WRITER EXCLUSIVE
The two Robins of Sherwood meet for the first time in graphic novel The Hooded Men
► SCI-FACT! Chinbeard Books have also released a collection of the Robin Of Sherwood comic strips, which ran in Look-in from 1984 to 1986.
AFTER TAKING ON THE ROLE OF ROBIN OF LOXLEY IN 1984’s inaugural series of Robin Of Sherwood, Michael Praed was replaced by Jason Connery, who played a completely different incarnation of the legendary outlaw, Robert of Huntingdon, in 1986’s third and final series. Now the pair are meeting for the first time in The Hooded Men, a new graphic novel from Chinbeard Books, set to be released on 28 April – the 40th anniversary of when Robin Of Sherwood first screened on ITV.
“It really started with a ‘What if the two Robins came together?’ and how and why would that happen, and what would the mechanism be that would make that happen?” says writer John Semper, who is teaming up with Brazilian artist Allan Jefferson. “It stemmed from my desire to work with both Robins and to personally write both of those characters.”
A Los Angeles-based screenwriter who first created the concept of the Spider-Verse for Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Semper compares The Hooded Men to a missing episode of Robin Of Sherwood itself. “This is something that could have been done for television if they’d been given another season,” he explains. “So it was about extending a world that already existed and was so well delineated by [series creator] Richard Carpenter.”
Having first seen the show on US channel Showtime in the ’80s, Semper was impressed by how Robin Of Sherwood combined historical drama with ancient mythology. “It was like an early precursor of something like Game Of Thrones, which did a wonderful job of mixing medieval fantasy with action adventure in a way that nobody had done before,
