Prince of Cats

by Ron Wimberly

A hip-hop retelling of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet that focuses on Tybalt (derisively referred to as "the Prince of Cats") and his Capulet crew as they do battle nightly with the hated Montagues. Set in a Blade Runner-esque version of Brooklyn, PRINCE OF CATS is a mix of urban melodrama, samurai action and classic Shakespearean theater...all written in Iambic Pentameter!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Shakespeare, Retellings, Adult

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prince of Cats has to be the most unusual book I have ever read, but that is not bad... it is just different. Ron Wimberly has combined the story of Romeo and Juliet, with '80's gangs/samuri warriors and it is written in iambic pentameter but with lots of '80's lingo. I have given him 4 stars for his visionary concept and great artwork, but not 5 since, at times, it is easy to get lost and try to keep characters straight. I applaud Mr. Wimberly's efforts and creativity, and his ability to think totally out of the box. I received this book in a giveaway.

[Hannah Garden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh. My. Fuckn. God. This fuckn goddamn hell ass magnificent fantastic book. This book is a puzzlepoem of firework light rock candy, that itchy urgey lipbiting thing Wertz once described as "this book is so good I wanna crawl inside it and fuck it." Perfect.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Recipe for Prince of Cats

1. Take Romeo and Juliet.
2. Set it in 1980's Brooklyn.
3. Turn the Capulet's and Montague's into rival street gangs who regularly sword fight.
4. Pretty much forget about Romeo and Juliet and focus on Tybalt instead.
5. Keep stilted Shakespearean dialogue.

I wanted to like this more than I did. The stilted dialogue took me right out of it though. It would just shut my brain off to the point I was reading it over and over to decipher what they were actually saying.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those rare times where I wish I had actually read about this book before plunging in to it. I thought it was going to be a pretty straightforward adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, where the plot would largely match up. But it wasn't that, so I felt thrown off during the entire book. It is NOT a straightforward adaptation of R&J - instead it looks at the plot sideways, focusing on Tybalt, the Prince of Cats, with rarely any depiction of Romeo or Juliet or their relationship. I would have to re-read R&J, but I am pretty sure the timeline was chopped up and rearranged in this story. Maybe someday I will re-read for a better appreciation. And I guess I should also see Kurosawa's Ran to understand those references, too. I don't think this is the kind of book you can read and really understand independent from the cultural products it references.

[Dev · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was absolutely gorgeous! I wish I had taken some time to pick out some panels to post but I was 1. too into it to break my concentration and 2. kind of struggling to understand it at points. I know those two things seems contradictory but hear me out.

This is a Shakespeare adaptation that is set in the [slightly altered] modern day BUT it's still mostly written in iambic pentameter. This is really fascinating because the author also uses a lot of modern words and phrases and busts out some truly great word play in the process ...BUT it's also hard for me to understand at times. If you are one of those people that just 'gets' Shakespeare then this probably won't be any sort of problem for you, but I just struggle so much with Shakespearean language so it's something I have to actually work to understand.

Also I see a lot of people in the reviews complaining that this is a Romeo and Juliet retelling that barely even features the title characters and I just kind of want to say ...duh? Like 1. it's a retelling 2. it's titled Prince of Cats so it's obviously going to focus more on Tybalt and 3. Romeo and Juliet are literally the most boring part of Romeo and Juliet anyway so ... ??? I guess if you are really into the original you might not like this, but I always like Shakespeare adaptations more than actual Shakespeare so I thought it was great.

And like I said, the artwork and designs are just so gorgeous. I'm too lazy to go back and pick out specific pages but here have a preview page I found on Google:

[ashleigh]

the way i’ma slut for romeo and juliet retellings

[Rachel Nabors · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reserve five star ratings for "things I would go out of my way to experience again if I got to live my life over." This is one of those things.

