This is a column that focuses on something or some things from the comic book sphere of influence that may not get the credit and recognition it deserves. Whether that’s a list of comic book movies, ongoing comics, or a set of stories featuring a certain character. The columns may take the form of a bullet pointed list, or a slightly longer thinkpiece – there’s really no formula for this other than whether the things being covered are Underrated in some way. This week: Nottingham: Death and Taxes.
This is one of those trades that I had seen at the comic shop for a few weeks now, and never quite got around to picking up. I didn’t really know too much about it beyond the blurb on the back (which is copied below somewhere), but there was a remarkably quiet night a week or so ago, so I sat down on one of the couches in the shop (there’s two either side of a solid coffee table, literally for the purpose of creating a living room like atmosphere for regulars, first timers and everyone in between to stop and have a chat, paint or construct a model, play Magic… you get the gist) and read what amounted to the first comic and a half before deciding I should probably just buy the book and read it at home.
In this twisted medieval noir, the Sheriff of Nottingham hunts a serial killer with a penchant for tax collectors. The Sheriff’s investigation makes him the target of England’s most nefarious power-brokers. That’s to say nothing of the Merry Men, terrorists lurking amongst the trees of Sherwood, led by an enigma known only as “Hood.”
What grabbed me with this book first and foremost was that it was told from the position of the character who is most often portrayed as the antagonist – whether it’s as a henchman for the evil Prince John, or as the main foil to Robin Hood, the Sheriff of Nottingham is rarely ever a sympathetic character for whom the audience actually roots. Nottingham: Death and Taxes approaches the Robin Hood story from the other angle, one where the Sheriff may be the protagonist, but all the characters are bathed in different shades of moral grey to some extent. It serves to add a depth to the background characters that can so often be missing. You get the sense that each character has their own motivations, even if we don’t get to see them in any great detail.
The story in the book is great, and the art has a sharpness to it that really emphasizes the time period; all in all, this is a killer book and one I’m superbly happy that I finally picked up. The fact that the readers have an insight to the story because Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham have been in our collective psyche for so long (or maybe that’s just me because I grew up surrounded by those stories in England), and the it’s twisted ever so slightly… it’s brilliant.
Join us next week where there will doubtless be another movie, series, comic or comic related thing discussed that is, for whatever reason, Underrated.
Source: Graphic Policy
