Nottingham #4

Nottingham #4

Mad Cave Studios 2021

Written by David Hazan

Illustrated by Shane Connery Volk

Coloured by Luca Romano

Lettered by Joamette Gil

With its Sheriff still reeling from a recent loss, Nottingham hosts a grand tournament and Gisbourne is intent to use it to root out Hood and the Merry Men. Chaos and disaster follow, leaving Ev the only man standing between Nottingham's nobility and certain doom... but do they really deserve to be saved?

Well this issue everything changes as Sir Robert of Locksley’s plans come to life exposing him to Marian as the fraud that he is for all the good that will do her. Last issue we saw his thoughts on Marian and I have to say that this issue definitely changes the way that I see him and his band of Merry Men as well as the Sheriff. Ironically there isn’t anyone in this story to actually like and root for which is something I’ve never experienced before so I doth my cap to David for being able to write a story in which the readers alliance to characters can change as swiftly as simply turning the page. It truly makes this a unique and fascinating story the likes of which we’ve really never seen before.

I am absolutely loving the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is impeccably presented. The character development is phenomenal thanks to how we see the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances that they encounter. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story with its twists & turns and revelations we are drawn into this deeper and deeper with greater respect.

I am very much enjoying the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, strengthen, evolve and emerge depending on what avenues we see continue and new reveal themselves. With the Sheriff alone his detective and deductive skills being what they are just add this depth and complexity to an already compounded story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is so beautifully achieved.

I’m still not the biggest fan of the interiors here and the Sheriff’s hunchback hides so much as it’s always so dark he looks like an egg with face in it. The style may not be for me but nevertheless the linework is still nice and how the varying weights are utilised to create the detail work is accomplished very well. The panels that feature the backgrounds, the two-page two-panel spread for instance is how I wish we’d see the whole book as they enhance the moments and bring us this great depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a decent eye for storytelling. The colour work is extremely nice to see. With the exception of the Sheriff and his dark fur surrounding his dark hair what we see is nicely laid down using various techniques. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is really quite nice to see.

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I love being surprised by what I read and with this I’m constantly wondering what is going to go down next. With the shocking cliffhanger ending they certainly got me on my feet hooting and hollering about how it went down. Horton may hear a Who but the Sheriff of Nottingham hears his commanding voice as if he’ll make the difference in taking down the Hood and his men and that kind of confidence well you can’t fake that. So should we root for the Hood or should we root for the Sheriff? Neither is a good man but who is the lesser of the two evils at this point? What will Marian’s fate be? All these questions and more will hopefully be answered next month, same time, same channel so be there or be square.