The Tempest

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By William Shakespeare. First published in Britain in 1623 by Edward Blount, William Jaggard, and Isaac Jaggard. Review copy from ‘The Arden Shakespeare: Third Series’, edited by Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan. Revised Edition.

First off, let’s get one thing clear right off the bat: no matter how much lovers of Shakespeare want it to be, and try to rewrite history to make it so, this is *not* the final play that Shakespeare wrote. Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen, both co-written with John Fletcher, followed this, as well as the lost play Cardenio (also with Fletcher). There’s no denying that it would be awesome if we could read the play as an allegory of Shakespeare’s playwrighting and the final speech as his retirement form the stage. But that’s not what actually happened.

This is not to take anything away from The Tempest. There’s a reason people want it to be Shakespeare’s last play – it’s fantastic, easily his best ‘romance’ and among his top plays, with some superb dialogue, especially from the magician who many say was Shakespeare’s self-portrait, Prospero. It has a lovely palindromic structure, and some supporting roles that an actor can really sink their teeth into in the form of the island’s two natives, Ariel and Caliban. And, despite many saying that she’s just a passive girl who does whatever her father tells her to, there’s more teeth to Miranda than one might expect if played in the right way.

I must admit when I first read this in college I did not get any colonial subtext at all – most of my classes were not dedicated to finding the political or social themes in Shakespeare’s work, merely focusing on the plot and language. But apparently there’s been a lot of discussion about how much Shakespeare was influenced by colonial trips England was taking to the Bermudas, so much so that some used to describe this as Shakespeare’s American play. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but certainly the conflict between Prospero and Caliban has been what many directors enjoy focusing on as the centuries have passed.

As times and mores change, the way we view the three main characters also develops. Caliban was a hulking, ape-like villain at times, but has also been portrayed as something of a noble savage – though one has to be careful not to make him too noble, given how he willingly admits to attempting to sexually assault Miranda shortly before the play began. Likewise, while it is tempting to keep to the symmetries of Shakespeare’s play by portraying Ariel as the light to Caliban’s dark, this does not necessarily make him any less of a servant – and many excellent productions have focused on Ariel’s truculence when dealing with Prospero, and his joy once freed.

As for Prospero himself, his character seems to have experienced a similar trajectory to Shakespeare’s, as so many scholars and readers saw Prospero’s magic and arts as Shakespeare’s discussion of his own writing. And, as the ‘bardolatry’ of the earlier centuries has given way to a more balanced look at Shakespeare’s life and works, so Prospero is not viewed with the rose-colored glasses anymore. He can be surprisingly petulant and stubborn, even in his final speech, and it’s possible to read his decision to leave behind his magic and return to the real world as a particularly bitter pill to swallow.

I’ve talked before about how I would stage a production of the play I’ve just read, but unlike Shrew and Merchant, I have less to say here. Certainly there would be a few more special effects needed than I’m normally used to in my Shakespeare – I’ve mostly performed the comedies – but that shouldn’t pose too much of an issue. Other than that, though, just reminding the actors that they need not necessarily lock themselves into one interpretation on their first reading, an to let their own view of the character come about during rehearsals and multiple readings. I hope that this would allow the ambiguities I prize so much in Shakespeare to shine through.

I feel I haven’t said as much as I normally do about this play but, slight controversies about Prospero and Caliban aside, there’s not as much controversy here as in the prior plays I’ve reviewed. This is the last truly great play Shakespeare ever wrote – Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen are interesting yet flawed, I would say – and anyone who loves the theater or language should read it if they have not already. As for this Arden edition, it’s great to read if you want to hear about the backstory of the play and get into the nitty gritty of Shakespearean scholarship – I loved the discussion about whether a speech should be assigned to Miranda or Prospero – and reads smoothly. This edition also updates it to cover the last 10 years or so of Tempest discussion, including the recent Helen Mirren version.

The Best of Archie Comics

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When I first saw the solicit for this title, I admit I didn’t pay it quite as much attention as I could have. Between the chronological archives Dark Horse has started and the hardcover collections by artist, there has been a glut of old Archie re-releases, with more coming every month. This one was a chunky 400-page paperback from Archie’s own publisher, though, and about the size of its Double Digests. Despite its rather uninspiring cover art (which remains a weakness), I decided to give it a shot.

