Tales From The Cave is a one-shot anthology showing three original stories surrounding Mad Cave’s most notable IPs on September 27. Featuring: Battlecats, Hunt. Kill. Repeat., and Nottingham, this anthology gives potential new readers a general feel for each franchise.
Tales From The Cave: Where Mark London Shares His Toys
Battlecats and Hunt. Kill. Repeat. are examples what kind of company Mad Cave is. The owner/creator Mark London is willing to let other people expand and enrich his IPs.
Battlecats: Ought To Be Tabletop
The Battlecats story, Not All Cats Go To Heaven, for example sells how accessible it can be for new readers and creatives.
The bigger world of Valderia has a simple outline with places to explore, often with characters to help sell the influence. Keith Frady’s party of aspirants might seem a bit generic: boastful warrior, faithful monk, token everyman.
But it’s their presentation by Riccardo Cecchi that’s notable, displaying a clear body design language and in panel layout to show off the characters. Like how the debut page lays out; the warrior Diara likes to be on top of everything, using her tail to help climb a tree to get way ahead of her group. This helps Diara look down on her teammate Falstine, while the next panel shows her impatience by leaping higher into the tree to get away from his comment. She forcefully dragged him into this adventure, practically dodging his words by using Renato Quiroga’s lettering as a launch pad.
With the colors by Marco Pelandra, Diara’s colors match with the tree’s autumn leaves and bark, showing her in her element. Unlike her Falstine whose teal tunic stands out amongst the trees.
To give Falstine credit, his arc in this is probably the strongest point. Probably with how he changes his initial distressing response to Diara with one filled with confidence.
Athena Wants To Hunt. Kill. Repeat.
As for the Hunt. Kill. Repeat. story Spearhead, it gives one of the villains an interesting look. Rachel Pannelas shows off the point-of-view of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. While still a ruthless dictator, there are still things that make Athena’s motivations understandable. For one thing, she hates dealing with men who don’t give her respect. But unlike the mortal politicians who plot against her, Athena can’t do a thing about her relatives sticking their noses in her business. Dealing with the committee is just a way of blowing off steam, because there she’s dominant.
To illustrate this, Marco Tortella displays foreshadowing with Athena’s owl Cicero. His eyes glowing with a yellow aura by Marcello Iozzoli show off his divine power granted by Athena. When she gives him consent to act, the panel can barely contain him. Seeing Cicero going off to hunt pigeons in a fountain for sport, sets the stage for Athena shutting down any peaceful negotiations. Although lettering by Andriy Lukin shows that these are just debates about how Greek influence should be used.
Can’t Escape Nottingham
Finally the Nottingham story, The Witch of Winter Hill captures the essence of this franchise for first timers. Hey with a final saga coming up, a good way to show the outline is always welcome. It’s a plus that series writer David Hazan does a classic case with both subversion and meta-commentary.
What seems like a simple open-and-shut case turns out to be not so clear. A witch accusation probably isn’t the most surprising thing in 12th century England. Hence why Sheriff Everard Blackthorne is open to interpretation but keeps suspects at arm’s length. But what is surprising is the motive behind the accusation. It was a decently played political matter that gave the healer Maeve no supporters. So seeing Blackthorne being the rough voice of reason on the real guilty party is more than a little cathartic. Best of all it tells first-time readers what Nottingham is all about, de-romanticizing Robin Hood’s time period.
But if you think the story is impressive, how the artists work the script triples the experience. Shane Connery Volk illustrates the grimdark atmosphere of Nottingham’s setting with empty spaces and character dominance in panels. Like how a village lord looks more detailed with his inking compared to the mob of villagers behind him. This feat is further emphasized by his fuschia coat provided by Luca Romano. As for lettering, the best is when Justin Birch uses the echoes of Maeve’s voice to speak to Blackthorne from a distance. It really sells her reputation as a witch by making her feel otherworldly.
Tales From The Cave: Dive Into the Madness
We’ll rate each Tales From The Cave story individually, but the entire anthology is a great thing for new readers and collectors. They each show the general atmosphere of the series they come from without relying on continuity. Plus they’re all simple and clean stories that feel good to go back to thanks to the creatives putting their all into presentation. Not All Cats Go To Heaven gets 8/10, Spearhead gets 8.5/10, and The Witch of Winter Hill gets 9/10. Overall its an 8.5/10.