Faye Yong – Manga Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice from SelfMadeHero on Vimeo.

By William Shakespeare, adapted by Richard Appignanesi, illustrated by Emma Vieceli

SelfMadeHero

Another entry in the impressive line of Manga Shakespeare graphic novels of which I’ve previously looked at A Merchant Of Venice and Twelfth Night. And just like those previous two volumes, I have to say I really liked this contemporary reinterpretation of one of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies.  The whole Manga Shakespeare concept is something I really enjoy, stripping away the stuffy mystery of Shakespeare, energising it with Manga stylings and taking the bard’s wonderful words and fantastic stories and making them interesting to a whole new readership – it’s a very good thing indeed.

Much Ado About Nothing is a classic Shakespeare comedy, full of trickery, romance, mistaken identity, deceit and marvellous wordplay:

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(Benedick and Beatrice engage in their “merry war” of words. But can love really be waiting for them? From Much Ado About Nothing, published by SelfMadeHero)

Claudio loves Hero, whilst Benedick and Beatrice spend their lives ridiculing and fencing with each other, engaged in a “merry war” of barbed, delicious wordplay. But love and hate are very close things, as we’re about to find out. Plots are carried out Claudio and Hero are united, but the story is baarely begun at this point. Two more plots are to form the rest of the story, one delightfully setting Benedick and Beatrice together (and wouldn’t you know it – under all those barbed words, true love is blossoming), the other a darker plot set by the villain of the piece Don John to drive Claudio and Hero apart. It oh so nearly succeeds but in the end, as it should be in this glorious romantic comedy, it all comes good and it is indeed, much ado about nothing. The adaptation does everything right, the words are funny and heartfelt in equal measure, the villainy devious, the characters play their assigned roles well. This is a wonderfully romantic comedy, just as it was originally written.

(Emma Vieceli’s gorgeous art from Much Ado About Nothing. Published by SelfMadeHero)

Emma Vieceli’s artwork is gorgeous, sumptuous and very pretty, full of all the lush backgrounds and romantic characters of the Italian Risorgimento era. It’s a deliberate stylistic choice on the part of Vieceli, who sets the action in her familial home of Tuscany and populates it with the wonderfully romantic fashions and styles of the time.

It’s particularly fitting that Vieceli illustrates this most romantic of Shakespeare’s tales in Shoujo Manga style where everyone, male, female, good, bad, are ridiculously pretty characters. Indeed, if I were to be hypercritical, it’s sometimes a little too pretty, with characters all looking a little too similar at times. It can sometimes take a little work on the reader’s part to keep up with the story, and work out whether this particularly pretty face is male or female, hero or villain. But like I said, that’s too critical and after all, whenn the words are so good, it’s worth concentrating that little bit more to make everything work perfectly.

Like the other two Manga Shakespeare titles I’ve read, Much Ado About Nothing is a great read, with great art. But better than that, it’s a great way to get more and more readers enjoying Shakespeare – and that’s always a good thing.

Richard Bruton.

By William Shakespeare, adapted by Richard Appignanesi, illustrated by Nana Li

Self Made Hero

Another entertaining exploration of the world of Shakespeare using Manga stylings from Self Made Hero’s Manga Shakespeare line – but I knew what to expect this time, having only recently reviewed The Merchant Of Venice and really a lot of what I said there can be assumed to be true here. It’s yet another very classy adaptation that stays very true to the original whilst updating the styling and storytelling for a modern audience. It’s as wonderful and entertaining as Twelth Night always was, just this time with a different style and a different setting. If you already enjoy Shakespeare you’ll find much to enjoy here and if you don’t like Shakespeare (and let’s face it, that’s normally because you were turned off him at school), then this is a great opportunity to approach this wonderful comedy from a different perspective.

Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s comedies, and like most of his comedic work relies on a good deal of wordplay, a goodly collection of fools and that old staple; the mistaken identity, cross-dressing unrequited love triangle. The greatness of Shakespeare’s comedy, at least as I’ve always seen it is that essentially he’s often just telling what we’d immediately recognise as a good, funny screwball romantic comedy. If he’d been writing in the last century he would have made countless Cary Grant films and managed to work the Marx Brothers in as an extra.

(“Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness”, Viola/Cesario ponders the tangled love triangle she’s in the middle of. From Twelfth Night. The books full of these lovely, inventive panel arrangements by artist Nana Li.)

Countess Olivia is in mourning for her brother, her castle is a cold, joyless place even in the run up to Christmas and she has no time for thoughts of love. Yet Olivia’s neighbour; Duke Orsino is madly in love with her and desperate to find a way to make her fall for him. Enter identical twins Viola and Sebastian, washed up on the shores of Illyria, both thinking the other dead. Viola disguises herself as a boy and, going by the name Cesario quickly lands a job with and immediately falls in love with Duke Orsino who sends Cesario/Viola to convince Olivia of his love, but Olivia meanwhile falls in love with Cesario/Viola. The triangle is made, unrequited love is all around. But don’t forget Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother – could he be the solution to all this and allow everyone to get their own Merry Christmas with the love they want? It’s Shakespeare – of course they do! All’s well that ends well after all.

In addition to this, we have the other Shakespeare staple, the fools and a great comedy villain, played here in delightfully pompous fashion by Countess Olivia’s puritanical, hated butler Malvolio. The fools consist of Olivia’s Jester Feste, her drunken uncle Toby Belch and his rich friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, whom Toby has convinced has a chance at Olivia’s hand. This trio, along with feisty maid Maria hatch a plot to humiliate the hated butler Malvolio. In true Shakespeare style this plot is calculating and funny, a wonderfully silly subplot to offset the romances of the main players.

