Wednesday 23 January 2008

Macbeth graphic novel by Classical Comics.



My good friend Jon Haward's new graphic novel of Macbeth is due to be released next month. It is a stunning piece of work with a script by John McDonald and beautiful colours by Nigel Dobbyn. Jon has been working on this for over a year and it is his best work to date. Have a look over at the Classical Comics site and see what publisher Clive Bryant has to offer. A great selection of books including more Shakespeare plays and other literary classics.

Jon's next book is The Tempest and I have already seen pages from it. It promises to be as good as Macbeth with more imaginative and creative visuals and sumptious vistas. Clive's approach is to produce good looking graphic novels with great stories by established artists and the classic literature of Shakespeare is beyond reproach. Cleverly, he has produced three text versions of each play; one for schools with the original text, a standard edition in plain English and a 'quick text' version for the nervous, first time reader. Having tackled Shakespeare at school myself I think this is a good decision as it allows people of varying interests to enjoy the series and hopefully the 'quick text' readers will venture further into the world of the Bard with this helpful introduction?

You will find plenty of sample pages up online and a free download of the 2008 Key Stage 3 English Text for schools. It clearly shows what Classical Comics is trying to do with the series and highlights the other classic authors to be published later this year. John M Burns and Mike Collins are also part of the team and new talent Declan Shalvey is shining on Frankenstein. Will Volley is another name to look out for on his wonderful Romeo and Juliet. Enjoy the site!

4 comments:

jamie said...

hi gary,
great to see you online,and we're really enjoying reading your blog.
is there any chance you could dig out that old ukcac cover you did years ago,of wolverine and the punisher?
that's one of my all time favourite bits of art,of all time,ever!
cheerio for now,

Gary Erskine said...

Thanks for the kind words. The UKCAC cover was given to Dougie Braithwaite as a page swap. I still have a slide of it somewhere. A favourite page of mine too and one of the few colour pieces I have done!

Declan Shalvey said...

Wow! Thanks for the kind mention Gary, i had no idea you'd seen any of my Frankenstein pages. Very flattered that you like them.

Hope to see you at Hi-Ex, if you ain't too busy that is.

All the best,

Declan.

lenbot said...

I LOVE this. Any Shakespeare nut would.
tres cool...