The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0688  Thursday, 7 March 2002

[1]     From:   Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 06 Mar 2002 09:01:46 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.0675 Re: Comic Book Shakespeare

[2]     From:   Alison Taufer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 6 Mar 2002 13:14:40 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.0675 Re: Comic Book Shakespeare


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 06 Mar 2002 09:01:46 -0800
Subject: 13.0675 Re: Comic Book Shakespeare
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.0675 Re: Comic Book Shakespeare

Joe Conlon wrote:

>I've got to disagree with Mike Jensen comments on how "awful" the old
>Classics Illustrated comics were.  I have many fond memories of them.

I am delighted that Joe enjoyed them.  Really.  What's the point of
reading something you don't like--besides getting a degree, I mean?
I'll stand by my comment, though.  I have read them all in the past 3
years and found them ill suited to the medium.  They are stodgy things,
far too reverent to be effective comics.  The writers and artists, in my
judgment, failed to find a pace and rhythm that worked on the comic book
page.  They were too wordy, and aside from eliminating some (not all!)
descriptions, the art didn't do enough of the work.  Worst of all, I
find them plodding.  The stories move forward, but neither the scripts
nor the art build to the climaxes of the scenes.  The stories just plod
on.  The artists do not make angle or background choices that convey a
sense of mood or atmosphere.

There are even moments of incompetence, as in 1H4.  The nobles tend to
look alike, so it is difficult to tell one from another.  There is also
a problem with the artists's skills.   They do not tell their stories
effectively in terms of the flow from one panel to another, and from one
page to the next.  That is fine for an illustrated book, but they don't
tell a story visually, as Milton Caniff and Roy Crane did.  Now if one
of those guys had written and drawn them, Pollard might have retitled
his book *Terry's Fight with the Pirates.*

Obscurely yours,
Mike (Buzz) Jensen

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Alison Taufer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 6 Mar 2002 13:14:40 -0800
Subject: 13.0675 Re: Comic Book Shakespeare
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.0675 Re: Comic Book Shakespeare

I found all three Oval editions (King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello) in
Ashland last year at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival gift shop. Unless
the OSF has a secret stash of these texts, I would guess that they are
still in print.  The publisher originally planned to do all of the
plays, but because of the cost and the understandably less than positive
reviews that greeted the first three editions, the project was dropped.

Alison Taufer

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