Manga Shakespeare
Date: 2007 January 16 16:17
Posted by Joe
We've been sent an interesting press release from SelfMadeHero about their Manga Shakespeare series. The bard's classic tales have been reinterpreted into a manga style. With Romeo and Juliet the action has relocated to Shibuya in Tokyo, with yakuza talking the place of the more traditional families in the original. Hamlet is still set in Denmark, but in the future cyber world of 2017. SelfMadeHero inform us that the series keeps true to the text of Shakespeare, but is specially abridged for use in the manga. Sweatdrop Studio's very own Sonia Leong illustrated Romeo and Juliet, while Emma Vicieli illustrated Hamlet.
Both Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are due for release on 1st March 2007, priced at £6.99. The Tempest and Richard III are due to be published in Autumn 2007. Othello, Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are planned, but no release date is mentioned.
Our readers still in education might want to show this to their English and drama teachers, while our other readers might just enjoy reading a new interpretation of Shakespeare's works.
This is not the first time Hamlet has been made into a manga in English, our good friend Amethyst Angel has done a fan version using characters from Slayers, entitled Hamlet: The Manga.
Full Story
Press release as follows:
Press Release
For immediate release
Title: - Romeo and Juliet
Original author: - William Shakespeare
Adapted by Richard Appignanesi
Illustrated by Sonia Leong
208 pages, paperback
Publication date 1st March 2007
Published by SelfMadeHero
Fiction. Price £6.99
Colour: 8 colour, 200 black and white
ISBN:
(10 digit) 0-9552856-0-7
(13 digit) 978-0-9552856-0-8
Manga Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Manga Romeo and Juliet published by SelfMadeHero is a reinterpretation of Shakespeare's classic play in manga form. Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's most famous love story, unfurls in a dramatic manga setting, in which Verona becomes a street in the highly fashionable Shibuya district of Tokyo. The star-crossed lovers, touching in their youth and innocence, are caught up in a bitter feud between two Yakuza families (Japan's ‘mafia') whose rivalry erupts into violence and killing on the streets. Romeo, a rock star, is a Montague who falls in love with Juliet, a Capulet. They defy their parents and consummate their passion in secret. This is a story of love, revenge, violence and tragedy.
The book is one of the first full length manga book commissions in the UK using a UK manga artist, along with SelfMadeHero Manga Shakespeare title Hamlet, also published on the 1st March.
Editorial style
The series keeps true to the text of Shakespeare, but is specially abridged for use in the manga.
Press Release
For immediate release
Title:- Hamlet
Original author William Shakespeare
Adapted by Richard Appignanesi
Illustrated by Emma Vicieli
208 pages, paperback
Publication date 1st March 2007
Published by SelfMadeHero
Fiction. Price £6.99
Colour: 8 colour, 200 black and white
ISBN:
(10 digit) 0-9552856-1-5
(13 digit) 978-0-9552856-1-5
Manga Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Hamlet published by SelfMadeHero is a reinterpretation of Shakespeare's classic play in manga form. In this manga, Hamlet is set in a dramatic futuristic world. A great earthquake has divided our planet into separate colonies. The state of Denmark has grown prosperous and defended itself successfully against neighbouring states. But could it be that its greatest threat comes not from without, but from within the state itself? It is in this cyber world that we find the young Hamlet. His grief over his father's death turns to something far darker when the ghost of his father appears to him. Hamlet is very soon to discover that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
The book is one of the first full length manga book commissions in the UK using a UK manga artist, along with SelfMadeHero Manga Shakespeare title Romeo and Juliet which is also published on the 1st March.
Editorial style
The series keeps true to the text of Shakespeare, but is specially abridged for use in the manga.
Editorial Team
Publisher Emma Hayley is the Director of SelfMadeHero, which is an imprint of Metro Media Ltd, based in central London. Emma has a background in magazine journalism and film PR. She worked as editorial manager for publishers Hobsons and Arcturus before setting up Metro Media with her business partner Jenny Ross four years ago.
Richard Appignanesi- Series Editor /Adapter
Richard Appignanesi graduated with a doctorate in classical art history. He was a founder and co-director of the Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative and Icon Books where he originated the internationally acclaimed ‘Introducing..' series. His own best selling titles written for that series include Freud, Postmodernism, and Existentialism. He is the author of the fiction trilogy Italia Perversa (Stalin's Orphans, The Mosque, and Destroying America) and the recent novel Yukio Mishima's report to the Emperor. He has served as curator of art exhibitions, university lecturer, and conference organiser for the British Council. He is currently associate editor of the art and culture journal Third Text and reviews editor of the policy and futures studies journal Futures. What do Existentialists Believe? In the new Granta series,2006, is his most recent book.
Nick de Somogyi – Textual Consultant
Nick de Somogyi was educated at Dulwich College and Pembroke College Cambridge, where he gained his doctorate, and now works as a freelance writer and researcher, as a genealogist at the College of Arms, and as a contributing editor to New Theatre Quarterly. He is the founding editor of the Globe Quartos series, and was the visiting curator at Shakespeare's Globe 2003-6. His publications include Shakespeare's Theatre of War(1998), Jokermen and Thieves: Bob Dylan and the Ballad Tradition (1986), and as editor The Little Book of Ware Poems(1999), and (from 2001) the Shakespeare Folios series for Nick Hern Books. His work has included contributions to the Open University (1995) and Carlton Television (2000), BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and the National Portrait Gallery (2006).
Illustrator
Sonia Leong is a professional illustrator specialising in the Anime/ Manga style and comic artwork. She is a core member of Sweatdop Studios, the leading UK comic collaborative. She has printed several comics, exhibited artwork in prestigious venues (London County Hall, London Cartoon Museum, Japanese Embassy), provided product demonstrations (on behalf of Copic, Letraset and Wacom), and regularly presents workshops on manga creation. Her artwork has featured in several manga-related publications, events, websites and magazines internationally. Sonia's competition achievements include Winner in NEO Magazine's 2005 Manga Competition, Joint Judge for the Character Design category of the International Manga and Anime Festival 2005, and 2nd place winner of Tokyopop's first Rising Stars of Manga competition. Her work is appearing in a forthcoming British movie, Popcorn.
Series Overview
Future SelfMadeHero titles will include The Tempest and Richard III (Autumn 2007), with plans to publish Othello, Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Alongside Manga Shakespeare, SelfMadeHero will launch its Classical Eye series later this year, featuring other classics in graphic novel form. The first titles include The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, adapted by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal, and Kafka's The Trial, adapted by David Zane Mairowitz and Chantal Montellier. Other titles planned include Edgar Allan Poe's Nevermore, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.
Manga Shakepeare
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
both published March 1 2007
The Tempest
Richard III
both published Autumn 2007
Othello
Much Ado About Nothing
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Series editor: Richard Appignanesi; Textual consultant: Nick de Somogyi. Source: SelfMadeHero
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