LONG THE POOR relation of children's books, comics have been cool for more than a decade, ever since the craze for Japanese manga began. Where today's parents may have fond memories of Eagle, The Beano and Bunty, children tend to reject the old formulas of mild satire about school, animal adventures and mysteries. Meanwhile, the treasure chests of Marvel are plundered by Hollywood for superheroes.

Yesterday David Fickling launched his long-awaited new comic, The DFC, with a lead story by Philip Pullman. Whether it will revive the appetite for more conventional comics remains to be seen, but meanwhile another venture is well worth bringing to your attention. Classical Comics was launched earlier this year with Macbeth and Henry V; also in the pipeline for this summer and autumn are Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and A Christmas Carol.

There have been a number of attempts to make classic literature more accessible to a younger audience through comic strips and graphic novels, ranging from Marcia Williams's admirable Bravo, Mr William Shakespeare! (Walker) for 5+ to the versions of Moby- Dick or Hound of the Baskervilles, published by Bank Street Graphic Novels. Personally, I feel that many of these deprive children of the essential pleasure of the language; if a classic is beyond a child's stamina at 11 or 12, then the best expedient is to read it to your child yourself - or at least download an audiobook version on to their iPod.

However, the panache and fidelity of Classical Comics' version of Macbeth is something quite different. For one thing, they have got a real star of the genre, the Spider-Man illustrator Jon Haward, to do the artwork with the illustrator Nigel Dobbyn, and they have stuck, frame by frame, to all the details of the story. Just like Can of Worms Press's excellent Cartoon Shakespeare series, Classical Comics leave nothing out, and this is crucial now that GCSEs allow students to skip the whole thing in favour of the accursed “gobbets” approach. Even more cleverly, they provide three different versions of text - Original, which is unabridged, Plain, which renders it into modern English, and Quick, which is reduced and simplified. For English students struggling with revision, and an impoverished imagination, these will be a godsend.

My guess is that the Plain text version, making every detail clear, is the most useful to these, as well as being the most appealing in its cover design - a hulking Macbeth holding a bloodied sword. Although many sentences are needlessly modernised (“the Queen, my lord, is dead” becomes “The Queen... is dead, my lord”), losing their rhythm as well as their complexity, there is no doubt that students who have found this vivid, manga-influenced rendition fun will be encouraged to tackle the real thing. Each frame is action-packed, with dizzying perspectives, dramatic shadows hatching characters' faces and a restrained palette of red, purple and yellow emphasising the menace and gloom of moral corruption. Figures clutch their throats, Macbeth soliloquises in thought bubble, and the cadaverous, red-eyed witches are simply terrifying.

There are useful notes at the back about the origin of the play. No doubt many teenagers will get most out of the pages showing how drawings were worked up into the final versions, and how the three versions have to fit into the same speech bubbles - something that could provide teachers with a series of lessons. But teenagers would probably just enjoy what their ancestors did - a jolly good yarn. Click here for a slideshow of images from the book

Macbeth: The Graphic Novel adapted by John McDonald and Jon Haward
Classical Comics, £9.99
Buy the Original Text version here
Buy the Plain Text version here
Buy the Quick Text version here

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