Kill Shakespeare Volume 2: The Blast of War, McCreery, Del Col, Belanger

Occasionally, ever so occassionally, there is an extra perk to my job. One that could make me the envy of a handful of nerds. Occassionally. Before this graphic novel's final issues dropped last year, myself and a couple of other staffers were treated to a first look at the completed Volume 2. I read it in an afternoon and promptly forgot to write about it. No more!

Volume 1 introduced us to our protagonists: Hamlet, Juliet, Othello, and Falstaff; as well as the antagonists: Richard III, Lady Macbeth, and Iago, among others. Central to the plot is the preservation (or destruction) of The Creator - Will Shakespeare. Hamlet is on the Quest of the Chosen One (caps for tropes), while waffling on just which side he falls upon. Richard III has promised to raise Hamlet's dead father if he kills Will, but Will's supporters believe that his existence is key to their own - that killing him could destroy the world.

On with the show!

Besides some text, there are a lot of throwbacks in this volume. The protagonists attend a play called What you Will, which embroils Hamlet into reenacting his father's murder After Hamlet and Juliet share an emotionally harrowing experience reliving their pasts in a hall of Mirrors there is a balcony scene, only it's a little different this time.Will Shakespeare does appear in this volume, but he's not the Will Shakespeare we know and love... or is he?

Something I will always enjoy in any story is the feeling that no one is safe - you can pick your favorites and root for them, but it's up to the storyteller for who comes out alive and well. Some live, some die, some come out well, others are destroyed forever. Even though we know the characters, their fates are not determined by what we already know. PLUS each new episode holds the possibility of introducing new characters to the plot that we totally weren't expecting! In novels, this can be annoying. In this it's like the cameo effect in a nerdy movie.

And, again, the art is really cool. Not being an avid GN reader, sometimes the floating boxes of text and speech bubbles were hard to follow in order as they wove around the stunning pictures, but it is a really engaging story with a lot of fun thrown in for fans of the Bard. Not so much for Tarantino, I think, but feel free to correct me on that.

Kill Shakespeare Volume 2 Paperback: 148 pages Publisher: IDW Publishing (November 22, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 1613770251 ISBN-13: 978-1613770252