Publisher: Accent UK (www.accentukpress.co.uk) Writer/Artist: Various
Any reviewer when faced with something called "Pirates" will immediately be very strongly tempted to lace his writing with a string of pirate related cliches. You just cant help it - the mere mention of the name brings out a bad case of the "aarrr me 'earties".
So I propose I just get them all out of the way now then we can get on with the article. So here we go:
Shiver me timbers it be a swash-buckling anthology of the finest pirate yarns ever to scourge the seven seas or I be the scurvy son of a lapdog to the slip of a girl. With a yo ho ho, a bottle of rum and pieces of eight.
...or something
Anyway, with that over I feel much better.
Pirates is essentially an anthology of pirate related short graphic tales. In doing this it brings together an impressive array of very talented independent comic creators, including David Hitchcock and Garen Ewing.
Despite my general reservations about anthologies, I had very high hopes for this one. Accent UK are quickly and rightly becoming associated with anthology comics that are a cut above the norm and, fortunately, pirates does not disappoint.
The first thing that struck me about pirates was the presentation. It is produced in US comic format with a glossy cover that has the heavy black, with a splash of red, imagery, which makes it instantly recognizable as an Accent UK anthology. It’s a very striking image of a skull and crossbones and stands out a mile. Pirates looks good and oozes professionalism before even you pick it up, which is presumably the intention of the presentation on the whole.
On the inside the presentation, is still very good and the comics are well arranged, although one story (Black Bart) does justify once and for all, why you should be very careful about letting artists loose with a disk of 1000 medieval style fonts and a copy of Microsoft Word. The font used there is painfully clichéd, very hard to read and frankly does not really work (The story itself is pretty good, if short).
Next, the artwork. For once in an indie anthology the artwork is generally of very high standard, with only a couple of exceptions. Special mention should be meted out to the frankly fantastic artwork of David Hitchcock, who is one of the finest and most interesting artists working in comics (indie or mainstream) today. His art style is indisputably his own, yet highly polished and of a standard that many others in the indie field can only dream of. I also particularly liked the manga-esque artwork of Jeff Borneman, the heavy black and white contrasts and precision of the art of Garen Ewing and the computer enhanced, but close to traditional comic stylism of bjr.
I honestly have never seen an anthology where the artwork is so consistently high in standards and it’s a breath of fresh air, to be honest.
All the brilliant artwork in the world, would not save this anthology if the stories are of a lower quality, however, in Pirates this certainly is not the case. All the stories are engaging and entertaining. Admittedly, some are a little contrived and clichéd, however, it is to be expected with a genre anthology such as this and besides, they are made up for by the many stories that take a genuinely fresh approach to a pretty stale genre and create something that is worth really worth reading.
My one criticism here, is that the stories feel a little unsatisfying, because they are mostly so short. It looks as if only a few pages have been allocated per creative team, when it might have been better to have longer stories, even if you needed to have a few less of them. A few pages is not really enough to convey anything particularly meaty or nourishing to the reader in plot terms, and you are kind of left disappointed that some of the great talents contained within this book don’t have more space to develop their ideas.
Even so, Pirates comes highly recommended for its genuine desire to innovate, produce quality content and showcase the works of some very talented independent creators.
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