Day Eighty-Three: Yo Ho Ho and a Carton of Ribena
What's the new thing? I haven't been keeping up. Last year, pirates were the new zombies, and the year before that, zombies were the new ninjas. What are the new pirates? Is it cowboys? Dinosaurs? Aliens? Robots? Vikings? I have no idea. Of course, if it's still pirates, then that's fine too. I enjoy a bit of rum-swigging, set-your-beard-on-fire action as much as the next person. Those Depp/Knightley/Bloom movies are pretty darn good too, as is any book which promises that the pirates featured within may be having adventures with scientists, whaling or communists.
Pirate comics are more thin on the ground - pirates don't seem to have pervaded the consciousness of the comics discussion to the extent that zombies did a couple of years ago. In fact, I can only think of two American pirate comics off the top of my head (discounting the fictional Tales of the Black Freighter featured in Watchmen). The first is El Cazador, part of CrossGen's last hurrah. Not much to that one, I'm afraid - it only ran for a clutch of issues before the big Monty Python foot of bankruptcy came down on the company. The other more than makes up for that, though, being the excellent all-ages romp Polly and the Pirates.
The eponymous Polly is a young girl living at a prestigious boarding school in the Renaissance city of St Helvetia. She finds that the school days pass more quickly when she's reading about pirates, most particularly the famous and feared female captain Meg Malloy, the Pirate Queen. Polly has no female role model, her mother having passed away when Polly was born, and so it comes as something of a shock to her to find out that not only was her mother much more interesting than she had been led to believe, but that she was actually Meg Malloy herself. Now Meg's old crew are on the lookout for the Pirate Queen's treasure, and their ship needs a captain. The way they see it, who better to inherit the captaincy of Meg Malloy's ship than Meg Malloy's daughter?
Writer/artist Ted Naifeh is most well known for his series of stories featuring young Courtney Crumrin, a girl who discovers that her Uncle Aloysius is a powerful magician when she is sent to stay with him and let her parents go off gallivanting. Polly and the Pirates features a similar situation, in that the main character is a young girl who finds that her humdrum life is turned upside-down by revelations about her family. There are a good few differences, though - in Polly and the Pirates, Polly's mum is long dead, and Polly has to make her own way as a pirate captain. Courtney, on the other hand, has her Uncle Aloysius to guide her. Courtney also has more a mean and sarcastic streak than the wide-eyed and bold Polly. Beyond that, the characters do share many traits, including a deep bravery which leads them to take control of their lives from the disinterested authority figures who ostensibly should be directing them.
Naifeh's black and white artwork, with its influences being drawn equally from Edward Gorey and manga, perfectly conveys the classic storybook tone of the plot. All of the characters are exaggerated in one way or another (the pirates being a particularly weird set of grotesques), and it's easy to wonder what a movie of Polly and the Pirates would be like if realised by the Henson corporation. It's very much up their street - there are wild escapades, there's comedy, there are heroes you can cheer for and baddies you love to hate. The whole thing's built on a solid base of goodheartedness, fun and charm, and the collected edition would make the perfect present for any kid who's fond of ripping adventure stories. Here's hoping pirates are the new pirates this year - that way we might even get a sequel.
