‘Much Ado about Nothing’ from Manga Shakespeare: a guest article by Kate Holden

William Shakespeare, adapted by Richard Appignanesi & illustrated by Emma Vieceli, 208 pages, A5 softback book, Self Made Hero, £6.99.  Available in high street bookstores or online stores such as Amazon.

After a break from our mini ‘Emma Season’ on Comic Mole in order to announce some new releases for the London Expo, we’re back to round it up with another fun and informative guest article from Kate Holden!  This time she takes a look at SelfMadeHero’s Manga Shakespeare version of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, once again from the point of view of a reader with a degree in English Literature.

Mole note: spolier alert for Much Ado!  This article is best read if you already know the basic story and characters of Much Ado About Nothing, either having read it, seen it on the stage or as a film etc.

Once again, I’ll hand you over to Kate now…

If ever there was a Shakespeare play to be adapted into comic form that would sound like a daunting prospect to me, Much Ado is it.  It’s not high concept.  It doesn’t have a big, obvious hook.  No ghosts, no cross dressing, no magic, no fights, no deaths.  Not like Romeo and Juliet, which can be excitingly summed up as, ‘two star-crossed lovers take their life!’.  No, this is something different.  ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is a deft and subtle play, jam-packed with wit.  In many ways it feels like a precursor to the ‘Comedy of Manners’ genre of plays from the later Restoration period.

As the title suggests, in this play there’s an awful lot going on over not much of importance.  The title itself is an understatement, since there’s a life at risk among other things, but that understatement is what makes it such a fitting title, as this is an understated work that really plays with language and meaning.  To make it successful as a comic requires a lightness of touch.  While this publication has the same illustrator as Hamlet – it’s Emma Vieceli again, albeit with a few years’ more experience giving a more polished look – the style and setting are quite different.  Much Ado employs finer inking and more diffuse tones, so unlike the heavy and sparse feel of Hamlet, this comic has a more shoujo manga (girls manga) feel and a summery atmosphere.  The setting is meticulously reproduced by Vieceli from real Italian scenery.  This isn’t quite a period adaptation.  Or rather, it is, but a later period from Shakespeare’s time.  The overall feeling of the costumes and setting is quite timeless, which I feel works well.  Much Ado is a rather deft and effortless-feeling play, and the art here matches with an elegant, light and airy classical look.

The play primarily concerns two very different couples.  First we have Claudio and Hero.  Claudio and Hero are young, likely teenagers.  Claudio has just won a lot of honour by performing bravely in war, ‘doing with the body of a lamb, the feats of a lion’.  Having come home with thoughts of battle put behind him, he notices Hero in a new light and Romance comes to mind.  In this adaptation, Claudio and Hero are depicted as two wide eyed and innocent characters, often flushed or excited.  You could easily compare them to Romeo and Juliet.  The plotline of their romance follows a similar course, but with a comedic happy solution rather than a tragic one (Romeo and Juliet reads like a comedy until about halfway through, but I think that’s something to discuss in a later article).  They fall head-over-heels in love, are torn apart by family circumstances, but fortunately there is a happy solution at the end involving trickery and a dramatic reveal!

The other couple, and the real stars of the show in this adaptation (they’re on the front cover!) are Benedick and Beatrice.  These two are older and more jaded.  They courted in the past, but fell out and have spent their time since incessantly battling wits.  In this adaptation they look probably around their late twenties to early thirties.  While not particularly old, they contrast the wide-eyed idealism of Claudio and Hero.  Benedick is a lovable rogue in his dishevelled outfit with a slight Han Solo air about it.  He is portrayed as flippant and cheeky, but still quite chivalrous.  Beatrice is an elegant and confident lady, shown by her more elaborate and mature clothes, hairstyle and manner compared to the girlish Hero.  Her personality is calm and cool, kind, but with a barbed tongue, particularly where Benedick is concerned!

Of particular note in this play is the scheming villain, Don John.  He’s a strange character because he doesn’t really have a good reason to want to mess with everybody.  He’s a dark character, portrayed here with black hair and clothes and a solemn demeanour.  His status as a bastard child, unlike his brother, and his less gregarious personality seems to have given him an inferiority complex.  He enjoys causing strife because he doesn’t enjoy socialising.  Notice how he and the Prince are quite similar looking, separated mostly by the colour and style of their hair.  Don John is like a shadow of John Pedro.  Both characters intentionally manipulate those around them, but the Prince does so to make a match, while his brother does so to break one apart.  Don John has the urge to disrupt a society he feels doesn’t welcome him, but rather than admitting his feeling of powerlessness and abandonment, chooses to say that his motivation is just plain villainy.

