GGotS Exclusive Interview: The creators of IDW’s Kill Shakespeare (Pt 1)

By Kate Kotler

Anthony Del Col, Conor McCreery, and Andy Belanger are the trio of crazy Canadians who are trying to kill Shakespeare. According to Del Col and McCreery, the new graphic series from IDW, Kill Shakespeare (in stores April 14, 2010), is “Kill Bill meets Hamlet.”

What we’re really talking about is a complete reimagining of the world of Shakespeare in which Hamlet is an action hero, Juliet is a savvy politician, and other notable Shakespearean are transplanted from Elizabethan England into a new world. In this world, Shakespeare is a powerful wizard (ala Merlin) who Richard III would like destroyed. He employs Hamlet as his assassin, telling the Prince of Denmark that he will resurrect Hamlet’s father if the murder succeeds…

The book is being previewed this weekend at Wondercon, and GGotS was able to catch up with Del Col, McCreery, and Belanger to chat about this exciting new series.

Where did the concept to reimagine Shakespeare come about?

Anthony Del Col: We actually came up with the idea about five or six years ago.  Conor and I were sitting around brainstorming ideas for a video game.  And Kill Bill had just come out and we started thinking… “Kill Bill… Shakespeare…” We both thought that it was actually a really cool idea. From there we went out and wrote 15 or 20 story ideas.  We took it out of the video game world and put it into the film world. We thought that it could be a really interesting live-action film — like Lord of the Rings type stuff — and then we kind of shelved it for a while because we both were busy. I was working in the music industry in Toronto helping to manage artists, and Conor was working in journalism for a business news network in Canada. Then about two years ago we took it off the shelves and basically we started to explore it as a comic-book series. Conor started to expose me to new comic books — when I was growing up it was all superheroes — and he started to introduce me to nice graphic novels, nice romance series…

Andy B.: It wasn’t actually a romance between the two of them…

That would be a BROmance…

Conor McCreery: Why do we have to ghettoize a man’s romance by calling it a “bromance”?  It’s just as special and flowery — just with more sports and sweat.

A bromance by any other name…

CMC: Smells like a dirty jock strap. (Laughter) That’s the great thing about a comic-book series: We were able to do what we never would have been able to do with a three-hour feature film in this book series of Kill Shakespeare…  And, of course, even if we had [film] experience back in Canada, if we had flown down to LA and asked them to make us partners [in making a film], we probably would have gotten a few good laughs and a couple of cards if we were lucky.  So we decided — because I love comic books, it has always been a passion of mine; and Anthony loves Shakespeare, we just decided to try it out.  Then we actually went and raised a lot of cash first so we could do it professionally, so we could hire someone like Andy Belanger — who was one of the top artists in Toronto — we didn’t want to find someone who was going to try to do their best afterhours.  We wanted to say, “This is a business deal, we are professional about this, and we want to hire you for a year to live, eat, breathe Shakespeare.”  And we were lucky to find Andy, who as we said, was one of the top guys in [Toronto].

So Andy, what other books have you drawn?  What’s your pedigree?

AB:  My background?  My first sorta comic book that came out on the stands was a Moonstone book called Wolf.  My actual first comic book [that I drew] ever was Friday the 13th.  Like a DC-style Friday the 13th… then New Line got folded into Warner Brothers and the book got shut down… so I didn’t get to do anymore, even though the head guy at New Line said that mine was his favorite, which was really cool. Then I started doing The Devil’s Due, drawing Chucky covers.  Horror was kind of my bag as I was first coming up. I’m part of the TX Comics Collective and I have a book called Raising Hell that I do on there. Then I got a gig drawing Bottle of Awesome for Zuda. It’s a series that’s still going on, I just started season two, Conor is going to be helping me with some of the writing coming up… the series is kind of like my Simpsons or Family Guy, it’s very humor-based, a really cartoony feel. While I was working on that, these guys came to me about 18 months ago and said “Hey do you want to help us kill Shakespeare?” And I said, “Uh, isn’t he dead already?” I’d been trying to get a series in print [for a while] — I was doing all these one-shots or covers — and I really needed to prove to publishers that I could do mainstream stuff.  And that I’ve got a lot of ideas in mainstream comic format, storytelling ideas, that I want to get across.

CMC: So you used us?

AB: I used you. No! Seriously, as soon as I started working on it, I just fell in love with it.

ADC: Anyone reading this, if you’re an artist and looking for work… we’d love to work with you.  (All laugh)  We like to tease Andy.

CMC: But Andy and I have talked about it and we looked at Issue 1 and we were like “Wow, look at what we created here, but look at where we’re going.”  I know I’m biased because I’m involved in the project and it’s something we’ve evolved together, but I honestly think that when [the series] is finished that people are going to be talking about Andy in the same vein as any of the other top artists and that we’re going to have to fight to keep him.

AB: Actually, you know what?  You guys aren’t going to have to fight to keep me. I’m so in love with the series so far, working on it day in and day out, it’s so much fun. I get to do a time period I really like, I get to do battle scenes I really like… The artistic style I want to pull off in this book, I have time to do… And what are you going to do? You can’t get someone else to play Hamlet in the sequel if you have a different actor in the first one. It just doesn’t work as well!

CMC: Is there a sequel to Hamlet?

There is… Hamlet 2.

AB: I know where they want to go — for the second series — this is a trilogy, so maybe another 12?  And where they want to go, they’re going to be doing my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, so I have to do the next one for sure. It’s so much fun to work on. Othello is so much fun to draw!

I can imagine, Othello is like a badass!

AB: Oh… he’s The Incredible Hulk of Shakespeare! And I really love drawing Falstaff. You know, in comics, you’re normally drawing these really fit guys, and Falstaff is like a Santa Claus, he’s really fun to draw.

I think that Falstaff is probably my favorite Shakespearean character.  He’s just — a buffoon.

ADC: You’ll love him in the comic. It’s a lot of fun because we take what everyone traditionally knows about him and we use that as the template and build him from that. So, yeah — Falstaff is the ultimate comedic sidekick — he’s very concerned with wine, women, and food, but, then we’ve taken that and he also serves another function.  He’s not just concerned with wine, women, and song — he’s got some other stuff going on underneath all that.

CMC: He has depth.  He would be our Ben Kanobi, he serves a story function.

• Make sure to stay tuned to GGotS for Part Two of our interview with the creators of Kill Shakespeare, coming Wednesday, 4/7.  If you’re at Wondercon this weekend, stop by the IDW booth where the fellas will have limited prerelease editions of their book at various times on Saturday and Sunday.  They will also be speaking at a panel titled “What Would Shakespeare Do” on Sunday at 2:30 pm in RM 220.