I'm not sure if you were ever a reluctant reader. I wasn't myself, and to judge success with that audience I rely largely on the feedback I get from teachers -- which is overwhelmingly positive for Beowulf, and so far seems good for Lear and Merchant. As you mentioned, a good stage production can engage the audience in much the same way, but there are two problems there; one being the lack of access most kids have to staged productions, and the other that it doesn't actually involve them reading. I'd like to promote the reading of Shakespeare as well as the enjoying of it.

I guess 'edgy' is shorthand for being modern and somehow atypical. In all of my books, I strive for a distinctive style, one that doesn't look like other comics (including *my* other comics).

I choose works to adapt not based not on how easily they will make the transition to comics, but based on what stories interest me and make me want to re-present and share them with my own spin. Also, to some extent, how close they are to the center of the literary canon. Merchant is a talky play, and I wasn't trying to turn it into something else, I was trying to share what I perceive as its entertaining and artistically compelling qualities. Certainly there are other ways I could've shown it, and some of them might be more creative or engage the viewer with more unexpected visuals, but I didn't choose to push it that way - partly because (as I noted, and for entirely selfish idiosyncratic reasons) I wanted to draw the book from life, and focus on the sort of eyewitness verisimilitude I think that approach gives it. Of course, again, YMMV. I hope you'll find more satisfying action and eye-candy in The Odyssey. Though it still won't look like a typical comic ;-)