Creators Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col with George Zotti at The Silver Snail
In this dark tale, the Bard’s most famous heroes embark upon a journey to discover a long-lost soul. Hamlet, Juliet, Othello, Falstaff, and Romeo search for a reclusive wizard who may have the ability to assist them in their battle against the evil forces led by the villains Richard III, Lady Macbeth and Iago. That reclusive wizard? William Shakespeare.
Any English majors reading that synopsis feel their heads exploding yet?
Those who survive this initial assailment on First Folio canon will want to check out Kill Shakespeare, the planned 12-issue comic book series from IDW Publishing co-created by Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery. I sat down (okay, leaned against some short book shelves) with them last weekend at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. They were attending as part of Transmission X’s entourage (Kill Shakespeare artist Andy Belanger is one of TX’s founders).
Jonathan: Can you give us a synopsis of what the comic is about?
Conor McCreery: Kill Shakespeare is an action-adventure series in which we pit all of Shakespeare’s greatest heroes against his most menacing villains. And they’re all on their way to either kill or save a reclusive wizard by the name of William Shakespeare. It’s being published by IDW, and it’s a 12-issue series.
Jonathan: Where did the idea for this story come up?
Conor: The origins are: We came up with it about six years ago. We were just brainstorming ideas for video games, and Kill Bill had just come out. We thought, hey there should be a Kill Bill video game, but instead of tracking down David Carradine, we should be tracking down Bill…Shake…speare? And we thought, ‘Oh my god, this is fantastic.’
Anthony Del Col: At first we thought of it as a massive multiplayer online role playing game, but then as we started to develop it, we just discovered how great the medium of comic books is. Conner had worked at the Silver Snail for a while, and we felt that Kill Shakespeare would be best as a comic series.