Ron Wimberly is... a genius. Do you remember "Romeo and Juliet" back in the 90s, how trippy and delightful that film was? This is in the same vein, only set in the much more urban environment of Brooklyn. The character designs are rich, the colors, tyopgraphy and design treatments will delight and amaze you.

I walked away from this with a better understanding of where William Shakespeare was writing from. I never understood why everyone was killing each other in Romeo and Juliet. Now I understand the true depth of its tragedy.

Enjoy this book with a long hour in the tub. Re-read the jokes you don't get until you get them. They are worth understanding.

[Skye Kilaen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hip-hop ninja Romeo and Juliet remix focused on Tybalt, who's involved in an underground sword dueling club in the equivalent of 1980s New York. You've probably never read anything like this, and it has all the excitement of the classic story that inspired it. Bold coloring, full of action and intrigue, heading towards an inevitably tragic ending. Reading Wimberly's afterword gave me even more appreciation for how good of a writer he is, and I was intrigued by the connections he drew between Kurosawa's Ran, Wu-Tang Clan, and the streets of Verona that led him to create this book.

We got this big hardcover reissue in November 2016, and it's SO worth it, as Wimberly had made updates for this edition.

[Lissibith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty much everyone knows Romeo and Juliet. But what if the story were to change eras? And settings? And move what part of the story we were seeing?

The lives of the youth in Verona are cheap, and a combat ranking is one of the best and easiest ways for them to make their mark. But how can people who live so quickly and so loosely really connect with one another?

I found this to be a really entertaining read, and very funny, though if you find Shakespeare's original language impenetrable you won't like this most likely. There were a few textual problems, most usually in the form of bad punctuation.

The art is vibrant and varied, with bold, fantastic colors.

If anything, I would have liked this to be a little longer, to get a little more into some of the characters and their motivations. I find Romeo and Juliet to be infinitely more enjoyable, however, when Tybalt is more central. :)

[Alex Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. You don't need a working knowledge of Romeo and Juliet to appreciate Prince of Cats, but without it, you'll miss some of the genius of this adaptation. Wimberly really gets it. He gets the impetuousness, the blood-lustiness, and the rampant, fairly obscene sexuality of the Veronese youths in the original story, and he reinterprets it with aplomb.

I think it helps that graphic novels, like plays, are told in dialogue. Wimberly's use of hip-hop register and command of Shakespeare's language allows him his innovative use of the play's words. He's got that same love of playful manipulation of language that makes Shakespeare so excellent, and the result is authentic and just plain cool.

I don't normally go for reworkings of Shakespeare, but this one is transcendent. Don't miss it!

[Oriana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly dumbfounded by this magnificent spectacular staggeringly brilliant stupidly beautiful book, oh my fuckin god.

Here's our spread from book club, including rosemary butter cookies, olive oil cake, handmade pretzels, and this preposterously decadent chocolate chip cookie dough dip I made my very own self (here's the recipe if you want it).

[bri]

A really fascinating retelling of Romeo and Juliet! I loved the coloring of the artwork and I really thought the choice to do the whole work in iambic pentameter was brilliant! It was unfortunately quite difficult to follow at times in terms of visual narrative and it just got too violent for me, which is why I decided to put it down.

[Darcy Roar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woooooaaaaahhhhh! This was super amazing and made my head hurt a bit (been a long time since I had to read Shakespeare style). The art styles jump around a bit which was confusing at points, but still amazing. The dialogue, oh man the dialogue is sublime. A perfect mix of Shakespeare words, Shakespeare's style,and modern slang. At one point Juliet tells the wonder woman/batman/invisible man joke in Shakespearean and it's perfect. I want more of this and more of everything Ron Wimberly has worked on.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, for Pete's sake! Why does Goodreads have seperate listings for the hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions? So I read the hardcover, but somehow my review got appended to the paperback instead. And it's counting that as a seperate rating too. Whatever.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a great idea to mix and match the minor characters from Romeo and Juliet with urban gang warfare. (Romeo and Juliet are minor characters here, and the story ends soon after they meet.) It makes total sense, especially after reading the authors end-note about how the idea came to him. Both groups were basically teenagers with nothing to look forward to who weren't afraid to fight and die for their team.

