As she did with her adaptation of The Great Gatsby, Nicki Greenberg has remained faithful to Hamlet’s original text, while adding her own voice and irrepressible charm to this most famous of stories. Employing the conventions of the graphic novel, she directs the focus and emphasis to where it should be: Shakespeare’s words. By breaking up the speeches into word balloons and placing them within the gorgeous artwork, Greenberg is able to add pace and timing, giving pause and heightening the drama as required. These words are brought to vivid life by Inkblots—a charming, quirky masterstroke! It seems perfectly appropriate that Shakespeare’s writing be anthropomorphised by Inkblots—the very manner with which the bard created his works in the first place. And so the Inkblots literally don the actors’ masks on a stage of wondrous, explosive colour. Greenberg’s ‘play on the page’ uses recurring backgrounds to approximate the stage, thus capturing the spirit of the play. However, the book’s ambitious length—440 pages—may be its downfall. When we spend long spells in each scene, the backgrounds begin to grow repetitive, and we start to lose the majesty of the settings. This book would serve as a good introduction to those who have found Shakespeare difficult to read, as the words and the art work very hard to get to the essence of the play.

W Chew Chan passes the day as a comic-book and storyboard artist, and is the comics consultant for Books Kinokuniya. This review first appeared in the October 2010 issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine.