Loxley

Title: Loxley

Publisher: Alchemy Texts

Writer: John A. Short

Artist: Blake O’Farrell

Relevant Websites: http://www.alchemytexts.com – publisher’s website.

Basic Premise: The Robin Hood legend revisited.

Presentation: 28 pages in comics size format. Consists of black and white interiors with a colour front and back cover.

Pricing/Availability: Prices are £2.70 in Great Britain, $3.50 in the United States and $5.25 in Canada. Buy this using mail (an order form is available from the publisher website) or from conventions and so on.

Writing:

This comic is a reworking of several key concepts taken from the Robin Hood legend and proceeding work (Richard Carpenter’s Robin of Sherwood TV series seems a particular influence) and embellish it, add new characters and change it slightly to “bring it up to date”.

Some changes are interesting and add a little to the story, for example, portraying Richard the Lionheart as a bit of a nutter, not such a good guy and being perfectly willing to have innocents tortured is probably closer to truth than the perceived vision of him as a noble and just king.

Other changes are merely an excuse to try to add the creators imprint on the work, such as adding new characters to the mix.

Other changes are probably unadvised, for example, I feel it is a bit of a risk to take the popular folk hero, Friar Tuck and turn him into a raving coward and pervert.

To determine which of the additions and modifications would have worked well would be the final job of an editor, however, quality editing seems mostly absent. In fact, a little more editorial control would have greatly improved several aspects of this comic.

As it is the comic is pretty good, however, it is not quite great and needs the additional polish that a good editor would bring to it. For example, a good editor would have noticed that it’s a bit of a cliché to use “the year of our lord” in an olde worlde based work.

In addition, I feel that they have overplayed the swearing card here. It is not that I have anything about swearing in comics especially, but I prefer justified swearing that has been used sparingly and realistically. If swearing is overused it loses its impact for the times that you need it, also, very often, swearing is just used to cover up dodgy writing.

The writing isn’t dodgy here, and in places it seems pretty good, despite lacking much by the way of editorial control, however, in the setting the swearing somehow feels a bit out of place and as I said before it is overused.

Artwork:

As regards the art, it’s not really to my personal taste, particularly, however, I can appreciate that it is pretty good, consistent and stylised. It conveys the action well and there is some nice use of panel layouts and so on to create a specific effect.

Art is a very personal thing and just because I feel I’m not keen on the artwork, don’t let that put you off as everyone is different in this respect.

Conclusion:

My comments may seem over critical, and in a way they are, because, despite a few niggles, I did actually quite enjoy and like the comic. Overall, it was a good take on the Legend of Robin Hood and worth reading, so I’d suggest give it a try despite these minor points.