Shakespeare ComicsArt, Time and Character

Identifies how comics, manga and graphic novels reshape Shakespeare’s works in manners unavailable to other media

• Investigates multiple formats, from manga and OEL (original English-language manga) to graphic novels, albums, and comic books, produced in America, Europe and Asia from the 1950s until the present moment
• Offers an interdisciplinary approach bringing together Shakespeare studies, adaptation/reception, comics scholarship, and art history
• Studies dramatic representation of gender, sexuality and race within Shakespeare comics, and it investigates the meanings produced dialogically in Shakespeare comics through allusions to films, paintings and novels

Investigating how character, time and art manifest and interact in the visual-verbal medium of Shakespeare comics, Svenn-Arve Myklebost uncovers how this medium (which includes comic books, graphic novels and manga) reframes and interrogates the Shakespeare canon. He argues that comics’ blend of literary narrativity, dramatic action and fine art draw out elements of the plays, their genesis and afterlife that other media cannot capture. Among comics’ distinct affordances are their spatial treatment of time, their ability to mix genres and media, their meta-aspects, their art-historical roots, their position within print culture, their “dramatic” combination of words and visuals, and their generic flexibility – all of which offer new ways to look at Shakespeare’s dramatic and printed production.