Lady Macbeth's Breasts (SFW - honest!)

Lady Macbeth gets the academic treatment thanks to WPI Prof: Michelle Ephraim

We're a week away from the release of the new JULIET trade to bookstores, and to help celebrate that we have something cool for you Shakespeare academics.Michelle Ephraim, who was one of the scholars who helped to put together our Backstage Edition has thoughtfully provided us with a copy of a Kill Shakespeare inspired essay, entitled, rather provocatively: Lady Macbeth's BreastsMichelle talks in her piece about the role that sexuality plays in the depictions of Lady M, both in our comic, and in culture as a whole. It's a funny, thought-provoking and insightful take on one of my favourite characters in the canon, as well as one that gives us a pat on the back for having Lady M transcend her "femme fatale" tropes (yay, us!).It's a short and enjoyable read - and you can go here to get in on the fun!Or if you'd rather just read the whole thing now i'ts here below: Lady Macbeth’s Breasts Before venturing into the influential (and notoriously censorious) Texas library market, the Kill Shakespeare team took some professional advice and gave Lady Macbeth’s ample breasts a bit of a nip/tuck. Especially to the “side boob” swelling out from the periphery of her metal tank top. Even with this strategic augmentation, Lady Macbeth’s breasts are a formidable presence in KS. And even more than her signature props—daggers, poison, wine—the breasts are Lady Macbeth’s most defining accessory. At the end of Issue #6 (also the concluding chapter of Kill Shakespeare: Volume 1), Lady Macbeth is serving up plenty of wine and cleavage to her obsequious paramour, Iago. (You can practically hear him panting.) Issue #7, with which Kill Shakespeare: Volume 2 begins, picks up with the same tableau of booze and breasts, establishing the latter as a key visual and symbolic theme in KS’s grand design. These prominent breasts seem appropriate given Kill Shakespeare’s literary context. In Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth’s most famous speech, her furious response to Macbeth when he tries to renege on their plan to murder King Duncan, concerns this part of her anatomy: I have given suck, and knowHow tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.I would, while it was smiling in my face,Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gumsAnd dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as youHave done to this. (1.7) The speech has launched many an academic publication on Lady Macbeth’s maternal history. Did she give birth? What happened to the kid? Regardless of the true story of little Macbeth, her anecdote is meant as a testimony to her toughness, her refusal to wuss out of any promise. Ultimately and ironically in Act I of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth cites the female breast to articulate her strong masculine attributes and, by contrast, her husband’s weak, feminine nature. We hear her plea to be rid of any and all nurturing attributes: “Come you spirits/Unsex me now, and take my milk for gall.” Just in the highly unlikely case there’s a residual drop of motherly compassion. But her real concern lies with her husband who’s “too full of the milk of human kindness.” Whereas she’s manned-up to the task of killing the king and usurping the throne, Macbeth has not; she must bully him into it. To this end, Lady Macbeth shames her husband: if he refuses the chance to kill Duncan he is unmanly, but if he takes this opportunity he will be “so much more the man.” Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth demonstrates her feminine side by the end of the play, but it’s not a pretty sight. Senseless, sleepwalking, and suicidal, she embodies what contemporary medical discourse would have identified as textbook female hysteria. Modern American psychiatrist Isador Henry Coriat in his 1912 book The Hysteria of Lady Macbeth goes to town with this interpretative tradition: “Lady Macbeth is a typical case of hysteria; her ambition is merely a sublimation of a repressed sexual impulse, the desire for a child based upon the memory of a child long since dead” (28-9). KS, however, clears Lady Macbeth of any trace of maternal trauma or desire. She’s homicidal, not hysterical. She’s characterized by malevolence, not madness.[1] In gaining and maintaining the Scottish throne, she also succeeds where her Shakespearean prototype fails, but this is hardly enough for her. And unlike Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, she doesn’t rely on her husband to get what she wants; she simply rids herself of Macbeth, a nuisance of a husband and an obstacle to her own political ambitions. In fact, KS’s Scottish Queen doesn’t give her husband much thought at all. It’s Iago who comments on their inverted gender roles: “[Lady Macbeth] has none of the soft parts of her husband.” No soft parts, indeed. Those impressively pneumatic breasts are definitely not filled with milk, not even a drop of it. Instead of milk, she’s full of the sinister liquids of liquor and poison, which she administers without a trace of human kindness. Lady Macbeth’s breasts in KS might be seen as inflated, metaphorically, with her voracious ambition. Appropriately, they are also her most formidable weapon, insuring her husband’s lusty oblivion as she straddles him in bed . . . and murders him.  