Free Comic Friday: Romeo vs. Juliet

Romeo vs. Juliet: A Kill Shakespeare Adventure
Writer: Anthony Del Col
Artist: Stefan Tosheff
Letterer: Becca Carey
Editor: Conor McCreery
Designer: Dawn Guzzo
Cover: Tosheff
Published by: Gemstone
Released: May 4, 2024

It wasn't Star Wars, Phoebe and Her Unicorn or any Marvel or DC giveaway issue that caught my youngest daughter's attention this Free Comic Book Day, but this twist on a literary and a theatrical classic.

I believe her words were something to the effect of “What the heck?” I can't remember if I'd noticed this in a list leading up to the day, but between her curiosity and my own interest in offbeat twists on familiar tales, it was one of the first I grabbed.

I had seen the comic “Kill Shakespeare” on Comixology at some point, maybe even a digital copy of a Free Comic Book Day offering years ago.* At some point, it became conflated in my brain with that movie Roland Emmerich directed about Shakespeare** because if half the “Independence Day” duo is making a movie about Shakespeare, I assume somebody's trying to kill him. Finding out that Del Col is a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction comic writer made me even more curious.

Basically, it seems like “Kill Shakespeare” is a Bard Cinematic Universe. In this issue alone, we get Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet and name drops of Lady MacBeth and Richard III. There are probably a lot of others, but, shockingly, I am less knowledgeable about the works of arguably the greatest writer of all time than I am the adventures of Marvel superheroes.

Like many people, I'm passingly familiar with a lot of Shakespeare's plays, but my first personal experience was volunteering for the role of Puck in an excerpt of “A Midsummer Night's Dream” in elementary school, almost certainly because the character shared a name with a member of Alpha Flight. I watched Polanski's “Romeo and Juliet” along with reading the play in a high school class, bought a T-shirt after being the only one in the group who enjoyed a performance of “Coriolanus” during a college trip to Washington, D.C., and watched Kenneth Branagh's “Much Ado About Nothing” as preparation for watching Joss Whedon's cast of regular actors do their version in the aftermath of “Avengers.” I would still love to see Nathan Fillion and Tom Lenk reprise their roles as Dogberry and Verges in a series as they solve crimes (or try to) whilst spouting Shakespearean dialogue.

I know that Iago is both a villain in “Othello” and Jafar's parrot, but I can still name more members of the Masters of Evil than Shakespearean bad guys.

Fortunately, in an interview included with this issue, Del Col says he intends for this story to be enjoyed by people both familiar and unfamiliar with “Romeo and Juliet.”

The issue begins with a fake-out as an unseen narrator recounts the climax of the play, where Juliet fakes her death so well that Romeo kills himself. You think that's what you're seeing until this happens:

This story picks up a few years after the original, when Juliet has led a successful revolution and is gravely wounded, pregnant and searching for... Shakespeare?

Searching for the bard and Juliet is Hamlet, who apparently also survived his self-titled drama in this reality. I definitely never thought about Shakespeare multiversally before.

Juliet is hidden away in a secret place and being tended to by nuns, or at least women with nowhere else to go. Her former one true love is also alive and well and shooting people, setting the two up on an apparent collision course.

I didn't go into as much detail here as I usually do, lest I betray my ignorance of the subject matter even further. But I will say this got me interested in the earlier “Kill Shakespeare” series. Apparently, there have been four volumes, plus a board game?

The included interview with Del Col helps provide context and whet my appetite for reading the other stories. To really appreciate them, I know I should actually get around to reading more of the original material.

But Del Col is right – you don't have to be a Shakespearean scholar to appreciate this issue. My daughter will have to get a little older before I let her read it though.

* - My not-technically-hoarding-if-I-use-it-for-content is not limited to physical media.

* - “Anonymous,” which I haven't seen and don't believe is connected to the comic other than by Shakespeare.