Tonight on Classic Literature Manga
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – The Manga Edition
Adam Sexton and Hyeondo Park
Wiley Publishing
178 pages
$9.99
While some people may think the idea of blending Shakespeare with manga, a comic-form that’s gained rapid popularity amongst today’s youth, is something of a literary blasphemy, others may be willing to embrace this unusual art form as a teaching aid, which is indeed how Wiley Publishing’s “Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – The Manga Edition” is marketing it as. Bearing this in mind, we delve into the pages with the mindset of an easily bored young teenager who really needs to score high on that next test.
The book itself can be looked at in three ways; the quality of its art, the faithfulness of the text, and the helpfulness it poses as a study aid.
As an artform, it rates poorly. Manga varies wildly in its art, from painstakingly detailed to roughed out to give a general idea of what’s going on. This book falls more towards the latter category. While this might leave much to be desired for a reader looking to be entertained by the pictures, it at least gets the job done well enough so you know where you’re at in the story and what’s going on. To the less imaginative reader who has a hard time puzzling out precisely what ancient Rome and her senators must have looked like, it does a passable job of filling in the blanks.
The text is kept pure; there’s no “dumbing down” of the language. In the form presented here, such a tactic would have been self-defeating at best. The goal is to get the reader to better infer what Shakespeare’s words meant by use of visual aid. If the reader seeks only for a basic plot they can glean from the pages quickly, they would be better off reading a summary off of SparkNotes. For this, a round of applause goes to Sexton and Park. Seeing Julius Caesar say, “Dude, you too Brutus?” would have just been weird anyway.
Taking these two crucial factors, we can determine whether or not it does its job as a study aid. In this, the art, while nothing to frame on your wall, does its work and the reader can better understand what’s going on. At times it can be difficult to keep the Senators apart, just as it is in the text, but they’re kept separate enough in appearance that it’s nothing a quick note jotted down wouldn’t fix. In fact, Sexton and Park go to all the trouble of doing this for you by providing a page where all the conspirators are lined up, unhooded, and their names rattled off as though in roll call. Where it is important, facial expressions are drawn with exaggerated care to set the mood of the speakers, adding further emphasis to the tone and drama of the piece.
All in all, this is a recommended book if you find yourself struggling with the story or are looking for an entertaining way to brush up on the text before class. It’s even an amusing addition for any Shakespeare enthusiast seeking a quirky new medium to get their fix.
Andrea Martin