Manipulation is a recurring theme throughout the play.  In this adaptation, notice how the theme is represented through puppets.  Don John is seen with a puppet of Don Pedro, and later we see Don Pedro with puppets of Benedick and Beatrice.  Masks and music also recur as themes, though this isn’t just in the manga adaptation, but part of the play.  Performance is frequently employed, and for most of the play no single character seems to be aware of what everybody else is up to.  Every character seems to be, for good or bad reasons, involved in some kind of secret plot manipulating somebody else!  A visual theme used here is the apple.  My interpretation of the apple is that it is the symbol of ‘cupid’s trap’.  It symbolises romantic temptation, and the clever plot used on Benedick and Beatrice.  Rather than forcing them together, they are lured to each other in order to realise feelings that were there all along.

Much Ado About Nothing is an enjoyable read.  It’s a subtle and complex romantic comedy, and while it may not have the conceptual punch or high drama of some of the other plays, particularly tragedies, if you’re willing to look closely it is a real masterwork, very intricate and yet tightly plotted.  While it may seem light and fluffy on the surface, it has hidden depth and complexity.  The art matches well.  While it’s not so conceptually or thematically bold as ‘Hamlet’ you may well find pleasure in its clever, understated and polished execution.  Like the play, it may look effortless, but there’s a whole lot of thought and detail there and a huge amount of hard work!

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Once again thanks go out to Kate Holden for giving her time to write this article for us here on the Mole!  Kate is a member of the UK manga circle IndieManga and currently has work featured in their latest anthology release ‘Legends‘, as well as her own webcomic ‘Fan Dan Go‘, which updates twice a week.

New Comic: Between Worlds

Tis the season of new comics (October Expo season that is), and this year the IndieManga table will be the home of this delicious-looking new edition of ‘Between Worlds’ by Anna Fitzpatrick, alongside IndieManga’s new anthology ‘Legends’, which also features more work by Anna.

Between Worlds first debuted last year as a full-colour limited-edition run.  This new volume is a black and white version of the atmospheric hand-painted comic, friendlier to the more price-conscious among us at £4.

However, if you can afford the £15 price tag, I still recommend asking Anna if she has any copies of the limited edition left for sale, as the artwork really sings in full colour (as you can probably tell by the cover image above).

To see more of her work, check out Anna’s art blog Between Two Worlds.

New Comic: Talking to Strangers, from Sweatdrop Studios

‘Talking to Strangers’ is a new anthology from Sweatdrop Studios, which is debuting at the upcoming October London MCM Expo.  Its a black and white book that boasts a page count of 228 at a standard price of £7 (but will have a special price of £6 over the Expo weekend).  More information, plus page samples, can be found on the thread over on their forums.

This comic is a collection of short stories written by Fehed Said (who also wrote The Clarence Principle) and illustrated by a variety of up-and-coming UK manga talent.  The book features work by

• Sonia Leong, whose work most recently appears in the ‘Domo’ manga, but who also has several other both professional and personal comic titles in print.
• Nana Li, recently the artist for SelfMadeHero’s Manga Shakespeare version of ‘Twelfth Night’
• Chloe Citrine, creator of the popular webcomic ‘Rainbow Carousel’ (of which print volume 1 has now also been released)
• Faye Yong, who most recently worked on the Manga Shakespeare version of ‘The Merchant of Venice’
• Wing Yun Man, who works as an artist for Eyeko Makeup, and has recently been drawing their webcomic

But don’t worry if you can’t make it to Expo!  Sweatdrop assure us that will we be available from their online shop soon after the event.  This promises to be a world-class release, so do keep an eye out for it if you’re going to the show ^_^

New comic: Legends, from IndieManga

Debuting at the upcoming October MCM Expo in London, ‘Legends’ is the latest anthology book from UK manga circle IndieManga.  It will be a black and white book of 130 pages with a price of £6.00.  It will feature work from

• Kate Holden, who should be familiar to Comic Mole readers as the multi-talented creator of the webcomic Fan Dan Go, as well as writing our recent literary article on Hamlet from Manga Shakespeare
• Rebecca McCarthy, a writer who’s shorts ‘The King’s Silver’ and ‘Rake’ appeared in IndieManga’s first anthology ‘Origins’
• Anna Fitzpatrick, who’s hauntingly beautiful comic ‘Between Worlds‘ will also be seeing a new release at the October Expo.
• Sally Jane Thompson, who created Little Thoughts and had a story in Leek and Sushi’s Manga Show: 150 Years of Friendship, amongst other things.
• IndieManga’s new member! Sarah Burgess, who also writes the fantastic webcomic ‘Far Out Mantic’

So all in all a pretty exciting new anthology title from some proven independent talent! More information plus preview pages can be found on IndieManga’s website.  The comic should also be available to order online from the website shortly after the event, for all those (like me) who can’t make it to the show this year ^_^

New Comic: Dragon Heir Reborn

Hot on the heels of her announcement in our recent interview, Emma Vieceli has unveiled the first five pages of her new series ‘Dragon Heir: Reborn’ as a webcomic.  Its free to read so go check it out!  Her blog post about it provides some more info, and would-be commenters are directed there too.  Happy reading!