Instead of drinking the “nectar” between her legs as he happily expects, he gets poison thrust down his throat. As Lady Macbeth forces her liquid into him with her phallic vial, she is so much more the man. Like the stage and film productions that have depicted Lady Macbeth erotically, KS emphasizes a connection between a woman’s verbal and sexual aggressiveness. In the Renaissance, the oft-open mouth of a woman who talked excessively or forcefully was thought to have an analogous “openness” in her nether regions as well. In KS, Lady Macbeth’s skill at verbal manipulation hooks not only her husband, but Iago and King Richard II. In bed, she and Richard spar with “wit”--a word that for Shakespeare’s audience would have a double entendre as genitalia. Like their battle of wits, their competition for Shakespeare’s quill, an object with clear phallic symbolism throughout KS, is ultimately a fight for sexual and political domination. The most audacious adaptation of Lady Macbeth’s character in KS, more than her inspired cup size, is her new identity as a bona fide witch. Her magical cred supersedes that of the incanting Weird Sisters who submissively mumble their toil and troubles in her shadow.No matter how many Shakespearean scholars have argued for their similarities in Macbeth, there is no evidence that Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth knows the three Weird Sisters, save for Macbeth’s mention of them. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, all four ladies may take gratification in controlling Macbeth, but only the witches have true agency; as she discovers, Lady Macbeth is just a poor player strutting and fretting her way to a really crappy fate. By promoting Lady Macbeth to witch status, KS ups the ante of the threat she poses to Macbeth, to Shakespeare, and, if we think about King James’ influential 1597 treatise on witchcraft, Demonologie, to the world of men in general. Richard is warned that she is “bewitching” and to “stay safe from her spells,” but he counters that she is merely his “possession, nothing more.” Nothing more, Richard? Are you sure about that? Shakespeare’s witches are sexual deviants who gets their kicks from screwing with men. Maybe from literally screwing them, too. They brag about removing a sailor’s thumb, a castration narrative KS evokes in Lady Macbeth’s fantasy of snatching the quill from Shakespeare. A well-endowed caricature of a Sexy Woman, Lady Macbeth would evoke a grotesque and subversive (and transgendered?) figure should she gain possession of the phallic quill, that penile appendage. With the quill, she would, as she declares to Richard, be “crowned king of this infinite space.” In Demonologie, King James’ deep paranoia about his subjects’ loyalty is on full display. He writes that women are susceptible to becoming “entrapped” by the “gross snares of the Devil” because they are weak, frail, disloyal creatures by nature. Once they become witches, the devil’s servants, they will launch a sexual and thus, political assault on every man they can get their hands on. Witches, he argues, have the power to:“[weaken] the nature of some men, to make them unable for women.” Unlike the bearded ugly witches in Shakespeare’s play, the extreme sexuality and physical beauty of KS’s Lady Macbeth only underscores, by contrast, the potentially sterilizing, castrating, and generally emasculating effects she has on men. What would King James make of her controlling the dagger that flies around trying to stab Hamlet and Shakespeare? Like the phallic vial of poison, the dagger is a weapon that is both physically and ideologically threatening in its symbolic usurpation of phallic power. It’s easy (and pleasurable) to imagine King James quaking with anger and pointing a shaky finger at this comic book Lady Macbeth. “See?,” he would mutter through clenched teeth, “I told you so!” At the end of Issue #12, after the big fight scene, Lady Macbeth disappears in a puff of magic smoke. It’s her own version of “I’ll be BAAACK.” Suddenly, that visually arresting eye candy of a body is gone, and we are left with . . . well, with eyes. Her eyes, staring out at us from the page. There is no body here, no breasts. Yet their gapingly absent presence is as much of a threat as they are, in all their gloriously visible cleavage, to the horny Iago. Shakespeare’s suicidal Scottish Queen becomes undone by her physicality—she just can’t seem to get that damn spot off her little hand. Not to mention the trauma of that lost child, the pet theory of Coriat and other psychoanalytic critics. There’s nothing little about Lady Macbeth’s character in Kill Shakespeare, but her enormous breasts, and perhaps her entire body itself, is a ruse. As the disembodied eyes suggest, she maintains a purely utilitarian relationship with her own body. Her real power isn’t her well-endowed physique but rather her ability to deploy it and collapse it. In this sense, her magic allows her to transcend the physical body, freeing her from the matters of flesh and blood—such as the prophecy of Banquo’s children who will succeed the childless Macbeths—that sunk her sixteenth-century prototype. Michelle EphraimAssociate Professor of EnglishWorcester Polytechnic Institute 