However, the dialog was really tough for me. Parts of it are directly from Shakespeare, and most other parts are made to look and sound like Shakespeare even when it is Ron Wimberly's words. (And in at least one case the words of some other poet, William Blake, re-written to sound like Shakespeare.) I find that language tiresome and difficult to understand. English majors may have more fun with this than I did.

Not all of the text is like that. There are even some pretty funny limericks about superheros.

[Amy! · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a little tough to get through because the Shakespeare-esque language is so dense (some of the dialogue is directly from Romeo & Juliet and all of it feels like it could be), and I feel like I probably definitely missed some things because of it. Overall, though, this was an excellent graphic novel. I read the recently released Image oversized hardcover, and the larger format was great for really seeing the details of the characters and the action; this probably would have been TOUGH to read in the traditional comic book size.

It was interesting and refreshing to see familiar characters be given new life and motivations, and transforming the streets of Verona into an urban gang environment was a really inspired choice.

I think there's a lot of good stuff to talk about here when it comes time for our book club discussion.

[Stephanie (aka WW) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such lush, cool graphics. I felt hip just reading this. This is B-side Romeo and Juliette. The story of Tybalt (the Prince of Cats) and the turf war between Montague and Capulet gangs set in the 1980’s. There’s (lots of) sword fighting on subways and cool dialogue in iambic pentameter. I wish I could say that I followed everything in these 140 pages of graphic awesomeness, but I didn’t. Guess I’m not that hip after all.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Not sure how, but this really worked for me! Ron Wimberly has done a fantastic job of 'fusing' two very different concepts (hip-hop and Shakespeare) - but has found commonality in the confusion of youth and the power it influences over love and honor.

[Kaleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent retelling of Romeo and Juliet with a dash of hip-hop and samurai action! Highly recommended. RTC

[Alex Sarll]

Romeo and Juliet remixed in eighties New York, with Tybalt (who, after all, is one of the two who tend to steal the show) given centre stage. The Shakespeare-pastiche dialogue doesn't always come off, but then that's true of everyone who's ever attempted it; Hell, even Bill himself would occasionally come a cropper. And there are some fabulous bits, from the very simple ("The fuck is thy problem?") to one intricately filthy conversation of which I think the Swan of Avon would be proud. And the art! Loose, limber, rolling; it's not that it looks like Lazarus Churchyard, or Deadline, but it has a reminiscent energy, a hint of that moment when comics were just getting cool but hadn't yet gone overground about it.

(Edelweiss ARC)

[Bandit · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you ever read Shakespeare, specifically Romeo and Juliet, and thought…well, this was ok, but it just wasn’t ‘street’ enough, didn’t have any racial connotations or martial arts and no one used the F word (what’s up with that)…rest assured, now there’s an adaptation of the story (or version inspired by the original) just right for you.
Correcting all those Shakespearean ‘oversights’ of yesteryear and firmly updating it for the 1980s NYC, this version is hipping and hopping and popping all over. And your interest in it and enjoyment of it will probably be in direct correlation to your interest in all those ‘updates’.
Didn’t do much for me, but then again, I may not be the target audience. It was conceptually interesting, but that’s about it. At least it read quickly.

[Scott Foley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in Brooklyn, Prince of Cats lauds itself as The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet’s B-Side. Though it uses Shakespeare’s classic work as the inspiration, Prince of Cats is its own entity, a graphic novel unlike any other, an adaptation, a reimagining, a twist on a story that was already a twist itself.

And though there have been many iterations of the source material, I’ve never experienced anything quite like Prince of Cats. Sure, the idea of the Montagues being white and the Capulets black isn’t all that innovative, but setting the play in Brooklyn during the early 80s and mixing in a little kung-fu and hip hop with ample katana blades is a step in a daring, new direction.