‘Hamlet’ from Manga Shakespeare: a guest article by Kate Holden

William Shakespeare, adapted by Richard Appignanesi & illustrated by Emma Vieceli, 196 pages, A5 softback book, Self Made Hero, £6.99.  Available in high street bookstores or online stores such as Amazon.

Mole note: spolier alert for Hamlet!  This article is best read if you already know the basic story and characters of Hamlet, either having read it, seen it on the stage or as a film etc.

So without further ado, I’ll hand you over to Kate…

Let’s look at Emma Vieceli’s Hamlet:

Hamlet, as I’m sure you’ve been told, is considered one of the greatest works of Literature that exists. Sadly Hamlet is often forced upon school children too young to appreciate it, causing a lifelong resentment of something that’s truly brilliant. Reading the dry text, I have to admit even with a degree in English Literature, can be a chore. To truly experience Hamlet, you need to see it. Because of this, I feel that reading the Manga Shakespeare adaptation is an excellent way to experience the story, as it is much closer to seeing it performed on the stage or on film.

It is important to remember, however, that all performances of Shakespeare plays are interpretations. This comic is an adaptation of the text. The dialogue has been condensed to two hundred pages, and illustrator Emma has made her own decisions about the setting and characters based on her interpretation of the text.

In this article, I will attempt to explain the comic adaptation from a literary perspective in plain English, and point out some interesting things. Since Emma Vieceli also has a degree in English Lit, you can be assured that this adaptation has been considered intelligently.

Hamlet is a tragedy. The definition of a tragedy is a story concerning the downfall and death of a character who is mighty and heroic, save for an unfortunate fatal flaw. For example, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a noble man who is brought down by his own ambition (or possibly the ambition of his wife, depending on your interpretation). Hamlet is a particularly complex tragic hero. He becomes obsessed with bringing the truth to light, yet seems paralysed into inaction by his own inner turmoil. There is a lot of discussion about Hamlet’s age in Literary criticism. As a character, he is fascinating depicted as any age, but for a manga adaptation, I have to say I find Emma’s depiction of him as a dashing young adult bishounen quite pleasing! Emma’s Hamlet is less brooding than some depictions. She chooses to emphasise his quick wit, dark humour and his more active and flamboyant side. This works to great effect for the portion of the play in which he feigns madness, and makes him a strong, shounen hero you can root for in a sword fight. Hamlet is noted in the play for his dark, funereal mourning clothes, which he continues to wear some time after his father’s death, to the discomfort of the rest of the court, who are in wedding garb to celebrate his mother’s wedding.

Hamlet’s clothes are a statement of his disapproval of his mother’s rather early remarriage to her husband’s murderer, and Emma has given his look a rebellious gothic flair which really sets this off. Her Hamlet is a witty, swashbuckling rebel. Perfect, in my opinion, for a comic adaptation.

While we’re on the subject of casting, some other interesting things to note would include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being presented as twins. This is quite appropriate to the rather unnatural way in which the pair seem to act as one person. They are presented here almost as emotionless dolls and rather unsettling. This reflects their strange role in the play as seemingly unfeeling plot-movers. They eventually die offstage and their death is mentioned merely as a kind of side note.

Ophelia and Laertes deserve a mention, as Emma does a particularly good job of setting them up as very warm, loving siblings before tragedy strikes. Before her madness, Ophilia is portrayed as a very sweet, bubbly girl, and even playing in the river where she will eventually drown in a fit of insanity. By highlighting the comedy in the play, and the brief moments of happiness the characters find, this adaptation makes the tragedy more poignant.

You may not know that Hamlet was originally written as a History. All tragedies in Shakespeare’s day were based on history by tradition. They did tend to be rather loose adaptations of history, and often were based on legends with little actual historical basis, not to mention that they were hugely inaccurate through artistic licence. So Hamlet is based on a real Prince, Amleth, who lived in Denmark hundreds of years before Shakespeare’s time. Shakespeare was an entertainer, not a historian, and so the details of the story bear close to no resemblance to what’s reported in history, not to mention, the details of life the characters discuss reference life as it was in Shakespeare’s time, not the period of the setting. I expect that the costumes would also have reflected contemporary fashions and not been based on those of Medieval Denmark. Since Shakespeare adapted his plays from the stories with so many licenses, I have no problems with any director or artist who does the same when adapting his plays. They are not written as accurate histories, so the setting should be created to reflect and emphasise the events and emotion of the play. In this case, the setting is dark, post apocalyptic cyberpunk.

