To put it plainly, Sherwood, TX is Robin Hood with biker gangs. It works because Robin Hood is easily understood and translates to different settings and eras. This first issue is a bit shaky, but it recovers by the end of the story. It opens with a death, the death of Rob Hood’s father Richard Hood or “Richie the Lion” as he was known. We meet Rob’s half-brother Will and Richie’s biker gang the Jesters. Rob is in the Navy just like his old man before him, but he’s not really in the Jesters. The funeral is interrupted by a rival biker gang, the Nobles. They start shit with Rob and Will and a fight breaks out. The sheriff of Nottingham breaks it up. In this take Rob’s wife is the Sherriff’s daughter. As the Nobles clear out the leader tells one of his guys to kill Rob and it’s implied that they’re responsible for his father’s death as well.

It’s a pretty quick read and the story does a decent job of setting up the world. There is a scene later the shows Rob getting thrown through a window and being picked up by the Nobles. None of the Jesters apparently see this or try to stop them when they cart Rob off to an abandoned mine. That was the one big hiccup with the story.

I am curious to see where writer Shane Berryhill is taking the plot. The minor switches that he’s made are interesting and could change the direction of the story from anything else we’ve seen done with the Robin Hood lore. The dialogue is stiff at times with everyone trying to throw out their own one-liners, but again it could just be the curse of the first issue set up.

The art is interesting. At times it’s too detailed and others not at all. When the Nobles appear none of their faces have any details despite the fact that we can make out four faces. It was almost used as a rack focus in a way as it happens a lot throughout the issue. The action was easy to follow, but hopefully the rest of the series has more action. The scene at the end that I don’t want to spoil looked great and I wanted to be sure to point that out.

It’s an entertaining issue. There’s room for improvement and hopefully once Rob is Robin Hood then the story will really take off. The parts are there now and that’s the important thing, now the creative team can start building and hopefully it’s a bad ass story riding a gnarly hog.

Score: 3/5

Writer: Shane Berryhill Artist: Daniel Hillyard Publisher: 12-Gauge Comics Price:  $1.00 Release Date: 7/16/14 Format: Mini-Series, Print/Digital