By: William Shakespeare Publisher: Puffin Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Puffin Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 176 Publication Date: September 08, 2005 Reading Level: Young Adult
Product Description: Shakespeare’s classic play of deception and murder is reinvented in the Japanese manga style and set on a vast ringworld encircling a sun. Artist Tony Tamai’s unique vision and style breathe new life into a captivating classic.
good for the lulz As others have pointed out, this is not a refined, polished product. It reads and looks like a rush job, but isn't bad enough as to be incomprehensible--which is saying something, for Shakespeare. The comic doesn't offer much except that taking Macbeth into a futuristic setting is good for a laugh.
I picked the book up at the local bookstore on sale for $3, and I'd say it's worth bargain bin prices.
my review "Macbeth the Graphic Novel"
I like the book to some extent, like the plot and graphics, but the rest of the book was rather boring. It's boring due to the fact that it's been written hundreds of times before. There was nothing new except the comics used to illustrate the actions of the characters.
It was nicely drawn out but three quarters of the way through, the graphics became all sloppy and seemed to have been poorly drawn. It has many large words and old English dialogue, so it may be complicated to some readers. I was able to comprehend most of the language, but most of it I just faded in and out.
The idea is clever to set it in the Star Date 1040, and to add pictures to appeal to younger readers, but they should just leave Shakespearean literature alone and keep it the way it was intended.
Overall I considered the book wordy and poorly thought out. But I give it an A+ for creativity and use of graphics and the blend of suspense, comedy, and tragedy. Although I don't recommend the book, due to its many flaws and poor graphics.
my review "Macbeth the Graphic Novel"
I like the book to some extent, like the plot and graphics, but the rest of the book was rather boring. It's boring due to the fact that it's been written hundreds of times before. There was nothing new except the comics used to illustrate the actions of the characters.
It was nicely drawn out but three quarters of the way through, the graphics became all sloppy and seemed to have been poorly drawn. It has many large words and old English dialogue, so it may be complicated to some readers. I was able to comprehend most of the language, but most of it I just faded in and out.
The idea is clever to set it in the Star Date 1040, and to add pictures to appeal to younger readers, but they should just leave Shakespearean literature alone and keep it the way it was intended.
Overall I considered the book wordy and poorly thought out. But I give it an A+ for creativity and use of graphics and the blend of suspense, comedy, and tragedy. Although I don't recommend the book, due to its many flaws and poor graphics.
The Luck of Macbeth Made Evident Being the shortest of Shakespearian tragedies, Macbeth would be the logical choice of play to receive the graphic novel treatment. This book, retelling a somewhat truncated version of "the Scottish play," is one of the more recent attempts which capitalizes on the metaphysical elements, while transposing a unique futuristic setting (the opening caption puts the tale in "Stardate: 1040," the King's men ride dragons, and even the Weird Sisters appear as androids).
However, there is a definite sense that the finished product does not live up to the initial aspirations. Though the text is wholly comprised of critical lines gleaned from the original text (including a few superfluous but wholly memorable ones, such as Macbeth's "We have scorched the snake, not killed it" and the witty dialogue between MacDuff's wife and child), the story does not retain the proper flow of the original play. In adapting the story, too much has been lost for the sake of brevity, and thus are the characterizations fatally flawed. One feels little sympathy (much less empathy) with the tragic hero because his transformation from nobility to barbarism is almost immediate, allowing no opportunity to be drawn into his formerly held virtue. In fact, the only portrayal whose death I felt was that of Banquo (and Shakespeare's Macbeth is rife with such unjust murder and assassination)!
Likewise, Mr. Tamai's artwork is competant at best, if inconsistent. The lush style of illustration remains intact for all of 55 pages before degenerating into a completely different one, as if the pages were incomplete at the time of publication. The expressive eyes and astute detail return some twenty pages later, but soon dissipate back to the "new" style. It could be argued that this sharp shift in drawing style is a microcosm representative of Scotland's descent into madness, though for such a purpose it is sadly ineffective.
Together, both the text and the illustration occasionally work against each other, providing not so much complimentary story-telling techniques, but distraction. This is, unfortunately, especially prominent in the first few pages of the book, where the witches deliver their opening lines and the King's fighting men speak poetically during a complex, heavily detailed battle. The beauty of Shakespeare's words are combined with Mr. Tamai's fantastic rendering of a futuristic skirmish, yet the two provide such a juxtaposition as to render a steep mount of confusion.
Helpful would be some form of "spacing," or the use of separations signifying the breaks in the play's Acts (the short book's "chapters," if you will). Also, a brief description of the cast of characters would aid the reader in discerning who's who (since the book does run shorter than the play upon which it is based, thereby creating a minuscule window of opportunity into which the uninitiated reader may enter). Finally, a well-versed knowledge of the original play would assist the reader in getting through the entire book, as the book by itself neither involves nor moves the reader.
It is a lofty aspiration for Penguin Graphics to attempt such an adaptation, so it is especially disappointing that such a valiant effort should fall so short.
Dialogue butchered like Macduff's family What Arthur Byron Cover has tried to do here is to "stage" Macbeth in a science-fantasy setting, with dragons and planets instead of horses and countries. My personal view - and I know that many people disagree - is that staging Shakespeare out of period seldom works (I say "seldom" because I have seen it done effectively). It particularly doesn't work, though, when the visuals and the dialogue are at odds - for example, when two characters are discussing how remarkable and unnatural it was that King Duncan's horses ate each other and the visual is of two dragons. This, though, could have almost worked, or at least not been too appalling, if the dialogue itself had not been hacked about in such a way as to make quite a lot of it into nonsense. It's difficult for modern readers to follow Shakespeare's dialog anyway; it's impossible if someone arbitrarily cuts out the middles of sentences, or inserts full stops at the end of speech bubbles despite the fact that the sentence carries on in the next panel, or drops entire, critical lines from key speeches. Worst example of this: Macbeth is meeting the three witches (who appear to be cyborgs or something). The third "all hail" is missing - the line where the witch says "all hail Macbeth, who shall be King hereafter" is completely absent. And this, of course, makes complete incomprehensible nonsense out of the rest of the scene and, indeed, the rest of the play, since this is one of the most significant lines in the entire work as far as plot is concerned. I'm not sure who's to blame for this - ultimately Penguin, since their editors apparently didn't pick it up or correct it, or the many other lesser dialogue glitches. But it makes what might otherwise have been an adequate adaptation into a complete travesty. One star (for the illustrations, which are competent).
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