This is a wonderfully-fun, charismatic pirate's tale that rises well above similar fare. At 200 pages, it's easy and fun to read, with attractive, cartoony art, but what sets it apart is the excellent, gripping plot and superb storytelling. Even though the author Schweizer is an American, overall this feels a lot more like a 'Euro' work, hence why I've decided to share it. (see the sidebar for more about that)
So to our tale-- we start off on a merchant ship with something of a tense, building Mutiny on the Bounty situation due to the captain skimping on rations and running the crew ragged. "Catfish," our young protagonist, tries to speak up for one of his ailing fellows, but is accused of mutiny by the captain in a moment of extreme paranoia. Just as Catfish is being strung up, a pirate ship is spotted on the horizon, which swiftly runs our ship down.
In the sequence below, our protagonist has an audacious plan to help his new (pirate) captain lure in an English pirate hunter, one who's also carrying a treasure-hold of taxes from the Jamaican colonies.
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Previously, a rather unwise act of mercy on Catfish's part during the merchant captain's execution made him a bitter enemy out of the cruel, dangerous first mate. For the rest of the book, the main plot theme is thus a running battle of wills between our man and the hulking brute. We'll take a closer look at him in the final sample.
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Above we see a sequence that for me hearkened back to the excellent Master & Commander (2003) film, which explored a variety of hardships such tall ships of the time encountered.
The book is certainly loose and simple in graphics, heavy on the line-work, yet balances that with relentlessly fresh energy and expressiveness.
I really can't say enough about the storytelling. There's no wasted panels, no extra story that doesn't help move the book forward, and no overexplaining. It's very much a 'show, don't tell' kind of work, in which everything works together beautifully. Indeed, I found it quite a nice example of Chekhov's gun.
Above we see a page from the big finale between Catfish and the bloodthirsty first mate!
The book was published by Oni Press (~2015), and is a color reworking of an earlier B&W version. There's evidently a series of these "Crogan" books, and if the others are as good as this one, I think readers everywhere are all in for quite some treats.