[1]

In Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth betrays a soft spot early on: she says she won’t kill King Duncan because he resembles her father. On the other hand, a reader could imagine

KS

’s Lady Macbeth nonchalantly offing a family member should she get the chance.

I'm bringing my heart to San Francisco (for librarians)!

I'm off this evening for San Francisco - my first time there since attending WonderCon in April, 2010 to launch Kill Shakespeare. Why am I there? To attend the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference - one of my favorite shows of the year!I will at TABLE #147 in Artist Alley at the Moscone Centre from Fri - Mon so please come by and visit!(And I'm looking forward to checking out the Pacific Coast Highway trail after the show with Lisa - my first time!) 

A Jolly Time in London!

I apologize that I haven't posted anything of late. It's been a really busy month with recovery from my European honeymoon with Lisa (we so desperately miss Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast...) as well as work on a number of projects. Expect some big announcements in the next month or so.In the midst of all of this I travelled to London last month to do a talk at Shakespeare's Globe, attend the MCM London Comic-Con, have some meetings about these secret projects, and meet up with friends, of course.Here are a few photos of my appearance at the Globe and the MCM London Comic-Con. Thanks so much to everyone who made the show possible, but especially Gary Howe from MCM, Mike Holman and everyone at Diamond. And for the talk at the Globe, so many people to thank - Adam Sibbald, Phoebe Gardiner, Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper, Meghan Cole, Rebecca Casey and Emma Pizzey.(If I took a photo of you and it doesn't appear here I apologize - not all of the photos turned out.)

    

Appearing at Shakespeare's Globe next month!

Look out, London!I am quite excited to announce that I will be doing a talk the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, UK next month. I am the first speaker in their SHAKESPEARE: INSPIRED series of talks in the brand-new Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, a new candle-lit theatre that replicates what the first inside theatre were like in Shakespeare's time.It will be one-hour talk about the process behind the creation of Kill Shakespeare, the Bard in comics, inspirations, and everything else. It'll be different than any other presentation I've done for a number of reasons, two being that IT'S THE FREAKIN' GLOBE THEATRE(!) and also I won't have the safety net of a PowerPoint presentation behind me. That's right, I'm going rogue for this talk! Who knows what will happen? Anything could happen!The exact details of my talk are:Thursday, May 21st @ 7pm @ Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.Tickets are 15 GBP, 12 GBP for students - available hereOfficial Link hereThere will be book signings afterwards. In addition to the Shakespeare's Globe talk, I will also be appearing at the MCM London Comic-Con from May 22 - 24th. It's a show I've attended three times in the last few years and I'm excited to return. I'll post more information about this in the coming weeks.

