark and washing up on a beach in England, is tasked by King Richard III to seek out and kill an all- powerful wizard/ god called – you guessed it – William Shakespeare.
All of Shakespeare’s most famous characters are here: Juliet is a rebel leader whose band of rebels includes Othello, Puck, and Falstaff; while Richard III allies himself with Lady Macbeth and Iago to seize the magic quill of Shakespeare, which is said to have the power to rewrite reality itself.
Kill Shakespeare is a fascinating read, especially if you are familiar with the Bard’s works. The characters all bear shades of their original selves, but are also given new twists and stories that help to enrich them. The fun of this series is in how all Shakespeare’s characters interact with one another, and how the writers manage to mash them all up into a one epic story.
Shakespeare himself only appears in issue # 10, but the reveal is slightly anti- climactic, as we had already invested more interest in his characters rather than the man himself by then.
Kill Shakespeare was nominated for Best New Series in 2011, and spawned two sequels – the five- issue The Tide Of Blood in 2013, and The Mask Of Night in 2014.