Furthermore, Wimberly made a masterful move when he decided not to focus upon Romeo and Juliet, but instead gives the spotlight to two incredibly important but often underestimated characters – Tybalt and Rosalyn. I believe these are two of the driving forces of the original play, and I’ve never seen anyone give them their due like Wimberly does in Prince of Cats.

As you have probably guessed, I’m a former English major and devote a lot of time even today to studying Shakespeare. I can tell you that Wimberly weaves Shakespeare’s original dialogue into his own seamlessly, and at times I had to double-check what was true to the play and what Wimberly did on his own. Also, as you know, there are quite a few times in the original work when we have no idea what Tybalt is up to. This book gives you insight into those moments, and his connection to Rosalyn is titillating.

Now, right now, a few of you are probably thinking this would be a great book to introduce into your classroom as supplemental material to your Shakespeare unit. There are a few warnings you should heed. There is blood in this book – lots of it. People lose limbs. There is language in this book – lots of it. There is nudity in this book, and while fleeting, it is still there. To use this in a college class is pushing it, to use it in a high school class would be dangerous for your career.

Even with that being said, it’s now counted amongst my favorite adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. And, because of it, because of this book and the gaps that it fills in concerning Rosalyn and Tybalt, I can never look at the two characters the same way again. Before this book, Tybalt was always a stone cold killer in my mind, a man who loved trouble and adored violence. In Prince of Cats, there is still that aspect to him, but there’s also something more, something much more, which makes him the deserving title character of this book.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took a class once on adaptations of Shakespeare; the way the source material is foisted on dead-eyed high schoolers and the way creators can change the focus, change the details, and make something accessible and interesting and new. (After all, even Shakespeare was adapting stories.)

and Prince of Cats is really cool.

It's set in like, a slick alternate 80s NYC, where kids with samurai swords duel for status, with that burning zeal for life that looks more like a deathwish. The color-use is vibrant and moves with the moods of the characters, the mishmash of shakespearian and modern dialogue i find hella charming. (a note: i'm not much of a comics person, or, particularly, good at visual interpretation-- there's less dialogue and way more visual storytelling, and Lots of fight scenes, which made things occasionally hard to follow. nothing more than a couple of panel comparisons won't serve to answer.)

The main focal characters here are Tybalt (a duelist returned from school with something to prove), Rosalyn (photographer for Duel-List, the news-zine), and Mercutio (warrior poet artist), which opens up the story's scope from "doomed young love" to "doomed young swords." It starts somewhere before R&J, and about halfway through starts running into some familiar scenes. It's not a happy story but it's an interesting one, with some beautiful panels.

(Top New Scene: Romeo trying to do a balcony scene with Rosalyn, getting yelled at by neighbors for shouting and Ros telling him to stfu
Top Reinterpreted Scene: "do you bite your thumb at us sir?"-- amazingly choreographed and colored)

[Ad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have to admit that my first review for this was rather heated. I was just so disappointed by this graphic novel. A modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet sounded so good, but what followed after the anticipation was confusion.

I couldn’t follow the plot really well. This was partly caused by characters looking pretty much the same, but also by the way they talked. Even though we’re in the modern world, they still talked like they were reciting some poetry and not talking ‚normally‘. The other thing was that I just couldn’t understand what was going on. It was overall very confusing.

Another decision I didn’t get was why they used swords when other weapons exist. I understand that they’re supposed to be like samurai warriors, but I don’t get why swords were the weapon of choice. Wouldn’t others be more convenient and easier to use?

I have to give the author some credit for trying to be original by telling the story differently from the original work. The graphic novel is told from the POV of the cousin and the setting is interesting.