The mixture of Gothic and Futuristic in the adaptation may feel a little jarring in places, but Hamlet is a play all about time being mixed up. It even contains the line ‘The time is out of joint’. There are many untimely deaths during the play, and the people of the present are haunted by ghosts of the past. Bones are dug up from the earth and casually tossed around. Nothing is allowed to just let lie in the story, as you’d expect since it starts with a dead king wandering around! The sparse, post-apocalyptic setting emphasises the hopeless feeling of the plot, and the theme of untimely death, by setting it in a dark and largely dead world. Another theme worth noting is information. The characters are constantly plugging themselves into information devices in this comic. Hamlet is a scholar, a man always searching for truth. The act of finding, searching and passing around information is shown in this adaptation through the futuristic setting, and it nicely complements the themes of how everybody is after information. The play begins with a question; “who’s there?” and revolves around a question, “to be or not to be”, and a plot to uncover the truth. By placing emphasis on the act of searching for truth as a physical action, the manga Hamlet makes the theme clear to the reader.

Overall, Hamlet is one of the most richly nuanced of Shakespeare’s texts, and any given adaptation may be very different from any others you have seen, almost to the point of feeling like a different play. The manga adaptation excels because rather than trying to portray a mere generic version of the play with fancy period dress, just going though the motions, it uses a setting, cast and visual metaphor to actually emphasise the important themes, as well as make the story feel like something belonging to the manga medium. Far from being just a dumbed-down ‘for teenz’ version, this is an adaptation which can be studied and analysed just as much as any film or stage production of the play. It’s well worth giving it a close read and taking time to notice the careful details and symbolism, especially if you’re using it as a study aid. If you’re not a Lit student, and just looking to enjoy your Manga Shakespeare books on a deeper level, try reading along with some study notes, which you can find online quite easily, and thinking about why the books chose a particular setting, as well as the depictions of the characters in appearance, age and personality. See how these versions compare to stage productions or films. You’ll find that you can keep coming back and noticing new things. That’s the magic of Shakespeare!

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Many thanks to Kate Holden of IndieManga (aka. Darth Mongoose) for her time in writing this article on the Manga Shakespeare Hamlet from a more literary standpoint than I would be able to.  The observant among you will have probably noticed that Kate also creates comics, in fact her webcomic Fan Dan Go has just rebooted from scratch today!  So go check that out if you like the idea of some super colourful retro fantasy action.

If you liked this article then please say so! And I will try to get more points of view, or different takes, on more fantasic UK indie/small press comics in the future ^_^

FanDanGo Rebooted!

Remember way back when I wrote a column about Kate Holden’s webcomic, FanDanGo? Well after a hiatus the comic is back!  Its being entirely rebooted from scratch as Fan Dan Go (note the spaces), making use of Kate’s signature super colourful 70s stylings right from the start.

Regular updates are scheduled for Wednesdays and Sundays, and there have even been mutterings about a black-and-white print version in the future, for you types who prefer to read comics on actual sheets of paper ^_~

Kate has stated that she is leaving the old version of the comic up online for posterity, so its interesting to go back and see how all this began – but more importantly, here’s to more Fan Dan Go in the future!

10 Questions for Emma Vieceli

Hi Emma, its great to have you here today on Comic Mole!  So lets start right away with the work perhaps closest to your heart

CM: As well as your professional comics work, you have been writing and drawing your own self published series, ‘Dragon Heir’, for several years now – could you tell us a bit about the story and what it means to you?

EV: *phew* You start simple, don’t you? haha.  Dragon Heir is a story that started developing in my head when I was about 16, and just hasn’t left me alone since, haha. I take it as a good sign when a story haunts you for that long…so I know I need to finish telling it at some point! To explain it is…umm…tricky. Do you have a week or two?

Dragon Heir is set in a world where human life is dictated by Spirit signs; marks applied to human babies’ foreheads at the age of five. It is believed that these signs were given to humans by Spiratu, the spirit world, in recognition of skills and powers bestowed. The truth to their origins has long been forgotten.

