Back in the bad old days students used to have to decide between reading the Cliff Notes or the Classic Illustrated version of a particular work, but now thanks to a new series of manga-style graphic novel editions of four Shakespeare plays from Cliff Notes publisher John Wiley & Son, they can avoid that choice and read the Cliff Notes comic version.  Adam Sexton, a professor at the Parsons School of Design, supervised the new adaptations, which include Romeo and Juliet (by Yali Lin), Hamlet (by Maria Kristina Pantoja), Macbeth (by Eve Grandt and Candice Chow) and Julius Caesar (by Hyeondo Park).

All four Shakespeare volumes are text-shortened, 192-page black-and-white, manga style adaptations with a cover price of $9.99.  The Wiley & Sons' Shakespeare titles are hardly the only manga-esque adaptations of the Bard--Harry N. Abrams has released a number of Manga Shakespeare titles created by the U.K. publisher SelfMadeHero (see 'Manga Shakespeare').