We took our talents to South Beach! Errrr, Miami-Dade College Campus

As we move into the chill of December here in Toronto I thought I'd share some photos from our time in the sun this past month when I was able to represent Kill Shakespeare at the Miami Bookfair.Miami is a special place for K.S. as, as a Bookfair, it represents a very different audience for us. When we first went down to the show four years ago we had one book and no sense of how "real" readers would respond. In addition we were sharing a booth with another comic creator and there were only four of us with tables at the show.Would anyone notice us? (Yes) Would people be offended by our title? (Yes!) Would Conor get a crazy sunburn (Yes!!)Now, four years later, we've seen our sales climb at each show and we've been invited to be part of an outreach program that sees the K.S. team go into schools across Miami-Dade and talk about art, writing and creative entrepreneurship.Those school visits are always a highlight and this year Miami upped the ante by having me deliver one of the Fair's "school keynotes" which saw me talk to 500 kids AT ONE TIME!I was a little nervous to be facing that many students, but after getting them to chant "thank you Toronto" (for Chris Bosh, natch), and then sing the Canadian National Anthem (refreshingly they knew the tune and did not sing it to "O, Tannenbaum" as so many of my other American friends do), we got along fine.Aside from all that this year was extra special for two reasons:1) As many of you know we're passionate about expanding the reach of comics to those who, right now, ignore the medium. We've been working with Miami to expand the comic footprint at the show. Lissette Mendez, who runs the author track at Miami, is a MASSIVE comic fan and has long wanted to create a "mini con" in Miami. Lissette and the incomparable Eric Hitchcock at Diamond helped to spearhead a program that would bring comic publishers into the show.And lo'. Destination: Comics was born!Oni, Dark Horse, Zenescope and NBM/Papercuts were some of the flagship publishers who supported this pilot program - we also saw tons of big name comic creators including Gene Yang, Nate Powell and Paul Pope come out and sign in the Comics Courtyard -- which drew TONS of attention. A huge thanks to them and also to the amazing Joan Hilty - comic editor, creator and consultant extraordinaire who helped organize the entire event.And if that wasn't enough...2) We got to talk to an ENTIRE CLASS that was STUDYING Kill Shakespeare.Words cannot express how amazing it was to face 40 students who has all READ THE BOOK! The kids were super-engaged and asked some incredibly perceptive questions (we got hammered again on the good girl/bad girl dynamic of Juliet and Lady M., but they all seemed super intrigued to see what we do with Lady M. in Tide of Blood), and generally had an amazing time. I spent about 20 minutes after the class just hanging out and posing for photos.Below are a few more snaps from the trip --  you can see the rest here.-Conor  

Dream a little Dream with Neil.

Every once in awhile in the course of promoting Kill Shakespeare opportunities come by that see us starstruck. This past weekend was just such an occasion.While Anthony started the weekend holding down the fort in Rochester Minnesota (and rubbing shoulders with comci superstars like Bill Willingham), I was in Orlando after being invited to the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.The IAFA is an academic conference that focuses on sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Attending the conference is like going to the very smartest corner of a ComicCon, except with a swim-up bar, and no furries.The 34th edition of the conference had five papers on The Walking Dead, two on semi-obscure Swedish Vampire flick Let the Right One In and a paper entitled Do Linguists Dream of Electric Sheep? A Study of Constructed Languages in Speculative Fiction.I even sat in on one paper that linked changing Renaissance Fairs to Stephen Colbert's notion of "truthiness" and what it called a growing problem in American Politics of ignoring what is true for what we want to be true (as always, blame the trolls people).So, for a geek like me this was heaven.But I was talking about being starstruck, and while being around so many smart interesting people was dizzying enough what REALLY made me need the shades was the chance to rub elbows not once, but twice, with a certain gentleman named...... Neil Gaiman.Yeah, him.As part of the deal the IAFA offered us they said they'd pay for a night in a hotel and make sure that whichever of us came down would sit on a panel with Neil and other scholars and talk about adaptations of Shakespeare.(the fact I got to go to this one explains why Anthony is currently sunning himself in SoCal while I hang out in lovely, but much colder, Toronto.)But if that wasn't enough the amazingly talented Carrie Cole, who helped put together the Kill Shakespeare stageshow when it was in Arizona had a surprise in store for me.You see every year at the IAFA they perform three, one-act plays that were chosen as winners of a competition. This year Carrie was directing them, and knowing what a ham-bone I am she asked if I would be willing to be in one of the plays. I agreed, but because the play would be a day after I was scheduled to go to FablesCon from Orlando I was ready to beg off."Oh, but don't you want to know who will be acting opposite you in the play?" she asked."Wellll, I guess....""It might be someone named... Neil Gaiman."So, about 45 minutes later I had my plane changed and was staying an extra day in Orlando which is how I ended up on stage on Friday night looking at one of the greatest writers of our time as he pulled a gun on me.The play was a taut two-hander called The Sum of Your Experience and was written Trace Crawford. It involves the strange case of a man who gets robbed and the mugger who steals all his stories.Appropriately Neil got to be the tale thief while I was the sorry son-of-a-gun who loses everything -- including the memories of his children.While I didn't get a great chance to hang-out with Neil afterwards (he had been on his feet for three straight days) I was able to chat a little bit and passed on a couple of Kill Shakespeare t-shirts to him and his wife Amanda. He was as gracious and polite as everyone said he would be and is one of the smartest people I've ever meant.Below are a few pictures from Orlando (and there may be one or two of a certain comics genius).