In summary, I was really disappointed. Especially since nearly everyone loved this comic.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

So...take the obnoxious Leonardo DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet. Move it to Brooklyn. Make the Montagues and Capulets rival street gangs who fight with swords in the present day. Make all the characters black and focus it on Tybalt, who goes to private school. Make it a graphic novel where the words and sound effects produce perfect iambic pentameter in speech bubbles. In short, take that unforgivable DiCaprio nonsense and make it awesome.

3.5, really, but I'm grading up because it takes serious chops to make a comic in iambic pentameter and this is everything that DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet tried to be and failed.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an awesome retelling of Romeo and Juliet from Tybalt's POV. It's told in verse (iambic pentameter) and is just an amazing twist on the Shakespeare tale. It combines hip hop, samurai, issues of race, etc. all set in 1980s Brooklyn. I do wish I'd brushed up on my R&J a bit more before diving in as I feel like I could have gleaned even more from it. Definitely not for kids, but if you love Shakespeare and graphic novels, this is a must-read.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very cool. I read the large, hardback version and that was a great way to really get the artwork. There are a few areas that get a little muddled or confusing, and there is a lot of violence. But this is great.

[Keith Irwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, first off, this book is amazing. I put it down only with great difficulty, although I also needed peace and quiet to be able to dive in because neither the dialogue nor the plot is straight-forward. The book summary I see above mentions Bladerunner as being an ingredient of the setting, and that's a bizarre thing to say. The setting is not Bladerunner in the slightest. It's two parts Wildstyle, one part Shakespeare's Verona with a few shakes of Kurosawa mixed in for good measure

The plot is, of course, mostly Romeo and Juliet, except that it's not about them. It's about Tybalt. And, to me, Tybalt and Mercutio were the best parts of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet always struck me as whiny teenagers who needed to get over themselves, even when I first read it at age 14. So this, this works for me. It's Romeo and Juliet the good parts edition. Any dialogue from R&J gets lifted directly. But the real meaty stuff is the rest which gets filled in: iambic pentameter, but Shakespearean English and Hip Hop slang mixed in a blender. It's not trying to translate Shakespeare into Hip Hop or make Hip Hop into Shakespeare. It's just putting the two together as if all the characters were raised by divorced parents one of whom lives in 1980s Brooklyn and the other in London in 1600. And that's fantastic.

Some of the other reviews have said that it can be hard to keep track of the characters in the beginning and the plot can be a bit hard to follow at times. And they're right. They are. But it's worth the effort anyway. You won't find anything else like it.

[Ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tepid three starred review.

Ronald Wimberly's Prince of Cats is part 1996's Romeo and Juliet, part Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, and part samurai movie. The twist? It has the ill-fated Tybalt Capulet, the Prince of Cats, as its lead. The reason for the moniker is because he's had a lot of near-misses with death. However, nine lives are running out when he has to duel with Romeo because Tybalt killed Mercutio.

Prince of Cats had the misfortune of depicting the one Shakespeare play I can't stand: Romeo and Juliet. I'm pretty sure they used that play for 100 years while I was in school. However, nostalgia got me twice.

First, and the most obvious: The Romeo and Juliet from 1996. I was going through Leonardo DiCaprio phase and I saw it numerous times. This was before getting merciless inundated in school. Second, I remember in high school, we had to write a journal about the lives of the characters leading up to their demise. Yours truly picked Tybalt.

Another aspect of Prince of Cats that bothered was the art. I wasn't feeling it. When Wimberly showed action, it was so convoluted that it was hard to tell what was going on all the time. That uncertainty ruined moments that should have been impactful and moving.

If you're fans of Romeo and Juliet, you might like this.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Went in expecting something like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and wasn't disappointed. It's formatted much the same way. Prince of Cats was so clever that I had trouble following it at times. Updated to be about rival street gangs and also maybe rap battles and somehow also samurai (if the samurai were in it just for the aesthetic and had no concept of Bushido)? But also written in iambic pentameter, with words I had to stop and look up not infrequently. I loved the entire concept. It's a little niche, but probably one of the best retellings I have read to date.