Nottingham #2

Nottingham #2

Mad Cave Studios 2021

Written by David Hazan

Illustrated by Shane Connery Volk

Coloured by Luca Romano

Lettered by Joamette Gil

A murder at the heart of the castle shakes Nottingham to its core. As the Sheriff and Captain of the Guard scramble to root out a traitor in their midst. More of Ev's dark and tragic past is revealed.

After the shocking events that closed out last issue we pick up where we left off, sort of. The opening for this issue tells us that the Sheriff isn’t a dumb man by any stretch of the imagination and that he’s a much more formidable opponent than anyone is giving him credit for, or are they? We’ve seen that Robin isn’t afraid of killing off his own, which was surprising to me considering he could’ve freed him instead, so this is a much harsher reality than we were really prepared for it to be. It fits though as I said in my previous review and I’ve got to say I'm a little surprised this issue was so tame by comparison. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that I am surprised is fantastic. This means that David is going to keep me on my toes and I really like that.

I like the way that we see this being told. The story & plot development we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. I mentioned the Sheriff earlier and I’m not mad that he’s so prominent in this issue and we see him doing what he needs to do and his detective skills are mad impressive. Which ties into the character development because how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter alongside the dialogue that we see really does wonders in fleshing them out. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing all this new information and it captures your attention beautifully.

How we see this structured with the layers within the story continuing to grow, evolve and become stronger as well as new ones emerge makes this much more exciting than you might imagine. The way we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow and how this constantly moves the story forward is utterly delightful to see. I’m really impressed with the way that we see this story coming together and coming across to the reader.

I do wish the interiors were a bit cleaner but honestly that’s just me it has nothing to do with Shane’s style which is uniquely his and his alone. The linework that we see is great and how the varying weights and techniques that we see are able to bring out the detail work is really rather quite nice to behold. I really wish that we’d see more backgrounds because even just the way we see the rock face of the wall is fabulous and it brings us this enclosed space feeling. The composition within the panels do bring us some really nice depth perception, sense of scale and that 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 strong eye for storytelling. The colour work we see is great! I like how the various hues and tones within the colours create the shading, highlights and shadow work.

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There is some great stuff going on within these pages and I have to say that this is just getting better and better. The writing is strong, smartly done and the characters with their characterisation is impressive on a few levels. Add into this the interior artwork which just seems to go with the story so beautifully and Mad Cave has yet another winner on their hands.