Anthony at ALA 2012

I arrived yesterday in Los Angeles after a five-hour delay.  I boarded my first plane but before it could take off the pilot discovered a small malfunction and we had to switch to another plane.  The same thing happened with the second plane.  It wasn't until the third one that we were finally able to get into the air...

I've got one day here in LA and then head to Anaheim tomorrow to attend the American Library Association Annual Conference 2012! It's the annual conference that features about 20,000 of the top librarians from the continent and I will be there to sell and promote Kill Shakespeare.  I'll be at Table 577 if you're at the show - come by and say hello!As well, I will be presenting a presentation "How a Team of Canadians are Trying to Kill Shakespeare" on Saturday from 2pm - 3pm on the Graphic Novel Stage and then "Twists on the Tale: Reinventing Classics in Comics" on Saturday from 4:30 - 5:00 with fellow panelists Nathan Hale (Rapunzel's Revenge) and Christina Strain (The Fox Sister), moderated by the amazing Robin Brenner.If you're attending the ALA (#ALA12) please swing by my table - I'd love to meet you and tell you about the exciting things that are happening in the Kill Shakespeare world!

We guest blog on Reading With Pictures

Reading With Pictures is a fantastic site and resource for those who want to learn more about the medium of comics and especially for those who are looking to, or already to, teach comics in class.The two of us were honoured then when RWP asked us to contribute some guest blogs to the site.The first blog "Hamlet to Ham Sandwich" is up here. We hope you think it is an interesting take on why the comic medium deserves to be studied, why comics and Shakespeare are a great fit, as well as as why students of all ages respond so well to Shakespeare when he is presented in an accessible way (say, a certain graphic noel you may be familiar with?)Stay tuned as we should have more blogs up for RWP soon.Also we'd love it if you checked out the Kickstarter campaign for a fantastic new textbook that RWP is developing to help make teaching comics easier, and more rewarding than ever.(and some of the rewards for this campaign have GOT to be seen to be believed!)See you all in Dubai!

All the World's the SAA!

Conor and I just got back from the Shakespeare Association of America's 2012 conference, held in Boston the past three days. Despite my lack of sleep I'm still on a high from the days there.  The SAA is an organization devoted to the study of Shakespeare and his plays and how they from a part of the culture.

It was a great conference for us for SO many reasons: we got to meet up with some old friends, meet up with a lot of our Facebook and Twitter followers, were fortunate to sit in on the Friday morning plenary presentation by Dr. Peter Holland (University of Notre Dame), who discussed our project in the presentation "Shakespeare, Humanity Indicators, and The Seven Deadly Sins"), discovered that two other academics profiled our project in other papers (including one, "Screw Shakespeare", that discusses the sexual and pornographic images in our series" - who knew?), sold a lot of books and t-shirts... but MOST importantly, left feeling even more energized about the potential of our series to reach larger audiences and a better appreciation of how great Shakespeare is.Thanks to everyone who chatted with us this weekend - you were all great to talk to and you each inspired us.  Thanks for that!And next year we look forward to attending - especially as it's right here in Toronto!Here are some pictures from the weekend...

To all our Teacher friends, 'sup!

While Anthony was away in Seattle converting the masses to the joys of Bardicide, Conor was beavering away back in K.S. HQ on a new project that we've hinted at but will be announcing "for realsies" very soon.And while he was procrastinating by checking e-mail a really cool message came in.As many of you know we've got dreams that Kill Shakespeare will be picked up by school systems around the world as either a way to introduce people to the Bard's tropes and tricks or as a tool for deeper analysis of the plays.

So far we've been making steady headway (And later this week Anthony and Conor will both be in Boston for the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America) but the little e-mail we got was from noted academic reviewer Chris Wilson.

Chris is the top dog behind the awesome The Graphic Classroom --  a well-read site chock full of reviews and tools for teachers looking to bring graphic novels into the classroom.

Chris gave Kill Shakespeare a REALLY solid review and called it "highly recommended" for school classrooms.

