Writer: Chuck Dixon
Artist: Steve Epting
Publisher: CrossGen
Let me just say right off the bat that this book looks fantastic. The artwork by Epting is detailed and historically accurate. You can see that hours of work have gone into each page, not just in the penciling and inking, but in the research and overall design. So it is with heavy heart that I have to say that this title is really not worth my time. And it is entirely the fault of the writing.
I love a good pirate story. Dirty, filthy, murdering, raping and pillaging pirates are great! In my opinion. Stories of pirate attacks and lawless hideaways are wonderful explorations of amoral and immoral character development. Usually. Okay, there haven’t really been many good pirate movies in the past twenty years, although I did enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean. I hear that there are a few good pirate novels out there, but I haven’t read them. So my expectations were high for this title. Maybe too high. Maybe I was just too excited and there was no way the title could live up to my expectations. Maybe, but I don’t really think so. There just seems to be very little invention going on here, and the writing falls back on clichés and just plain poorly constructed narration.
Quick, what’s wrong with this sentence: “Villainous craft crewed by traitors, deserters, thieves, freed slaves, and worse roam virtually untroubled ...” Okay, I gave it away by adding the bold type. This is an example of the questionable narration in this book, and this is on the inside cover! Before the story actually begins! Maybe this is just an attempt to be historically accurate in the voice of the introduction. Regardless, it set a tone that I really didn’t like.
Then there’s the fact that most of the narration is in the voice of the obnoxious and arrogant “Lady Sin” (which might win some awards for clichéd character names). For example, she writes that her boyfriend was “laid low by a cowardly blow”, when the illustration clearly shows his death as the result of his running headlong into a thrown axe, which hits him in the chest and kills him. This, to me, is not a cowardly blow. This is just an obnoxious narrator. Especially considering that she dispatches a pirate in a very similar technique. Is she cowardly too? Or is her pirate victim as brave as her boyfriend was? Hell, she used a gun, while the cowardly pirate earlier actually threw an axe. This may be a nitpicky kind of detail to fixate on, but it bugged me. Dixon seems to be trying to borrow the creative formula that worked so well CrossGen’s Sojourn, only without the likeable personalities and sense of urgency that really make that story work.
I also didn’t really care much for the way in which Lady Sin takes over the ship. Maybe this sort of thing could happen – like I said, this is very well researched – but it really didn’t play out well. The shift in tone as the pirates switch their allegiances to her is very sudden and although next month promises “Mutiny!” I just don’t care enough about these annoying, arrogant characters to look forward to it. Maybe some of those horrible freed slaves will show up next time, although what could be worse?
That was sarcasm, by the way. Anyway, this was remarkably disappointing and I won’t be picking up any more. None of the characters were very interesting and the situation was kind of silly. The art is nice, though, so if you keep getting this, I won’t hold it against you.
What did you think of this book?
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