It’s not *quite* a Best Of – the publisher is trying to give a historical overview of the titles the company put out, and thus you’ll see stuff here of lower quality that nevertheless gives a broader look than just a bunch of Archie love triangle stories – but it’s actually a very decent effort. The stories all have as many credits as they were able to locate, and a short paragraph either saying why they felt this story deserved to be in the book, why this ‘sort’ of story typifies Archie and his friends, or the occasional celebrity blurb. Each decade gets about 50 pages, ending with the Life With Archie years that we’re getting right now.

As for the stories I mentioned above, we see many of the other titles Archie put out over the years that weren’t Archie. Some are famous enough to stand on their own – it’s nice to see the first Sabrina comic here, as well as a couple of Josie and the Pussycats stories (though I’d like to have seen something from the early, pre-band Josie years). And then there’s things like Wilbur, Ginger, and That Wilkin Boy, all of which try unsuccessfully to duplicate Archie’s formula with writing and characters that simply aren’t as good. Still, it’s interesting to see them here (we even get a glimpse of the infamous Super Duck) as a sign that it wasn’t just recently that Archie would try lots of different ideas to see what stuck – they were *always* doing it.

As for the Archie stories themselves, they are solid and readable – this is more of the Best Of that the title led me to expect. In particular, every time you see Bob Bolling credited you are in for a real treat. He’s got 3 stories in here, two featuring his specialty – The ‘Little Archie’ Archie as a kid strips – and they’re all brilliant, with two of them dredging out memories in me from when I was a small boy reading digests myself. Seeing Little Archie drag Betty through Riverdale’s worst outgrowth in order to put off her obsession with him – only to have it backfire and end in one of the most heartwarming moments in the history of the series – is beautiful. Likewise, one of his stories with adult Archie shows Betty misunderstanding seeing Archie and Veronica after he was just on a date with her, and spiraling into a blue funk. Archie’s solution requires a major deus ex machina, but we don’t care, as it’s simply so sweet. There needs to be a Bolling collection asap.

We do get a few stories we’ve seen reprinted many times over the last two years – Archie’s debut, the first appearance of Veronica, that Reggie with the football game – but that’s simply as the archive has skewed heavily towards the 40s and debuts, and you can’t really leave them out. But there’s other fascinating stuff here – some Katy Keene and Archie pin-ups, a few Jughead Dipsy Doodles, and of course Archie in the early 1970s taking the time to explain his growing media empire to the reader. We also get a few reminders that it wasn’t just experiments with other characters or series that didn’t work out for Archie. Witness Jughead’s pin that makes him irresistible to women, or ‘The New Archies’ trying to split the difference between Archie and Little Archie, or even things like Alexandra from Josie having magical powers – which, naturally, she uses for evil.

The book ends with a few stories that are right up to date. We get a Life With Archie from the current series, the only comic in here longer than 6 pages (by design, the editors admit), as well as a very funny Reggie comic about an anthropomorphic personification of his ego – and you can imagine how big it is. Kevin Keller even gets mentioned as a new breakout character – although his sexuality is not mentioned, FYI. And lastly, we see they’re still trying new things – the very last strips are one-page gag comics featuring Jinx, a teenage version of the bratty L’il Jinx from decades earlier.

There’s things I wish we’d seen in here – I’d have liked a few of the more serious 70s-style political stories, and I’d have loved one of the old ‘Betty Cooper is insane’ stories that the web has highlighted. But really, you can’t do a best of for Archie in only 400 pages – there’s simply too much. What you can do is give a sampler and show that Archie has, for the past 70 years, been doing what it’s doing today – writing fun, likeable stories and then finding ways to market them in any way possible. And if that defines Archie as a business more than a character, that’s not to say that the character is weak. You’d never have lasted 70 years without people loving Archie and his friends, and this collection shows why everyone loves them. As a history, it’s fine, and I would not mind seeing a second volume in a similar vein.

You can leave out That Wilkin Boy next time, though.

Urameshiya, Vol. 1

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By Makiko. Released in Japan by Futabasha, serialized in the magazine Women’s Comic Jour. Released in the United States by Futabasha on the JManga website.