For our teacher fans we hope this is something you can use to help justify bringing K.S. to your class, and for those of you who have teacher friends this is a fantastic link to help them discover our series, but more importantly graphic novels in general.

Thanks Chris!

Thanks to Lester B. Pearson C.I.!

Conor and I have done a number of talks and presentations at schools and libraries over the last 18 months and today we did the first of (hopefully) many for this year.  Today we were at Lester B. Pearson C.I. in Scarborough, where a number of classes came to visit us as we talked about Kill Shakespeare (of course), comics, the Bard, storytelling, entrepreneurship, art... as well as androids, sisters dressing up as brothers, tough exams, and everything in between (thanks to the students for coming up with the last couple of items...).We really enjoy these talks and thank the students and teachers for a great session today.  And special thanks to Miss Serba for organizing the event with us!

The Berenstain Bears and Librarians

The co-creator of The Berenstain Bears, Jan Berenstain, passed away late last week.  It's been years since I have read - or even thought of - those collections of books but seeing her obituary brought back a flood of memories, not only of the books but an influential librarian in my life.Growing up in small town northern Ontario, my mother always brought my sister Anna and I to the local library (I believe it was called the Whitney Public Library) to take out books.  Located right next door to the fire department (where my dad volunteered for a while), it was a sea of information and entertainment and we would spend hours there, perusing the shelves for the books.  The librarian, a fantastic older woman by the name of Mrs. Kullas (who had worked at the library for a great number of years), took a shine to my sister and I and, knowing that we loved reading The Berenstain Bears books, would always put aside the latest ones just for us upon their arrival.  We would be so excited to get those new books and crack them open when we got home later that day.We've been working with librarians now for the last two years on Kill Shakespeare but it wasn't until this very moment that I realized how important Mrs. Kullas was in my life, helping to foster an appreciation for books - and reading in general - in me.  It was just a small gesture, but her putting aside those Berenstain Bears books was a highlight for me that always had me excited to go to the library as a child.  Mrs. Kullas passed away when I was in my pre-teens and the library closed down shortly thereafter but my love of the written word has stayed with me to this day.  And for that I owe a big thanks to the influential librarian in my life, Mrs. Kullas.

Kill Shakespeare Secret Diaries

As we have mentioned we really get jazzed when we find out that teachers and students are using Kill Shakespeare as a way to explore the Bard.One of our fave teachers is Deborah Altenbeck who teaches at an institute for gifted children in Essen, Germany.  Deborah has been teaching Kill Shakespeare as part of one of her courses.Deborah has generated several cool lesson plans and walked the students through the first few issues of the series.One of the homework assignments she gave to her class was to take a Kill Shakespeare character and write a "secret" diary for them. The results were a lot of fun and Deborah shared some of them with us and we wanted to pass them on to you.So here you go - this first entry is from Richard III's POV and is done by Luise (and remember English is the second, third or fourth language for these students).Dear diary,We’re gonna stop Shakespeare. He is an evil guy, I know that. And with Hamlet’s help we’re gonna kill him. I hate that Shakespeare guy so much! I also need Lady Macbeth. She’s somehow creepy and seems clever although she’s just a woman. I think I have to be careful with her. Everybody knows what she’d done to her husband. Some even say she killed the English king… If she killed a king once, she can kill one a second time.  But I’m much cleverer than her. I mean she’s just a woman!The Syna wrote this diary from Lady M's perspective:Today, everything was just perfect! I persuaded my friendly and thankfully not very intelligent partner to accomplish my plan! I hope he won’t be too awkward, but hopefully, he will appreciate what I want him to do… But all in all, my plan is really delightful – it is just perfect! I really take pride in myself! One day, everything will be wonderful!And finally Jonathan got into the act, also as Richard:Dear diary, Today Hamlet finally got to my land. Yesterday, the stars shone in very strange colors and I hoped that it would mean that the prophecy will be fulfilled. This morning I found the Shadow King, Hamlet, at the beach. I'm very glad that now the prophecy will be fulfilled by him. The only thing I'm depressed about is that Hamlet doesn't want to hear anything about this prophecy and the fact that only he himself can kill Shakespeare. Yours, RichardFor our teacher friends Deborah has shared three of her lesson plans -- given that English is not her students first language I think that the content is probably appropriate for junior high school students. If you are interested let us know as we'd love to share these with you and spread ideas of how you can teach Shakespeare, and Kill Shakespeare, in fun ways.And as always we love to hear how teachers are teaching the Bard in their own classes.All the best,Conor and Anthony

SOME ART FOR YOUR LONG WEEKEND - WELL, FOR CANADIANS ANYWAY (the long weekend, not the art).

