Toronto, Canada: The creators of the comic book series Kill Shakespeare are excited to announce that Canada’s eastern-most comic convention, Hal-Con, will serve as the launch-pad for the release of the second collection of the award-winning series.
The all-Toronto creative team behind the Harvey- and Joe Shuster-nominated series will be in Halifax this weekend to unveil Kill Shakespeare Volume 2: The Blast of War to Canadian comic fans for the first time. The concluding chapter of the IDW Publishing series, which pits the Bard’s heroes and villains on a quest to track down a mysterious wizard by the name of William Shakespeare, will be released in bookstores inCanada at the end of November.
Series co-creators Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery, as well as series artist Andy Belanger, will also be taking part in panels and will provide workshops on how to create and market comic book series.
“I attended the inaugural Hal-Con last year and bar none I had the best time of any convention I have ever attended, say McCreery. “I’m beyond pleased that the timing of the release means we get to make Hal-Con the first convention in Canada to see The Blast of War.”
The Kill Shakespeare team will also provide more details on the upcoming Kill Shakespeare stage show. Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre – one of the country’s top theatre groups – will perform the series live on November 26th and 27th in Toronto. The play will provide the audience with a never-before seen mix of comic art, performance and music to bring the series to life in a way that will delight both theatre and comic “geeks”.
Del Col, McCreery and Belanger will be available for interviews during Hal-Con 2011.
About the series:
Kill Shakespeare (IDW Publishing) is an adventure story that pits all of Shakespeare’s greatest heroes (including Hamlet, Juliet, Falstaff, Othello, Puck) against the Bard’s most menacing villains (including Richard III, Lady Macbeth, Iago) in a quest to track down and kill – or save – a reclusive wizard by the name of William Shakespeare. Described by the New York Times as “gripping, violent and dark fun,” the series was nominated for a 2011 Harvey Award for Best New Comic Series and received profiles from NPR, BBC, The Washington Post, CBC and Publisher’s Weekly. The series was chosen by the Sundance Institute as one of six projects for the inaugural New Frontiers Story Lab in October 2011. It also created controversy in 2010 when Shakespearean scholar (and girlfriend of comics legend Frank Miller) Kimberly Cox railed against the title, while others – such as Des McAnuff (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Jersey Boys) – are fans of it.