Welcome to a new generation of graphic novels: one which creates a new storytelling world with famous characters of our past. The success of the award-winning Fables has far surpassed anything that can be written here; Bill Willingham’s works with characters from folklore to fairy tales have garnered 14 Eisner Awards (the Oscars of the graphic novel world) over its 9-year run. Fables has most recently released its 100th issue, not to mention the spin-off stories of Jack of Fables, the prequel 1001 Nights of Snowfall, a prose novel entitled Peter and Max, and most recently the release of Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, the latter being written by Chris Roberson. Instead of retelling the famous tales of Little Red Riding Hood or Pinocchio, Bill Willingham has instead integrated all the fables into our own world. The fables live in the Upper East Side of Manhattan or on a segregated farm in upstate New York, doing their best to hide their magic from the regular people (like us readers) who are not from folklore and have no special powers.
The success of this series has perhaps inspired the latest graphic novel hit, Kill Shakespeare, a series created by two Canadians, Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery. Kill Shakespeare has a strong parallel with Fables, as this story incorporates all of the characters of the many books of William Shakespeare into one integrated tale. The first arc tells the story of a young Hamlet, who has just lost his father, the King of Denmark. Prince Hamlet must then choose to either fight the evil Richard the III who has teamed up with the voluptuous Lady Macbeth, or to side with King Richard who has promised to resurrect Hamlet’s father from the grave in return for one simple task: kill the wizard William Shakespeare. The story of Kill Shakespeare, too new to have the depth of the likes of Fables, manages to peak our interest based on our fondness and curiosity for the writings of Shakespeare’s stories from over 400 years ago.
The successes of both series are well documented. Fables is currently one of the longest running graphic novels and has no foreseeable end in sight, especially since characters from folklore do not age. Kill Shakespeare is in its early stages, but on the right path. The co-creators claim that their story idea has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar series, amongst the famous movies/books of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. After releasing the comic version, Kill Shakespeare was recently awarded to top prize of $10,000 for the Toronto International Film Festival contest “Pitch This!”, an annual competition for the best original movie pitch of the year. But where is the line between creativity and drawing from the success of legendary stories?