It has been a big couple of days here in Kill Shakespeare land.Not only do we have the big Sundance news but I have some great art to share with you from the next generation of Canadian comic talent. AND, here in Canada, it's TURKEY day this weekend -- yep Canadian Thanksgiving is here! Gobble, gobble!(Alright, before I fall into a tryptophan induced coma, I want to share with you some REALLY cool stuff.)The pieces below were sent to us by the awesome comic club at the Ontario College of Art and Design. These lovely ladies and men are all enrolled in one sort of graphic art or another at OCAD, but they still find time to meet twice a month (usually the second Thursday) and share their comic creations as well as talk about the medium we all love.Andy and the ever-talented Ramon Perez went with me to chat with the club last year and in return they sent us their amazing work.Enjoy (click on the images to see them in all their full-sized glory).

Letters from Germany!

Kill Shakespeare continues to spread around the globe and through schools.We just received this e-mail from a pair of German University students who are studying Kill Shakespeare in one of their seminar courses.Dear Anthony and Conor!Deborah Altenbeck is our teacher in English and we had the topic of Shakespeare.In our English lesson we read your comics and we really enjoyed it! It was so exciting and interesting to see how people deal with Shakespeare in another way.We were surprised how detailed you know each  character!In issue four for example we first had problems to understand the complexity but after reading it several times we were very interested how the situation between Othello an Iago is going to develop. And after finding out about Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor we were amused that you also brought the aspects and background information from this play.Best wishes, Antonia and SynaWe love it when we get feedback from our fans, especially international ones - so please if you have any thoughts or comments on the series get a hold of us at lendusyourears@killshakespeare.comAll the best,Conor and Anthony

WORD!

The sun was shining, fans of the written word were laughing and comparing notes on their favourite authors, exotic meats and vegetables were grilling... it was definitely a great Sunday to be at Word on the Street.And so the Kill Shakespeare team braved this paradise (though we somehow forgot to grab any Tiny Tom donuts -- for shame, what we're we thinking?) to do our second  presentation at WOTS - which is a huge honour for us. We love getting the chance to mingle with so many readers and we especially appreciate the chance to try to open people's eyes to the humble comic book.In fact for next year I'm hoping to convince WOTS to give us and a few other creators a panel with some sort of provocative title ("You're dumb if you're not reading comics" ?) in order to really shake up the notion that comics are for kids.But that's enough of my little sideline passion.This post is really about thanking Nicola at WOTS for organizing the event and getting the K.S. boys a panel. And it is about thanking the people who came to hear us speak (standing room only!), and it is about appreciating the passion and energy the entire festival brought to the day. For those of you have not been to a WOTS it is getting bigger and bigger all the time, and the one in Toronto was easily the busiest I'd ever seen. And you don't even have to be in Toronto to enjoy the fun. The Toronto WOTS is held in conjunction with events across the country, including one in Halifax where our dear friend Chris Benjamin was a guest of honour.It's a great venue for hearing readings, picking up cool books, getting discounted magazine subscriptions (as my fiancee may have done) and mingling. It's also a great venue for kids so we invite all our fans to come down next year to join the party at Queen's Park - and come support the "comics are literature too" movement we'll be trying to drum up.As for the panel itself? Well, first off, we were scheduled to present at the "This is Not the Shakespeare Stage" -- perhaps the greatest literary omen since the 'Ides of March' (although I think our day worked out a LITTLE better than Caesar's). Once we got there we were greeted by a large and enthusiastic crowd and received a wonderful intro from the festival organizers.Then Anthony and I spent an hour going through the "ins and outs" of writing and drawing comics (poor Andy was in NYC and couldn't join us) and providing tips about how to become a creative entrepreneur. As I mentioned above the crowd was fantastic, especially Scott who graciously volunteered to be a guinea pig and talk through a comic book he was working on that had stalled.We also found time to plug the excellent Kate Beaton and her work Hark, A Vagrant!, to do a little high-fashion runway modelling, and to be COMPLETELY charmed by two adorable moppets in the front row who answered more questions than all the adults in the tent combined.At the end there was nothing left to do but treat the crowd to a brief sneak-preview of "Kill Shakespeare: The Musical" (starring the Bear from 'A Winter's Tale', naturally). We were told it was the first time that someone had ended a WOTS presentation with a soft-shoe routine.We hope that all of you who attended ended up gaining some value from our presentation, and please we'd love to hear feedback so that we can continue to improve our talks. We'd be honoured if something we said or did inspired your own creative spirits.All the best, and thanks again Toronto for the best Word on the Street yet!A smattering of the many photos the lovely Crystal Luxmore, the aforementioned fiancee, took of the day are below.

