Hamlet: The Facebook version
This hilarious little piece is from McSweeney’s, which, in case you haven’t discovered it yet, is only one of the smartest, most nerdy (in a good way) online lit-zine around. I’ve block-quoted the first couple of paras below. Appropriately enough, I was alerted to it by Writer-Director Abbas Tyrewala’s Facebook Page. It helps if you’re familiar with Facebook because then you’ll get all the terminology.
HAMLET
(FACEBOOK NEWS
FEED EDITION).BY SARAH SCHMELLING
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Horatio thinks he saw a ghost.
Hamlet thinks it’s annoying when your uncle marries your mother right after your dad dies.
The king thinks Hamlet’s annoying.
Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better.
Hamlet’s father is now a zombie.
- – - -
The king poked the queen.
The queen poked the king back.
Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.
Marcellus is pretty sure something’s rotten around here.
Hamlet became a fan of daggers.
Read the full piece at McSweeney’s. Plenty more great writing where that came from.
Zot! by Scott McCloud: The Complete Black and White Collection
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  Browse Inside this book
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Yet another great B&W graphic novel collection, this one by a great graphic novelist. Like any loyal comic fan, I read about the underground or small-press origins of many comic artists and writers–sometimes even self-published as stapled pamphlets–and longed to get my hands on those early efforts. Like Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve mini-comics. Or the early Love and Rockets comics of the Hernandez brothers.
In the past few years, thanks to the surging sales of bound comic collections, or what everyone prefers to call ‘graphic novels’ these days, there’s been a treasure trove of such releases. I had such pleasure holding the massive hardcover edition of Locas, 700 coffee-table-book sized glossy pages featuring the complete Love & Rockets comics. And now here’s another treasure. Zot! by Scott McCloud. I’m definitely getting this one! Take a look inside and see for yourself. This is a slice of comics history. And notice how the non-superhero parts are actually the most involving and evocative. They’re my favourite parts.
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis will be out next month (October). Written in a pacier style than my Ramayana Series, this short impactful book details the rise to power of the monstrous Kamsa and his brutal campaign to thwart the birth of the prophesied 8th Child. 