(Nana Li’s artwork – a lovely steampunk 19th Century update to the tale of Twelfth Night)

As with Faye Yong’s work on The Merchant Of Venice, Nana Li’s artwork here is lovely. Her pages have all the required style and dynamism for a Manga page but still maintain a relaxed pace more suited to this gentle romantic comedy. One inspired touch, as seen in the illustration above, is the decision to tranfer the action to some imaginary steampunk influenced point in the 19th Century, allowing Li to go wild with those retro-futurist clothes and the steampunk tech on display all the way through the book.

Like Merchant Of Venice, Twelfth Night does exactly what it’s intended to do; brings Shakespeare out into the modern world, giving it a very stylish update and, hopefully, opening it up to an entirely new readership who’ll find a real and genuine love of his work in these pages.

Richard Bruton

by William Shakespeare, adapted by Richard Appignanesi, illustrated by Faye Yong.

Self Made Hero

It perhaps seems strange at first – this idea of Manga adaptations of Shakespeare’s works. But the bard was always a populist writer, crafting entertainment for the masses rather than the high culture it is sadly seen as today by most. And thus a comic adaptation makes a certain amount of sense. A Manga adaptation even moreso with it’s visual language especially appealing to a younger audience who find Shakespeare inaccesible and difficult. Our school days were marked by reading Shakespeare in class, bored beyond belief as one child after another butchered and tortured the words in flat monotone. It kills the work for most children. And the only way it actually achieves the original intent is when it’s appropriated by popular culture once more. Readers of my age may remember studying Romeo & Juliet and only ever being excited by it when the teacher let us watch the Zeffirelli film version. A few years ago Baz Luhrmann redid it in beautiful hyper technicolour and managed to make it sexy and exciting once again. So if we want to introduce readers to Shakespeare the idea of adapting him using Manga is inspired.

But only if it’s well done.

And thankfully this Manga adaptation of The Merchant Of Venice captures the drama of the play beautifully. I had visions on getting this book that it would be some butchered, cut down, modernised text to go with the Manga visuals. But that fear is dispelled almost immediately as Antonio steps forth and speaks with Shakespeare’s words. Certainly it’s been cut down and made to fit the 200 pages but it’s an intelligent and sympathetic adaptation, keeping every nuance, every emotion and getting over every moment of drama and comedy.

(Love. It’s always about love. But what price is Antonio prepared to pay to see Bassanio happy?)

For those that missed Merchant Of Venice when it was butchered by your classmates at school, the basic story goes thus;

Bassanio, a gentleman of Venice, with all the looks but none of the money, is in love with beautiful Portia, a rich heiress whose late father has set her multitudinous suitors a simple test of character to prove themselves worthy of his daughter’s hand (and her not inconsiderable) wealth. Needing money to make the right impression and win Portia’s hand, Bassanio has to borrow from Antonio, a merchant whose fortunes are tied up at present in his goods across the seas. With no cash flow, Antonio approachs Shylock, the Jewish money lender for a loan. Shylock, angered and bitter at Antonio’s treatment of him and his kind, makes a simple loan, interest free, but whose sole terms demand the forfeiture of a pound of Antonio’s flesh if the loan cannot be repaid. Meanwhile, Shylock’s daughter is in love with another of Venice’s Christian gentlemen and will be moved to elope with him (and a goodly part of her father’s fortune). Shylock, thus angered, finds the perfect opportunity for revenge when the seas prove to be too much for Antonio’s fortune. A pound of flesh is required…..

(Shylock and Antonio make that famous deal, a pound of flesh is promised and both Shylock and Antonio are tainted by their words.)

It’s meant to be one of Shakespeare’s comedies. Yet there’s an awful lot of intense drama in Merchant of Venice. And with Shylock we have one of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters. His initial cruelty and sinister nature is tempered through the book as we see the good Merchants merciless baiting of him. And his torment at losing his daughter fuels his hatred of his tormentors until, by the end of the tale, there’s more than a hint of sympathy for dark Shylock and the good gentlemen of Venice are somewhat tainted by their words and cruel actions. Like most great works, light and dark are not always what they initially seem. And this adaptation does an incredibly good job of getting over the spirit of the play very well indeed. The initial reluctance on my part on seeing that the characters had been recast as Light Elves and Dark Elves proved groundless, since the fantasy appearance is supported ably by the strength of Shakespeare’s words and story.

The art by Faye Yong is a huge improvement on the last time I saw her work in Murphy’s Law. It’s tighter, darker and far more suited to the tale than I would have thought. She illustrates her pages with style and dynamism, and utilises the stereotypes of the Manga image to convey every emotion necessary and there’s even room for some well placed chibi/super-deformed characters to emphasise the comedic moments.

Based on this first exposure to Self Made hero’s Manga Shakespeare I can see myself eagerly coming back for more. It’s a modern, updated and most importantly, immediately accesible way to disseminate the bard’s works to a younger generation. Hopefully we have teachers across the land adopting these texts to hook our children into something truly wonderful. I’d love to hear from anyone out there who has used them, or anything similar in the classroom, since I really feel they could prove an incredible asset to learning. And anything that encourages reading of some of the greatest works of literature is to be applauded and encouraged.

Richard Bruton.