The story follows the trials and tribulations of four dragon heirs; human vessels chosen by the spirit world to house a part of the Dragon’s full spirit. Protus (protective spirit), Furose (Fighting Spirit), Kalm (Empathic spirit) and Lyntra (Wise spirit) are part of Spiratu’s task to transport the Dragon spirit to the hall of beasts, where it earned its place during its race’s life cycle. No human can house an entire dragon spirit, hence the four heirs for this great beast. Their mission should have ended when, at the appointed time, a spirit binder would come down from Spiratu, gather the spirits as one and transport them, leaving the heirs to continue their mortal lives blessed by the Spirits. However, early on in the story we realise it won’t be that simple, and for the heirs a race is on to fulfil the prophecy before the spirits within them grow too powerful and consume them from the inside. There is a far greater consequence at stake should the prophecy fail, but that will be revealed in the fullness of time…it has a lot to do with Verance; a mistake born from a duplicate dragon soul.

Enter into this bizarre situation Ella, a normal worker spirit with big ambitions, who just happens to be someone also tied into this prophecy, though her over protective brother has not informed her of this and has left her pretty clueless as to the whole shebang.

Drama, legend, love and lots of PAIN follow….that’s Dragon Heir. ^_~

For me, the story means a lot for several reasons. 1. It’s been with me so long that the characters really are old friends. 2. each character represents a part of me as their creator. 3. I now have my wonderful husband helping me with finalising bits of the story and scripting…and seeing him fall for the characters has made me love them all over again!

I think we can all empathise with the five main characters. We’ve all felt that we’re the pacifier in a mad situation, or that we could just let go and fall into anger…or maybe we’ve all wanted to escape what can feel like a pre-destined role in life sometimes. I like to think that every reader will find one character that they feel closest to. I just can’t wait to get further into the story so that more people can share in it with me. ^_^

CM: How many issues of Dragon Heir are there available, and when might fans get to see the next one?

EV: Herein lies an interesting answer. *ahem*

There are currently 9 issues of DH available through Sweatdrop. 1-6 are contained in the volume, with 7,8 and 9 still in single form.  HOWEVER….the story is an old one, and also one that I know I dived into far too early. I tried to tackle a vastly complex story in comic form before I really knew how to make comics…so: as I’m 40 pages in now, I feel I can reveal what I’ve been conjuring up in my secret basement ^_~

Issue 9 did leave us on somewhat of a cliffhanger, and I do want to ease the tension very soon, but I hope readers will also be excited about the fact that I am currently working on Dragon Heir Reborn – the first five issues, retold and re drawn from scratch! This will not be released as issues, but will possibly see a webcomic release – and, when I’m done, I’ll be looking to release 9 or even 10 issues together as one shiny, shiny graphic novel.

Sneak peak: two never-before-seen pages from Emma’s upcoming work ‘Dragon Heir Reborn’

I think readers should be pleased with Reborn. I know I am. Largely it follows what we already know, but the younger me creating issues 1 and 2 way-back-when was a scaredy cat and would omit certain scenes or moments purely because I didn’t know how to draw them, haha….this is me revisiting those early scenes as a professional comicker, and those who have read the early issues of DH will see a few marked changes in scenes, and even brand new scenes in some cases! The reborn section will meet up with issue 6. I won’t be redoing anything from 6 on, as 6 – though a little old – was created post-Hamlet….so there’ll still be some legacy artwork in the new book ^_~

I really hope people will look forward to this! I can’t wait

(I for one certainly will be! – CM)

CM: How do you find writing and drawing your own story compares to doing professional work for others?

EV: Freedom is a wonderful thing. I love playing with the page, with layouts and pacing…and though some writers will let me get away with murder, most of the time I can only really do that with my own work.  So i feel a lot more in control with my own work.

That said, I feel I learn so much as an artist by working with writers…and the ability to work to a panel description and find the most interesting way of showing what I’m being asked to is a totally different skill, and one I really enjoy as well. It’s great sometimes to just relax into the role of an artist and not think about the script, just enjoy drawing what I’m given. I guess I love both in their own way….though like anyone, I love to tell my own stories more than anything ^_^

CM: You’re probably best known in the UK comics community for being the artist on SelfMadeHero’s Manga Shakespeare adaptations of ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ – what is it like to work on adaptations of such classic and well-loved material?

EV: Tiring and challenging, but fun and ultimately hugely rewarding. The series has really touched people from all walks, and I love knowing that the books are being enjoyed by comics fans and Shakespeare scholars alike ^_^

I’ve learned shedloads through doing both books…combined they make up 400 pages of comicking, and that’s a BIIIIIIG learning curve! They’re also my 2 favourite Shakespeare plays, so you can imagine how much fun I had, knowing certain scenes were coming up and such!

