Culture

Author: Gareth Hinds
Publisher: Candlewick Press
(4/5)

Gareth Hinds’ graphic novel adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear bridges the gap between prose and performance with seductive, original artwork. The famous tragedy follows King Lear’s descent into madness after his decision to divide his land between his three daughters based on how well they flatter him. His youngest daughter doesn’t make the cut, and her exile is the beginning of Lear’s unravelling and a tale of deceit and revenge. Sons betray brothers, trusted friends are banished, and servants and madmen are not who they appear to be. Hinds sticks to Shakespeare’s original text for the most part and stays true to the plot and subplots. Typical to a Shakespearian tragedy, most characters are doomed to death from the beginning and the abundance of storms, battles, executions, poisoning, eye-gouging, and insanity provides many opportunities for Hinds to display his artistic style and flexibility.
The artist achieves his aim of making one of Shakespeare’s works more accessible to audiences who may not have access to a live performance and find simply reading a play unsatisfying. With its abridged content and unmistakably Gareth-Hindsy interpretation, it may not be suitable for study, but it provides an entertaining alternative to paying attention in lectures. 
One of the few things that prevent the reader from becoming completely immersed in the pen-and-watercolour world is the text. The Times New Roman text plonked willy-nilly among the characters breaks the flow of the story and is sometimes difficult to follow, despite the dotted lines intended to lead us between lumps of dialogue. Spending time developing suitable lettering and thinking more as a graphic novelist than as an artist would benefit the overall appearance and coherence of the book. This is not Hinds’ first graphic novel adaptation of a classic, or even of Shakespeare’s works, and it can only be hoped that he reads this review somehow before making the same mistakes in his current project, The Odyssey.