Well, JManga is finally open, and there was no way that I wasn’t going to get a title or two to test out, even if the prices are currently ludicrous, and the flash reader content means you are essentially paying for the right to read rather than buying an actual manga. That said, my goal was to find titles that I would never otherwise see here. The two companies who debuted with the most unseen manga were Futabasha and Kadokawa Shoten. Sadly, Kadokawa was all hype but no delivery as of yet, with no previews or chapters. Futabasha (who are clearly one of the big powers behind this site) had real content, and not just stuff already out in the US. So I picked two titles, one seinen and one josei, and began to read.

I will note that this manga is listed under the ‘seinen’ tag on JManga, but I’m pretty sure this is incorrect: it runs in Futabasha’s ‘Women’s Comic Jour’, a mystery-themed magazine whose covers and content definitely look like josei. The author, Makiko, has been drawing it since 1998, and it’s still running, with 14 volumes.

The story takes place sometime in the Edo period of Japan. We meet a young woman, Oyou, who’s trying to drink sake in a local bar. Unfortunately, she’s got a reputation as creepy and terrifying, and the bar owners beg her to leave as she’s driving away their business. (They also beg her not to curse them.) On her way out, she runs into a young man – literally. She knows a pickpocket when she sees one, though, and grabs him before he can get away. Though Saji, the thief, finds her weird, he’s also attracted to her, and offers to take her back to his place for some sake – and maybe get lucky, he thinks.

However, this isn’t just a romance. It’s a supernatural mystery title, and the mood overall is that of unease. Young men have been found frozen to death in greater numbers than usual this winter, and there’s a very good reason for this. And when Saji’s old childhood friend winds up the latest victim, he’s determined to get to the bottom of things. Luckily for him, Oyou is the titular Urameshiya, a woman who can see and, to some extent, control ghosts, spirits and monsters. And while this has made her a hated loner and outcast in the village, it also makes her a powerful spiritual detective.

There’s only 3 chapters available in this volume, but don’t worry, they add up to a full 200 pages – each story is lengthy and goes into detail. I wouldn’t call the stories horror, necessarily. This is a supernatural mystery with tinges of romance. I was actually rather surprised at the latter, as I was expecting this to be more along the lines of a ghost of the week type of story, with Oyou and Saji mostly being sounding boards to figure out the mystery. But the mysteries aren’t very mysterious. What works best throughout the volume is the prickly relationship that develops between Oyou and Saji, two lonely people used to being shunned by society who can’t quite have a normal romance. Oyou in particular is quick to act uncaring and cool around Saji, despite her obvious growing feelings. The two become lovers almost immediately – another sure sign this is josei – but Saji is going to have to get used to his lover being from the ‘show, don’t tell’ school of affection.

The first story deals with a vengeful ‘snow woman’ type, but the second one gets a lot more explicit, and reminds me to warn folks that this is not a title for anyone under 18. It deals with a girl who has a ‘vagina dentata’, so to speak – or “a nice set of chompers”, as Oyou points out in one of the few actual funny bits in a mostly serious book. Oyou’s solution to the problem is also fairly explicit, but works quite well. Unfortunately, solving the girl’s own personality is a much harder task, and not one Oyou particularly wants to try. The third story introduces a new male into the mix, a bratty fox spirit who goes to great lengths to make Oyou his – even if it means killing Saji off. This is the longest story of the book, and probably also the best – there’s no mystery here, so the romance is allowed to develop more, and the ending is fantastic. Best of all, no cliffhanger ending here, which is good, as only Volume 1 is available at this time.

The art is fairly typical ‘pointy chin’ style, being neither exceptional nor distracting. Oyou is conveyed very well, giving the impression of a woman wise beyond her years, one who’s been hurt a few too many times. As for the translation, I’ve heard that others have found titles that are more unsuccessful in that regard, but this one was just fine – no obvious awkward spots, and despite being in the Edo period it did not attempt to use anything other than modern speech. It’s very serviceable.

Overall, this wasn’t completely amazing, but was pretty much exactly what I wanted from JManga anyway. A title I’d never even heard of before, in a genre that hasn’t generally knocked it out of the park over here (mystery romance for young women). And the result was quite satisfying, and left me wanting to get the next volume to see if Saji can get Oyou to open up to him any more – and also to see what sorts of yokai might show up next. Anyone wanting to get a good look at what Futabasha is offering for US readers would be advised to check this out, even if JManga is still clearly a work in progress.