Kill Shakespeare: The Mask of Night #4 (IDW – McCreery / Del Col / Belanger / Chankhamma)
If you wrong us, shall we not seek revenge? Betrayed by the vicious cannibal Captain Lucius, Viola and Hamlet must undertake an odds-defying mission to punish a murder most foul.
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” – Macbeth, 4.1
Here’s a total play on the works of The Bard. Whether or not he’d approve is something best left to Macbeth’s witches to figure out. Hamlet and Viola sail aboard the pirate ship Boreas, trying to escape from the pursuit of the evil cannibal Lucius, aboard his own ship The Lavinia. All of this after Lucius has killed Viola’s love, Cesario, and kidnapped Hamlet’s own Juliet. What purpose could Lucius have for Juliet? What could drive him to risk the revenge of Hamlet, a man known for making revenge an art form? Helloo…… cannibal!
This book manages to take the elements of Shakespeare’s work, and turn them into something completely new. Where the original works featured more soliloquies than swordplay, this series turns it all on its ear and brings the reader into a world of high adventure. Very well-read high adventure. You don’t have to be a fan of Shakespeare’s works to enjoy the story, but those that have read his stories will find plenty of “shout outs” to earn a cheeky grin (“What fools these pirates be.”).
I can see some of the purists out there, and you know who you are, shaking their heads at the sacrilege of taking the Bard’s tomes in vain. For those people, I can only say:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
