‘Romeo and Juliet: The War’: Stan Lee’s cosmic Shakespeare

This post has been corrected, as detailed below.

Stan Lee has been writing in a sort of breathless, everyman version of Shakespeare jive for decades – the Asgard that he and Jack Kirby created in the 1960s was based in Norse myth but the tonal aspiration was galactic Olivier – so when I watched the video above I had to smile a bit. It’s a trailer for Lee’s sci-fi graphic novel called “Romeo and Juliet: The War,” which is a very traditional revisiting of the tragedy except with, you know,  laser blasters, starships, genetically enhanced superhumans and  malicious cyborgs. The book, from 1821 Comics and co-written by publisher Terry Dougas, comes out Nov. 30 and features the high-gloss images of  Singapore-based artist Skan Srisuwan.

[For the record, 11:59 a.m. Oct. 24: A previous version of this post misspelled Terry Dougas' last name as Douglas and incorrectly referred to the book's publisher, 1821 Comics, as 1812 Comics.]

– Geoff Boucher

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