Nottingham #5 // Review
Robin Hood is terrorizing a tax collector. It’s not like he doesn’t have it coming. The murder that’s coming a little later on is a bit much, but these ARE dark times for England, and dark times are going to feature very dark actions in Tales From Nottingham #5. Writer Damien Becton retells a tale of Robin Hood with appealing brutality that pounds into the page courtesy of Rafael Romeo Magat. Blood and shadow are cast across the page courtesy of colorist Ellie Wright. The grizzly nature of the action is really its primary appeal, but there IS a bit of depth that goes beyond the surface in an entertaining issue.
Robin Hood has killed a tax collector. So he’s a fugitive...which really isn’t anything new for him. He’s dealing with life in a corrupt system, and that means that he’s on the run as he shoots swiftly into Sherwood Forest. There he is met by a band of men who are unwilling to let him by. He looks like a nobleman, and they need money on which to live. There’s an economic disparity between those with money and those without. Robin and the leader of this band are going to get into some of the particulars over a fight.
Becton takes a particularly brutal situation and makes it...more brutal. The tale of Robin Hood’s first meeting with Little John was a bit open and playful in some of the earlier texts that outlined the original legend. Becton makes it all pound into the page with respectable brutality that makes Robin Hood seem that much more sinister. It’s fine. Really. On one level, it almost feels like an attempt to cast Robin into the gratuitously dark. Kind of silly and childish. On another level entirely, it feels like Becton is reaching toward something much more sophisticated than the original legend.
Magat is the driving force behind the issue. There’s an open embrace of the inelegant in Magat’s art that casts heavy lines around everything as every detail seems painfully gouged into the page. It’s impressive stuff. Robin Hood leers at the tax collector, and the reader can see every single line. Blood coats the page courtesy of some profoundly dark coloring on the part of Wright. There is the occasional establishing shot that firmly sets the tale in time and place, but so much of the action rests on blank backgrounds, which are given strength and texture by Wright’s respectably amplified colors.
Nottingham has kind of an interesting and ugly gravity about it. Becton’s vision would be a lot more interesting if there was just a bit more elegance about the brutality. The visual poetry that could accompany Becton’s darkness gets lost in a million little lines that are tattooed into page and panel. It’s all very, very aggressive in every way imaginable...from the dialogue to the plot to every last line of rendering. That aggression doesn’t come across nearly as badass as it should. It just feels restless and angry.
