“This isn’t Wicked done with R&J; Wimberly is far too savvy to offer us a mere ‘reversal’ story.​”

Wimberly’s hip-hop “Tybalt-take” on Romeo & Juliet is vivid, unexpected, and challenging: a mashup of ’80s street politics and samurai fantasy, of media ogling and Shakespearean verse, of motivated women and secret trysts.

This isn’t Wicked done with R&J; Wimberly is far too savvy to offer us a mere “reversal” story. Instead we see new dynamics arise behind the “not original” telling by the Bard: normed competitions and public stakes for dueling, the neighborhood’s women determining what their own wins must look like, and betrayals at least the measure of those which end Mercutio. Who are the “innocents” here? Well, perhaps none in equal measure.

But Wimberly challenges readers, too, with panels of artwork which demand more work than the stark and unambiguous narratives of traditional graphic novels. Most are without dialogue, slices of action or scene or character, exposing a critical detail or obscuring two. A quick flash of an image which changes everything; the next decision instantaneous. Then, when the moment settles to dialogue, we find ourselves trusting little of what is spoken, though its iambic pentameter lends its own gravitas.

As a revisioning, this is fine work. As a book which may motivate some students to approach Shakespeare more fully, it’s a clever method for us to discover his own ironic words. As an artifact of the cultural moment, it is astounding.