Reading Outlaw: The legend of Robin Hood by Tony Lee, Sam Hart (Illustrator), Artur Fujita (Illustrator)

Listening to Dinosaur Jr, Give a glimpse of what yer not (2016)

Well, this was awesome. I love Robin Hood anyway. It was part of my childhood. It brought me Alan Rickman, and occupied after school TV and the Disney version was great. The Robin Hood myth was taken in a new direction by the graphic novel Outlaw. I was listening to the new Dinosaur jr album. One of those bands that I might have loved, had they had the airplay they were due when I was growing up. The band formed in 1987, and reformed just over ten years ago. There is a sense of ‘if it ain’t broke’ about the album and actually I did enjoy their grungy, woozy guitar sound. I did know about them because they were on the soundtrack to Reality bites. That was one of those Generation X films starring Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder. Must watch again.

Outlaw fluffs out the edges of the story, beginning some years before Robin of Loxley was provoked to become an outlaw, form the Merry Men etc. Instead, the book begins with Robin as a child, before he becomes the expert archer and leaves England, on bad terms with his father, to fight in the crusades. You know, I would have liked a little more on the crusades…

The art work is epic. Although I knew the story inside and out I just loved every single panel, it was dark. Dark like medieval England, dark like a kingdom in disarray because their God-like King is held to ransom and the shades of right and wrong are blurred by the actions of middle management. That last bit is a more familiar a scenario, isn’t it? The tone of the book was in keeping with a comic book, by that I mean there wasn’t so much time for reflection and analysis luckily I’m all in favour of dialogue-led storytelling and the enjoyed reading between the lines. I wish it hadn’t finished. Boo.