Basis and Process for Comic #4

Act 3, Scene 4, Line 25

Polonius:
O, I am slain.

Polonius . . . announcing his death.

Lines 159-166
Hamlet:
Once more, good night,
And when you are desirous to be blest,
I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
I do repent. But heaven hath pleased it so,
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow, and will answer well
The death I gave him.

Hamlet says that his murder of Polonius was an act of faith (Protestant belief) meant to do two things: to punish Hamlet with another murder to repent for, and to punish Polonious
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Three jokes exist within the fourth strip of the web comic:
1. Hamlet's lack of remorse, as he proclaims the murder to be an act of faith (as well as the ones he commits in the final act); I have God arrive in the scene to counter-act the 'slander' against him.
2. The general violent nature of the play (suicides, murders, ect.), which I show through an exaggerated amount of blood on Hamlet's clothing and on the tapestry (juxtaposed against a heavanly figure -- judge).
3. Polonius' announcement of his own death; I try to make it more ridiculous by having him say the line well after he is presumed dead by the other characters in the strip.
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Process
It took 69 layers to complete the final web comic for the 'My Hamlet Project'. Although I feel it looks the best out of the four, I must admit that the rhythm is choppier than the others. With little time left to complete a fourth comic (I though three was too few) I could not spend as much time with the continuity of this strip as I did with the previous ones. Overall, I am satisfied with the way my project turned out -- if it were to become an actual web comic, the content would need to expand beyond death related scenes in the play.


Some choices I made:
- a portrait of Claudius was placed above Gertrude's head to allude to the conversation that had taken place
- the bedroom was drawn how I imagined it to look like
- tapestry where Polonius was stabbed is included on the right side of the background (ripped from Hamlet's sword)
- Gertrude was modeled after the Gertrude in Mel Gibson's Hamlet
- "heaven" replaced with "God" to make the joke more clear