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"Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery&amp;#039;s IDW Publishing series Kill Shakespeare gained a lot of attention in 2010 when the series set in a world populated by the Bard&amp;#039;s most famous characters debuted. The pair are back now with artist Andy Belanger for the title&amp;#039;s follow-up, The Tide of Blood.  Was a second Kill Shakespeare series always on the cards? Anthony: &amp;quot;Very early on in the conception of our original series we started to think out loud about a potential sequel - or continuation - of our story. Both being huge fans of Prospero, we thought a journey towards - and adventure upon - his island would be a lot of fun.&amp;quot; Conor: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always liked the epic fantasy tales from people like Robert Jordan and David and Leigh Eddings, and the fact that those worlds have so many facets and give so many different characters their time in the spotlight, so I was always enthusiastic about telling more and more tales in the Kill Shakespeare universe.&amp;quot;   What lessons did you learn from making the first series? How have they affected your approach of the follow-up? Conor: &amp;quot;We definitely got a better sense of how we could approach writing a comic. Kill Shakespeare was the first comic that either Anthony or I had published and we learned a lot about how our styles did and did not fit into the mainstream comic world.&amp;quot; Anthony: &amp;quot;One of the other things that we&amp;#039;ve been able to do is improve our visual sequences and look of the story through our partnership with artist Andy Belanger. The more we work with him the more we start to design scenes and moments that play to his strengths or, in some cases, provide him some interesting challenges. It&amp;#039;s led to some really great new moments in the story, both from character moments as well as the story itself.&amp;quot; What new characters can we expect in the comic? Anthony: &amp;quot;Well, since the first issue involves the journey towards Prospero&amp;#039;s Island, it&amp;#039;s quite inevitable that we&amp;#039;ll be meeting the mad wizard at one point. He&amp;#039;s a very interesting character - we&amp;#039;ve taken what he was in the original play The Tempest and added some new wrinkles and elements to him, as well as given him a challenging-yet-loving relationship with a character from our earlier series.&amp;quot; Conor: &amp;quot;You may also see a Shakespearean character who&amp;#039;s never seen in his or her original play, but has a distinct role to play. We&amp;#039;re also going to let you see a BIT more of one of the other &amp;#039;kingdoms&amp;#039; in our Shakespearean Pangaea - and the fearsome warrior who runs it.&amp;quot;  How do you top the threat of series one&amp;#039;s apathetic creator god William Shakespeare? Conor: &amp;quot;Well, who is to say Shakespeare hasn&amp;#039;t become a totally different sort of threat? In a world where a God-like creature returns, and then heads out on his own - a lot of people may be frustrated by that decision or see an opportunity to take that power to improve on &amp;#039;God&amp;#039;s creation&amp;#039;.&amp;quot; Anthony: &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve also created an interesting threat from within the circle of our &amp;#039;heroes&amp;#039;. Though the previous series ended on a high note, not every character was content with the exact nature of the denouement. We&amp;#039;re really exploring how people can be corrupted through what should be a positive obsession. It&amp;#039;s something that Shakespeare (the playwright, not our character) would find very interesting.&amp;quot; Can we expect the return of Lady Macbeth? Anthony: &amp;quot;I could tell you, but then Lady Macbeth would kill me\u00E2\u20AC\u00A6&amp;quot; Conor: &amp;quot;Bah, I&amp;#039;m not scared of Lady scratch-across-her-face. Let me break it down for you, OK? So, there is NO WAY that Lady Macbeth is going to... &amp;quot;ZZZRAAAKKK! \u00E2\u20AC\u00A6 ...&amp;quot;  What was the response to the first series? Conor: &amp;quot;Generally very positive. People liked the fact that Kill Shakespeare is both a &amp;#039;smart&amp;#039; comic and one that has the fun of magic and action-adventure. Comic fans have told us that reading Kill Shakespeare pulled them into the Bard&amp;#039;s work for the first time since high school and Shakespeare buffs ended up reading their first comic since they were a kid, and started asking us what other comics we could recommend to them. That was really satisfying.&amp;quot; Anthony: &amp;quot;What I wasn&amp;#039;t expecting was how much the academic community has jumped into our series. We&amp;#039;ve had not only favourable reviews and comments from teachers, librarians and academics but many have seized on our story to write academic papers on it, teach it in class, and suggest it to students through libraries.&amp;quot; Where did the idea for a live staged reading come from? Anthony: &amp;quot;We were approached by Toronto&amp;#039;s acclaimed Soulpepper Theatre company two years ago about the possibility of working with them on something. They were (and still are, of course) big fans of the series and collectively we came up with the idea of doing a live staged reading - something that would feel like a comic book come to life.&amp;quot; Conor: &amp;quot;We were very fortunate that they gave us access to their VERY talented company; especially Dr Toby Malone, who dramaturged the reading, and Derek Boyes, who directed it. With their help we&amp;#039;ve been able to re-work the show and start to take it on the road. It&amp;#039;s been in New York, and Tucson, Rochester, Montreal and in Halifax the dramatic reading was named the top show of 2012. That was cool.&amp;quot;  Are you planning any more Kill Shakespeare miniseries? Conor: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d like to bring Hamlet back to Denmark, so his story could come full circle (and he might be able to find out what REALLY was so rotten). Anthony has been kicking around a neat idea that involves Beatrice and Benedick that I&amp;#039;m excited to help out on! Plus, how can we NOT do a Falstaff ghost story?&amp;quot; Anthony: &amp;quot;There are some many great characters and stories to mine in the Shakespearean sandbox, I would LOVE the opportunity to do many more stories over the next decade.&amp;quot; What other projects do you have in the works? Anthony: &amp;quot;Though we still spend the majority of our time working on Kill Shakespeare, the success of the comic series has opened the doors to other publishers for us. We&amp;#039;ve had some publishers come to us and invite us to pitch ideas to them, which we are currently doing. In addition, Conor and I have backgrounds in film and television so we&amp;#039;re both developing some other cool ideas in various genres.&amp;quot; Conor: &amp;quot;Anthony and I started out putting together a couple of neat kids show ideas and I hope we can get them to screen one day. We&amp;#039;re also fortunate to have met other great creative folks who we can jam with. Anthony&amp;#039;s shared some really neat projects he&amp;#039;s got going on, and I&amp;#039;ve got a few cool things on the go as well. I&amp;#039;m lucky to have Anthony around to help review and improve those ideas.&amp;quot; Kill Shakespeare: The Tide of Blood #1 is out now from IDW Publishing. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/comics/interviews/a460803/kill-shakespeare-anthony-del-col-conor-mccreery-return-interview/>