The most rigid 4x4 grid of pictures is when Edgar is met in the blasted tavern.Īnd why the blinding gets sound effects, I don't know. Yes, shatter the layout with THAT storm, twist the page design as Lear (and others?) gets more and more maddened, but why should we lapse how and when we do? It looks like the blind Gloucester atop his cliff adds sanity when we get a clear layout. However the reasons for this artistry are not always clear. This puts one in mind of those dancers' foot pattern diagrams, and when we see exit signs and stage directions pencilled in with arrows, we have a sort of pre-destined choreography for the characters, an awareness of an omniscient narrator/director.

We even have to follow an ant's trail across the pages to learn the layout and reading pattern of the dialogue order, which will discomfort some. With several instances of people appearing in two or three poses in the same image, and with rampant, creative use of the metapanel (a page image made up of different 'shots' combined as one, yet separate) this is not a straightforward experience. It's the visual side of the book that is akin to the direction and acting of Lear that Gareth Hinds does for us, and it's here he tries the hardest to put a unique spin on things. And, as much has been clipped, this is what we get - the unnecessarily divided families without equal play out their tale at full throttle, while we can still pick up on the themes, concerns, motifs and character of the text - even before these are further touched on by the end-notes. The cover quotes and blurb struck me as quite Reithian - they never tried to imply a new, handy crib-notes version, but an honest new production to educate and entertain us all with its nuances.

To my mind the acclaim and esteem in which it's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blustering.Īs a result, a graphic novel, about a third the length of the original (it took me something like 80 minutes to read it aloud in my best Shakespearean delivery), was quite welcome, as long as it still did its truncating, adapting and envisioning in a sincere way. For me, even as a trained actor, the language is too dense and rich, the set-up too archly unfeasible to create the great tragedy it's thought to be. Hound me out of town in a most appropriate manner, but I do not like King Lear. Summary: A distinctive edited graphic novel of the Shakespeare tragedy, that is a very good way of adapting the source material, but lets itself down at times.

King Lear by Gareth Hinds