David Hazan talks Nottingham
Recently I spoke with David Hazan, creator of Nottingham, on my Podcast – My Kind of Weird. We spoke about a whole range of Pop Culture picks including the world of Nottingham, the Nottingham story and the ideologies of his Nottingham characters.
To listen to the FULL EPISODE click HERE.
For those who aren’t familiar with your work as a comic book writer, what can they expect from Nottingham #1?
David Hazan: So what we’ve done is we’ve taken the Robin Hood legend and kind of turned it on its head. The story stars the Sheriff of Nottingham as the main character who basically in our story is a detective in a noir/police procedural who’s hunting a serial killer that is targeting Nottingham Shire’s tax collectors.
So you’ll get a little Law and Order and a little Witcher vibe, where nobody is trustworthy. And none of the choices are good choices for any of the characters. So you’re getting a bit of everything that makes up the noir genre: crime, thriller, suspense, and really bad people doing horrible things.
So what I like about Nottingham is how you deconstruct the lore of one of history’s most well known, loved and repeated fables, or at least English fables. Like you’ve said, you have turned it on its head. The Merry Men are more like terrorists than anything else. They’re got interesting ideologies in terms of how they think a society should be run. Then the Issue comes to a head where one of The Merry Men takes his mission too far and ‘The Hood’ has to deal with it.
David Hazan: I tried to frame Nottingham #1 as a clash of ideologies. But we tried to ground it so that the clash of ideologies so that those ideals have faces. It’s not just the ideas being smashed together. It’s about people taking action and putting those ideas into practice in their lives to sometimes horrific and disastrous effect.
The character in question is essentially, motivated by this ideology, but not supported by the person who indoctrinated him. Let’s put it that way. None of his actions are endorsed and I think the first issue to me is a little parable on the dangers of taking ideology to extremes.
I like what you did with Lady Marian, and how she’s not referred to as Maid Marian in this because there’s a lot of older versions of the Robin Hood legend that always refer to her as a Maid. Which might be a sign of the times of when those pieces of media were released. Society’s view on sex and gender roles. But what I like about your version of Lady Marian is how she owns herself, she knows exactly what she wants to achieve and how she’s going to go about it in this world of men.
David Hazan: Yeah I think there’s sometimes a danger to men writing women who have owned their sexual power. To a certain extent, what I like about writing Marian, or at least our version, is that she isn’t sure of the outcome of her actions. What she is sure of is that she will interact with the world in order to gain power and influence on every axis that is available. Some of those axes are violent, some of those axes is sexual, and some of those axes are social.
But she will use whatever she has available to her in order to get the job done. And
in some respects, I wanted to totally throw this idea of that virgin figure out the window. That’s also something that she essentially uses to her advantage. That image is something I’ve tried to mobilise as one of the tools in her varied arsenal in order to achieve her own ends.
Great. Now, where will comics collectors be able to pick up Nottingham #1 and when?
David Hazan: 3rd of March is the release of Nottingham Issue One. You can grab a copy through Comixology, Mad Cave Studios, or from your local comic shop.
Where can people find you?
David Hazan: You can find me on Twitter. Or you can find me at my Website.
Thanks very much for stopping by.
David Hazan: Thanks for having me.
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