Othello: A Children’s Comic

Link to comic: https://share.pixton.com/rcy2r9f

Savannah Tessier 

Nic Helms

Rethinking Medieval Literature 

Project 2

Othello a Children’s Comic

I chose to rewrite Shakespeare’s Othello, but as a children’s comic. I made some changes to it of course to make it kid friendly.  I’ve never seen anything like this done before and I thought it would be super fun to try a new take on it to get kids’ toes dipped in Shakespeare, similar to how the movie Gnomeo and Juliet gave kids the chance to get to know Shakespeare in a cool way without even realizing it. I also wanted to get out of my comfort zone by writing a comic because it’s something I’ve never done before. I think maybe with more experience with comic writing I could’ve turned it into something better, but overall I’m proud of myself for trying something new. This was definitely difficult doing this for the first time.There are no deaths, only 4 characters because it’s a short comic. Desdemona and Othello end up together in the end and it’s a happy ending because as a child I only remember happy endings in comics like that. Although it’s hard to see the character’s faces up close, I made sure to make Iago’s eyes green to represent his jealousy and bitterness. 

My comic was super brief, but I tried to make it more about trusting your loved ones without changing Othello’s plot too much. Taking something old and making it new is never a bad thing in my eyes and because this has never been done before (that I know of), I think it would be really cool for it to become more of a trend to turn older works, like pieces written by Shakespeare or the hero’s tale Beowulf, and turning them into kids books. They have great themes and messages and by tweaking the plot you can even make more of your own. It’s important to inspire kids to love all types of literature from every time period and by introducing them to it at a young age it can help develop that love without them even realizing  The outfit and background options were a little limited, but I was pretty happy with the outfits I was able to find. I made due with what I had and doing so is a great skill to practice, although I wasn’t expecting to practice that skill while making a comic. Headley’s 2020 translation of Beowulf also inspired me to write this comic as she was a female writing a tale typically seen as sexist but made it modern, so reading Othello, I saw it was a tale that isn’t really kid friendly so it would be cool to turn it into something for everyone.