Greg Tubach, senior editor at Wiley who developed the idea for the manga classics series, says there's a good reason to develop manga versions of the Bard: "Shakespeare is still one of the most recognizable and most taught writers in the English language, and manga is an ever-increasingly popular form with kids and adults alike. Tracking sales of manga and popularity, we put one plus one together and decided this was the way to go: Shakespeare in the manga form would be perfect."
And Tubach enunciates what kids are not embarrassed to assert, "Shakespeare is so intimidating to students and a general reading population. Anything I can do to make it more accessible is an A-plus in my mind."
Tubach disagrees with critics who say manga is dumbing-down the classics. "We kept the language intact. We just shortened it a bit," he says. "We really think that the combination of Shakespeare's story-telling and the manga interpretation is a winner."
Sonja Rittenhouse, 19, a member of the Anime Club at Temple University where she is minoring in Asian Studies, thinks the manga-zation of the classics is more of a gimmick. "While the market for manga in America starts with kids as young as 7, the younger-end audience is drawn in to manga by anime TV tie-ins. These kids are less inclined to browse real books than young teens, making young teens the starting age audience for these classics. And by that time they are probably already reading Shakespeare in school anyway."
And high school students don't necessarily think Shakespeare in manga is an easy read. "I think that you would still need to have the language explained," says Christiana Sabett, 16, an 11th-grader at Old Mill High School in Anne Arundel County.
"Manga's kind of hard to understand, too," says Trevor Scheckelhoff, 15, a ninth-grader at Atholton High School in Howard County. "But," he adds, "it's easier to read than Shakespeare."
