Customer Reviews

Manga Shakespeare: Hamlet

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The cover of this book is misleading---the size of the wording implies that the text is partly 'manga,' but mostly 'Hamlet.' Sadly, the reality is that the book is 3/4 manga, 1/4 Hamlet.

The problems start with the cutting-edge, futuristic, dystopia setting. I'm not saying that Shakespeare can't be transferred successfully to other settings (because it can and has been done very well), but when people are talking to each through floating, virtual screens on one page, but a guy with a shovel is digging up skulls on another page, it just doesn't sync.

Worse than the problems with setting, this text doesn't seem to have much appreciation or sensitivity to what Shakespeare was actually doing. Huge passages are removed. Important information is elided. Beautiful language is abandoned on the cutting room floor. I'm ranting now, of course, but it just seems that if you're going to do Shakespeare, you should trust him enough to make his material the top-priority. (For a great example of what's possible, check out the Classics Illustrated version of Hamlet with artwork by Tom Mandrake.)

Back to the rant for just a second, using an ellipsis (e.g., "...") in every seventh dialogue balloon is gratuitous and uncalled-for.

With that out of my system, let me say that as far as the artwork goes, the book is great. While the figures are distorted beyond plausibility (a person with proportions of 11-heads tall?! I know that's part of manga-style, but please...), other elements of sequential art are handled very well. The dialogue balloons caught my eye, I think because of the generous white space that helps emphasize the wording. But even more, the background textures and page layouts were wonderful. On several pages I thought, "Aahh, so that's what McCloud was talking about...."

So, taken all in all, this version of Hamlet leaves quite a bit to be desired, but it's a great step towards what sequential art CAN do with sophisticated texts.

It is difficult to adequately express how amazing this was. It's all the spoken parts of Hamlet as Shakespeare wrote them, spoken by characters in a comic book. It is set in the future, in space, where Denmark is it's own planet or something. This doesn't change the story, since characters are positioned the same to one another. Personalities and stories aren't time specific like clothes are.

It has pretty good art. The style shifts to different levels of detail based on what's appropriate for that scene. Transitions between scenes and how characters are introduced are done well. So, just as a comic book this flows well.

Shakepeare as a comic makes far more sense than does reading a play. Hamlet is a play. Hamlet was meant to be watched. A comic combines the language with a linear visual. This might even be better than a play; at least, for me it was much more gripping than Shakespeare as a play. In a play, the visual is there, but due to language barriers, I haven't gotten nuances and all from the language that I probably would have picked up on had I learned English in the 1600s. However, in comic book form I could reread lines, or read more slowly or quickly and I had the visual there on the page with the lines mixed into it. The book was really gripping. I got so much more out of this than any other exposure to Shakespeare. I'm all about getting more manga Shakespeare.

I highly recommend this as a way of accessing Hamlet. Libraries and school libraries should consider getting a copy, since this is required reading for classes often enough that it will get wear, and, as I've said, is a very good way of really understanding Shakespeare's nuances. Also, it's just a good read in general as a comic and reasonably priced.

In theory, the idea of paring illustrations with Shakespeare's text makes sense: his words were, after all, meant to be watched rather than simply read; but this is not the way to do it. Artists like Hayao Miyazaki have demonstrated that Manga has the potential to be a more serious art form than many assume, but projects like this give pause: the juxtaposition of Shakespeare's rich and vibrant language with utterly flat and lifeless illustrations is unsettling, and makes one wonder if there might be inherent limitations to what can be done with the medium.

OK ... considering I never expected to see "Shakespeare" and "Manga" in the same sentence, it was a pleasant surprise when I plugged the terms in for a gift search and ... voila! It exists!
Good concept. Delivered on time, early actually, and in the promised condition.
Thank you!

William Shakespeare, Manga Shakespeare: Hamlet (Amulet, 2007)

Ever since I first heard about the Manga Shakespeare titles, I've been intrigued by the idea. I admit, I'm one of those people who generally finds Shakespeare a chore to read, even the plays of which I am perhaps overly fond. So, yeah, Shakespeare in manga form? A great idea, in concept. Execution not so much, at least where Hamlet is concerned.

First, the good stuff. Emma Vieceli (Vampire Academy), who does the adaptation, isn't slavishly faithful; she puts a subtle, but there, sci-fi feel into the adaptation that somehow manages to feel right at home in fifteenth-century Denmark. For some reason I was especially tickled at the bio-scanning door locks. I still have no idea why this is. And all the stuff people know is here, at least in abbreviated form.

On the other hand, there's the bad stuff. I know it's accepted manga style, especially in shojo (and this is definitely a shojo-style book), but come on, manga artists, do we have to keep making so many principals per book look almost identical to one another? It drives me up the wall. And Vieceli shows, with a couple of characters (Polonius, especially), that she's capable of coming up with wondrously quirky, distinct characters. I kind of understand making Rosencrantz and Guildenstern identical. It would actually be a disservice to the play if they weren't interchangeable, I think. But come on, Hamlet should be distinguishable from Horatio by more than a dark spot in his hair. Second, I mentioned "abbreviated form" above. When I say "abbreviated", I'll quantify. The Folger Library Hamlet is four hundred pages, all text. Now, I know that includes more than the play itself, but bear with me. Manga Shakespeare: Hamlet is 192 pages, and no more than an eighth of each page is text.

...what? This thing should have been a doorstop, folks. At least four hundred fifty pages, maybe broken into multiple volumes. It should definitely have included the complete text. (One of the reasons I checked this out is because my daughter has Macbeth assigned her this year--in ninth grade!--and I wanted to see if this series would have made it easier. Assuming Macbeth is as cut as this, if she tried writing a report based on it, she'd fail...)

As a prototype for what a manga edition of Hamlet COULD be, it shows some promise. As a finished product, I wanted it to be so much more than it is. ***

Reviewed by Jessica Clark (age 17) for Reader Views (9/07)


This story starts off with the King's death and Hamlet's mother married to the King's brother. Then it is discovered that the King was murdered by his own brother for his wife. Hamlet now has gone mad with revenge and wants nothing more then to seek revenge for his father's untimely death. Hamlet undergoes many changes and pushes away his love, Ophelia, and sets to work on presenting a play similar to his father's death to see his uncle's reaction. As the story unfolds there are certainly more deaths and the return of loved ones to seek justice for those that were slain, and a brutal end for all those involved.

Although I have not read the original Hamlet, I decided to read this, and I am glad that I did.

This uses original writings from Shakespeare paired with beautiful illustrations. I enjoyed reading this very much. I found it quite easy to follow and it was paired nicely with the correct drawings. I found this book to have everything storyline-wise. There was mystery, murder, romance, and action. I believe it did Shakespeare justice. I am going to have to read the actual book now to see how it compares, but I believe that it will be very close. I highly recommend that everyone read "Hamlet: Manga Shakespeare," whether they have read the actual book or not. For those that didn't follow on certain things, there is also a plot summary at the back of the book, along with a brief summary of Shakespeare's life.

Book received free of charge.