Anthony preparing to launch into "Kill Shakespeare: The Musical"

A story in three panels!

This past Tuesday Conor and I were fortunate to be able to visit the Pickering Public Library to discuss Kill Shakespeare, the Bard and the comics-making process.  We've done a few of these presentations now and we're really enjoying them.

One thing we do every time is a breakout session in which the audience (normally between the ages of 12-19) have a chance to create their own three-panel comic.  We started this part of the seminar, with the help of Andy Belanger, a few months ago and it goes over really well.This time we created a contest for the best/most creative comic and built it on the theme of "My Trip to the Library". The comics created this past Tuesday were all really strong, some involved Unobtainium, asteroids, syphilis, and sleep. The winner of this night's contest was James Hennebury, who created a simple three-strip comic - he built it up as a Bourne Identity-esque thriller, danger outside, and then a simple walk across the street to the library.  Very effective storytelling with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Congrats James, and thanks to everyone that came out in Pickering.  And thanks to Liz for organizing the event!

Ve are big in Chermany!

(Deborah forgive me for my teasing...)So, one of the best things about Kill Shakespeare, to me at least, is knowing that teachers and educators are finding it interesting.So it was with GREAT excitement that I saw this e-mail in my inbox the other day. It was from Deborah Altenbeck a German graduate student who is a BIG fan of Kill Shakespeare. She had been hoping to do a paper on us and wrote to me to provide an update.The e-mail started off a LITTLE depressingly:I apologize for not keeping in touch. I was very busy doing my final exams and my final paper for the university. But I'm through with everything now. Unfortunately I couldn't write one of my research papers on Kill Shakespeare as I've originally planned, but I was forced to write it on a different topic. Crap.So much for our inaugural German language paper. But as I read the e-mail I realized what Deborah HAD done was way, WAY, cooler.However, I am still working for the Institution for gifted children and still teach the Shakespeare course and I thought I should let you know what we're doing... ...A few lessons ago we finally started on the Comics Section. I assigned the various main characters from Kill Shakespeare to individual students and they made posters, researching information on:1. which play they are from2. their alignment (good ----- bad)3. a description4. a strength5. a weakness6. 5 adjectives to describe the character7. family tree8. a famous quotation9. pictures from the internetand I provided them with character artwork that I found on your website.When we were all finished, posters were presented to the group so that everyone knew each character. I attached some photos of the results. So I wanted to share with you, our fans, some of those photos so you can see how Kill Shakespeare is being used to help kids get into the Bard in a whole different way.As you can imagine this makes Anthony, Andy and I enormously proud of our work and it is something special to think that our little comic has made it across the sea.Going forward Deborah says she plans to read the whole series to her class and hope to put together a teaching guide for Kill Shakespeare.So a big Danke to Deborah. You have made our week.Conor

PS: The second coolest thing about her Shakespeare unit besides the fact it used Kill Shakespeare? The fact that she had the students do in-character job interviews. Can you imagine Hamlethaving to try to land a gig as an air-traffic controller?Interviewer: "So, Mr. Hamlet. Can you provide me some examples of times when you were under a great deal of pressure and we're able to make snap decisions?"Hamlet: ....Interviewer: Mr. Hamlet?Hamlet:...Interviewer: Mr. Hamlet, are you awake?Hamlet:...Interviewer: Mr. Hamlet!Hamlet ... yes.Interviewer: Well then, can you answer me the question, please. Can you think of an example of when you successfully made a quick decision?Hamlet: ...Hamlet:...Hamlet:....  Maybe?