It’s always a little scary approaching such well-loved texts, but I think we’ve been clear from the start that what we’re offering are not alternatives to the originals, but complements and stepping stones…and as a Shakespeare fan myself, I love them!

CM: ‘Hamlet’ was originally released in 2007 and ‘Much Ado’ was released earlier this year (2009) – have you found that your production techniques have changed over the years with experience?

EV: Gosh, was Hamlet only 2007? It feels much longer ago…it’s been a busy couple of years!! Yes, definitely. When starting Hamlet I had only just moved onto digital work. I had an A5 tablet, comicworks and was at the start of the learning process. It was all new and really a HUGE thing to dive into. When I started Much Ado, I was in a far more confident place and, thanks to Hamlet and later projects, I knew much more about pacing myself and scheduling workload. I had an A4 tablet and Manga Studio. Hamlet was almost entirely digital, pencils and all. Much Ado was all pencilled manually on paper and then scanned for inks and such. So there were several differences!

CM: Conversely to the ‘Hamlet’ adaptation, which was set in a cyberpunk future, ‘Much Ado’ was set in period Italy.  As the artist on the project, did you have a say in the setting of ‘Much Ado’? And did your Italian heritage help at all with the comic?

EV: I did indeed. And I desperately wanted to set it in the warring states as they’re so close to my family. I had a great opportunity for background reference, and the setting fitted the story so well! Thankfully Emma and Doug at SelfMadeHero agreed with me ^_^

CM: Who are some of your biggest inspirations in art at the moment?

EV: Hmm…so many! Right now: Adrian Alphona, Terry Moore, Clamp and Yoshinaga Fumi would be my top four I think ^_^

There are a crazy amount of people I draw inspiration from. I couldn’t possibly list them all, but artists like my Sweatdrop cohorts, my DFC chums, Kate Brown, Paul Duffield, Nana Li, Jamie McKelvie, Amy Reeder Hadley, Svetlana Chmakova and lordy, tons more all teach me over and again how much we should strive for and what can be achieved with hard work and dedication…I’m so lucky to be friends with such talented and amazing people!

CM: As well as illustration, you write your own comics – are you inspired by any particular writers or genres in literature or comics?

EV: When I was younger I ATE books…seriously, read SO MANY books. I wanted to be a writer (who didn’t? haha!), and was hugely influenced by a strange combination of Anne Rice, Douglas Adams and Douglas Coupland. These days I read comics far more, and some of my favourite writers are Brian K Vaughan, Terry Moore, Warren Ellis, Kieron Gillen and Bill Winningham. I also adore Morag Lewis’s ability to create worlds and fantasy realms that feel so real! But really, I absorb anything I read and see…you have to ^_^

CM: Working back to the very beginning now: what first made you want to start drawing and writing comics?

EV: Ranma 1/2. Though not the first comic I read, it was the first time I thought ‘hmmm, maybe I could try this’. And then, years later, I met Sweatdrop! haha. Sweatdrop really was the biggest inspiration and drive I could have hoped for. Without the group I simply wouldn’t have made comics. Simple as. ^_^

CM: And it just wouldn’t be a Comic Mole interview without this final question!  What’s your favourite dessert?

oooooh, Apple crumble and custards…TONS of custard ^_^

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I’d like to say a massive thanks to Emma for giving me her time for this interview, and my first scoop with the news about Dragon Heir Reborn!  As mentioned earlier, Dragon Heir is published by Sweatdrop Studios and is available to order from their online shop.  SelfMadeHero’s Manga Shakespeare volumes Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing are readily available from high street bookstores or online through shops such as Amazon.

Emma also has a work blog and art site where you can keep up with her current projects ^_^

Mini review of Manga Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing

It seems life has taken away most of my review time of late, so rather than write a few semi-decent notes about a UK manga such as ‘Much Ado’ on my Goodreads page and promise myself I will write more here on Comic Mole at a later date (but then never get the chance), I will try to write a proper mini-review here instead, so sorry for the shortitude. (yes ’shortitude’ is now a word..)

Note: this review was also written for REDEYE Magazine 2.2

(William Shakespeare, adapted by Richard Appignanesi & illustrated by Emma Vieceli, 208 pages, A5 softback book, Self Made Hero, £7.99)

Benedick and Beatrice are old flames who are now at each other’s throats in an on-off battle of cutting remarks on each other’s characters. When Benedick and comrade Claudio come back from the wars, Claudio proceeds to fall madly in love with Hero, daughter of the local governor. The villainous Don Jon has other plans though, meaning to put a stop to Hero and Claudio’s wedding using trickery. With a backdrop of hijinks as police constable Dogberry investigates what is really going on between Hero and Claudio (with a fake death thrown in for good measure), another plot is hatched; this time to see Benedick and Beatrice fall in love and marry happily…

If you couldn’t already tell from the somewhat convoluted plot description, ‘Much Ado’ is one of Shakespeare’s best-loved comedies. I might not have been able to successfully bring it across in so few words, but the pacing and story elements of this play really complement each other. Yes, it’s a collection of crazy antics and melodrama, but it never falls into confusion and always remains amusing to read.

