ABSTRACT
From medieval times until now, Richard III’s identity has been firmly tied to his disability. Medieval and Renaissance writers, from Thomas More to William Shakespeare, were obsessed with Richard’s outward appearance, using it as way to measure him as both a ruler and a man. Shakespeare applied “medieval notions of disability to the historical Richard III in his construction of Richard, the character” (Comber 2010: 183). The appropriation of medieval and Renaissance attitudes to Richard’s disability as a marker of character and morality continues in various twenty-first-century graphic novel and comic book representations of Richard III. This chapter examines recent graphic novel and comic book representations of both Shakespeare’s Richard III (Manga Shakespeare, Richard III; Requiem of the Rose King; Kill Shakespeare; and Batman: Knight and Squire), as well as the “historical” figure Richard III (The Boar and several web comics by artists Emma Vieceli and John Aggs). I am interested in how these works (re)interpret and visualize Richard’s appearance and their underpinning sources and assumptions. How is Richard’s disability – or lack thereof – depicted? Which Richard emerges more clearly: the Richard with a malformed body who is inherently evil or Richard the innocent victim of Tudor propaganda?
