I give you a single guess for what folklore figure Belgian comic series Robin Hoed is based on and I’m not even going to give you the answer..I will tell you that it was a gag-a-day series that was popular enough to make the jump from a compilation magazine to dedicated volumes, but not popular enough to escape the shadow of its big rival Bollie en Billie. In the series, however, the sheriff of Nottingham does manage to escape the shadow of the titular main character: in quite a few of the gags, Robin doesn’t even appear. 1 Like this one.
The sheriff is sitting in front of the open fire in his castle’s purple room, where he is playing chess against an unnamed young man. He has black and his opponent has just gleefully announced check. Is he right? Let’s check!
The picture is reasonably clear. The board is set up with a black h1 square, but as this series is set in medieval times, I can hardly complain about that. The position, after white has played Rg8+, is this one:2
For three whole panels, the sheriff searches desperately for a move, looking more despondent each time. Then there’s a sudden glow up and he takes the c6 knight, probably intending to interpose it on d8, but then he realises that it’s pinned and hi despondence makes way for desperation.
Finally, he strikes upon an idea: throw his opponent in the clink! Not particularly sporting, perhaps, but an effective way out and one must respect his thinking out of the box.3 What one must not respect, what one could not possibly respect, is his breaking the chessboard and jailing that, too.
Realism: 3/5 I can easily believe that the sheriff of Nottingham is the sort of person that continues playing long after he should have resigned and apart from that, there’s little to hold against this position.
Probable winner: White, in Caissa’s universe, but black in that of Mammon.
1. [Nor does Batman, for that matter.] ↩
2. [Chapeau for this diagram editor.] ↩
3. [Particularly if his opponent is the one responsible for the punctuation in this volume’s title.] ↩