Unfortunately, as I’m not a scholar of English Literature, I can’t comment on Richard Appignanesi’s adaptation of the original text to comic form. However, I can say that Emma Vieceli’s artwork suits this particular play very well. Emma’s character designs appropriately pick up on each character’s unique personality traits. The strong and witty Beatrice keeps her hair done up out of the way and has a slightly more sharp look to her face than the beautiful Hero, who keeps her hair down and flowing, and has larger, more ‘girly’ features. The artist’s light touch with the pen throughout also suits the comic’s sunny setting of period Italy.

The production values for ‘Much Ado’ are very high. It has glossy, full-colour covers and interior pages are printed on good-quality white paper. If someone wanted to use this book for study purposes (i.e. read it through many times, scribble notes in the margins etc.) it seems like it would hold up well to that treatment, whereas a book printed on the newsprint-style paper you get with a lot of mass-market manga wouldn’t.

PWANDA! from Dimensional Entertainment

This is a lengthened ‘director’s cut’ version of a short review originally written for REDEYE magazine issue 2.2

Created by Dil, 300+ pages, A5 digest format, Dimensional Entertainment, £9.99

In a fantastical land beset by demonic powers from other worlds, one small village holds the key to stopping them:  the pyramid vortex.  When the village is all-but-destroyed by the sorcerer Adurag, presumably not from another world but still bent on using the pyramid vortex for his own evil whims, a young villager called Hoshi becomes determined to help his people.  He is ordered to guard the village rather than leave on an epic quest, but Hoshi is distracted on one of his rounds by a small panda-like creature: Dipsyfear, the Pwanda.

Hoshi was told that if he went outside of the protective influence of the pyramid vortex, he would go mad.  After chasing the Pwanda all the way out of the village, he hears a voice telling him not to be so sure of the teachings of his people, and not to be afraid of seeing what else the world might have to offer.  Thus begins the adventures of Hoshi: across many realms, and befriended by an assortment of Pwanda allies.

Overall, ‘assorted’ seems like a good word to describe Pwanda.  What makes the comic unique is the sheer amount of different cliches, parodies, crazy character designs and crazier situations that are present, all tied together with a massive dose of off-the-wall philosophical ramblings.

“’You’ are now inside your oneness…the point of creation.  At this level, everything in existence is connected…you have access to all knowledge and understanding beyond your structured mind…” – pgs. 136-137

Unfortunately the main thrust of the comic – the parody element – wasn’t made evident straight away.  My initial impression of the comic was that it was pretty much a collection of tired clichés that lacked in enough comic exaggeration to distinguish them otherwise.  The creator uses an incredibly mainstream main character design coupled with some well-trodden storytelling methods: Hoshi is a young man with spiky hair and a giant sword, a la Bleach’s Ichigo Kurosaki or Final Fantasy’s Cloud Strife, and chapter one includes a section where a character who had passed away comes back to speak to Hoshi via clouds in the sky, as played seriously in The Lion King and subsequently famously parodied by The Simpsons several years ago.

It becomes more evident that the comic is trying to be funny at around page 15, but overall throughtout Pwanda the main stumbling block is that it doesn’t know whether it’s a goofy parody comedy, or an introspective philosophical epic. The comedic style reminded me in part of zany anime series such as Excel Saga or Abenobashi Magical Shopping Arcade, but incongruously mixed in with a dose of Ghost in the Shell (if Ghost in the Shell had been written by someone a lot younger and more naive than Masamune Shirow).

“My biggest goal began by creating stories that no-one else has ever seen.  Through this exploration I discovered that there were big fundamental points and concepts that I wanted to share with people – like the importance of showing you that a structured/complex mind is not necessarily as good as having a simpler mind like [the Pwanda] Dipillow.  This is probably the reason why there is so much war and conflict in the world today” – pg. 289, from the creator interview at the back of the book.

