The thought that the greatest writer of all time might be swallowed up by a 21st-century media overload of lessers concerned Canadian-based comics creators Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col. So they mashed Shakespeare's immortal characters into a densely intertextual series called Kill Shakespeare, debuting Sunday at San Francisco's WonderCon nerd-fest.
"He served as the aggregator for all the archetypes and story themes that make up 99 percent of today's work," McCreery told Wired.com in an e-mail interview, ahead of Kill Shakespeare's WonderCon bow. "Scratch almost any story and a Shakespearean theme emerges. He's everywhere."
"But most people aren’t aware of this," added Del Col. "Plus, he created a model of entertainment that appeals to all audiences, including elements of straight escapism and thought-provoking drama."
It's the type of compelling, character-driven convergence you find in acclaimed television series like Lost. Which is no accident, if you ask McCreery.
"If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be J.J. Abrams," he said.
Kill Shakespeare builds on the type of literary-comics hybrid that has made titles like Bill Willingham's Fables and Mike Carey's The Unwritten so engrossing.
Kill Shakespeare transposes unforgettable characters from our collective cultural history into a surreal comics environment where they, and the readers, are challenged to assign meaning and motivation. Rather than being allowed to dominate the proceedings, timeless villains like Richard III, Lady Macbeth and Iago are now forced to share space and stratagems, while heroes like Hamlet and Juliet are charged with combating them.
And all of them orbit around a diabolical metafictional purpose: A plot to kill their famed author.
"We think the most entertaining feature of our concept is seeing what happens when these notable heroes and villains are thrown together into the same world," said Del Col. "We're very intrigued by the recent trend of literary mashups, from Fables to Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. It’s a great sign, akin to sampling and mixing in the musical world."
"Our Hamlet is going to take actions that Shakespeare's Hamlet never did," said McCreery. "But we think it will work because we feel the process that leads them to any given choice is very consistent with what Shakespeare originally wrote."
Given the extensive breadth of Shakespeare's writings, it took Del Col and McCreery years and reams of paper to arrive at a singular narrative for their comic book. They even wrote up a 100-page business plan to give the project shape, before settling on artist Andy Belanger and plowing through the 16 drafts that eventually made up Kill Shakespeare's first issue. That left a startling amount of the Bard's writings on the cutting-room floor.
"A lot had to be left behind," McCreery said. "We were very strict in the editing process and we killed a lot of our babies. Just like they say you should."
"But we also tried to include every single Shakespearean story element," added Del Col, "from drama, war and romance to double-crossing and cross-dressing. We even have a play-within-a-play at one point."
The now-accomplished goal was to put together a crafty comic that would be ready in time for an April unveiling. After all, it is the month in which William Shakespeare was both baptized and buried. It seemed a fitting objective, for such a mammoth cultural figure.
"We want people debating about whether a project like this would have Shakespeare rolling around in his grave," said Del Col.
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