Initially the idea of a book like Pwanda seems like it would make for an interesting (or at least different) read.  However, the writing style often involves a very large amount of words per page, which slows the pace of the comic and makes it come across as clunky.  Sometimes its actually hard to tell if the writer is being serious or whether it is part of the parody, such as the massive overuse of quote marks, or passages like this:

“…stepping outside of the range the vortex held for many years, would make you insane, mad and even hallucinate!” – pg. 21

In the past, storytelling master Ozamu Tezuka managed to mesh comedy with philosophy in works such as ‘Black Jack’, but unfortunately in Pwanda they act a little like oil and water.  Crazy situations and cutesy Pwandas mix uncomfortably with long, wordy sections detailing the thinking behind Hoshi’s journey.

Though it hasn’t been 100% successful, it is still nevertheless admirable that Pwanda’s creator has set out to make a comic that has a little more depth than a run-of-the-mill comedy.  If creator Dil really wants to share some more fundamental and eye-opening concepts with his audience in the future, along with trying some new genre-bending experiments in writing, I can’t say that would be a bad thing for indie comics on the whole.  It would certainly be more interesting than some of the generic ‘lets pick a popular genre and make somthing similar to what’s already out there’ style small press comics you can get.  What I would hope that he would do though is learn from the audience’s reaction to books like Pwanda, perhaps read more comics that include philosophical elements, and work out how authors like Shirow manage to include these aspects in their work whilst still retaining readability.  Its a difficult thing to do, and personally I don’t think even Shirow managed to come across as particularly readable by Ghost in the Shell 1.5, but that doesn’t mean that creators should stop trying.

The art team should certainly keep at it, they’ve done a good job (the front cover says ‘created by Dil’ but it was drawn by 3 different artists and a letterer).  On the whole, compared to quite a few other small press works, the art is a solid effort.  The proofreading is also very good, there are barely any spelling or grammar mistakes in the book.  The cute mascot Pwandas themselves could have had more personality injected into their designs (vacant stares are a bit scary for supposedly adorable characters), and there are also some anatomy and proportion problems here and there with the characters and animals (e.g. wolves with human shoulders), but there are also a lot of very imaginative page layouts, and the pacing of the panels never falls into a rut.

Once you get to the end of the main story there are many pages of extras at the back of the book (I count over 110, though admittedly 34 of those are a bonus side comic).  Now usually I’m a big fan of extras: a page of notes by the author or some character design sheets adds to the unique personality of a small press comic.  However, with this many pages devoted to them it feels a little like padding the size of the book.  Some of the extras are quite interesting: there’s a one-page explanation of Dimensional Entertainment’s storytelling ‘Dimensions’ and a 4-page interview with creator Dil to get your head around, although the interview might have come across better as an author’s notes section written directly by Dil himself – I’ve not seen a lot of creators interviewed in their own books before.

If reading lots of text-heavy extras isn’t your thing, the bonus comic ‘Quantum Sheep’ by Philip Knott will probably appeal to you.  The comic is an amusing and cute read about quantumly displaced gruff-looking sheep appearing all over the place, and is really quite entertaining.

Apart from these, some of the more redundant extras include about 20 pages of character profile information, 12 pages of ads, and 13 pages of ‘Dipillow’s Dictionary & Encyclopedia’.  This covers a silly-sounding language that was made up for the Pwanda character Dipillow.  The language harks back to Star Wars’ Jar Jar Binks and is incredibly annoying.  Words are either cutesified, e.g. ‘rock’ = ‘wocky’, or just said with a lisp, e.g. fish = fithy or sausages = thotheetheeze.

Pwanda is presented in chunky tankoubon format.  It’s a professional-feeling production: a little smaller than A5, about the same size as a standard Tokyopop manga volume and a bit thicker.  It has glossy colour covers.  Interior pages are printed in black and white on newsprint-style paper. The comic is marketed as a “Feature: a whole movie storyline in a book”.  This doesn’t seem to address the fact that a decent-sized comic should be able to cover at least as much storyline detail as you could fit into a movie, usually more, so its a bit weird – are they saying that they consider movie storylines to be better than comics? And they consider this a viable way of marketing to an audience of comic-lovers?

Personal confusion aside, I can’t say that many readers would enjoy this book at face value.  The artwork and production values are nothing to be sniffed at, but the storyline and writing style let them down: the adventures of Hoshi and the Pwandas which parody films and video games don’t mesh well with the more wordy philosophical elements of the book.  However, that said I found at points that the book made me think.  I wondered about what the creator was really trying to say underneath the waffle, and why he chose to say it in the way he did.  I then wanted to talk about it with those around me so I could better understand my own thoughts on the matter.  So in conclusion, if you’re after a solid story that’s a lot of fun to read, don’t buy this comic.  But if you don’t mind a challenge (and perhaps want to annoy those around you with some rants about philosophy and storytelling), then give it a go.  At the very least it will probably be quite different from anything else you’ve read recently.