Top Cow Productions 2020
Written by Stephanie Phillips
Illustrated by Craig Cermak
Coloured by Brittany Pezzillo
Lettered by Troy Peteri
High adventure on the high seas in the waning days of piracy, when men were men, and the best pirates were...women? Watch as they bring to life the tale of Anne Bonny and Mary Read as they hoist the skull and crossbones, draw cutlasses, and seek a treasure that will make them legends. In an era when sailing with women was thought to be bad luck, Anne and Mary might just be the only people capable of saving the pirate way of life.
What an entertaining debut issue this is! I am always ready for a good pirate adventure and now that the craze caused by that film franchise is done it’s time to get down to some new nitty gritty characters, scenarios and daring do and don’ts on the high seas. This issue does some wonderful things in setting up how we are going to see the story progress. From how the crew of Calico Jack Rackham feel about Anne to setting up the adversary du jour and giving us a little extra piece of the puzzle ensuring that the interest has been piqued properly.
In all seriousness this book is extremely well structured and how we see the layers of story building up already engages the readers’ mind and has them thinking up some scenarios of their own. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented beautifully. This is fun, easy to follow and kind of see the obvious routes and then almost miss the subtle ones and all in all what a fun time this is. The character development that we see here is rather marvellous. From Calico Jack, Anne, the Governor and everyone in between we really get a nice sense of who they are and what they believe. This is the early 1700’s so you know there will be some points of view issues which we see done pretty honestly and I like that. The pacing here is superb and as it takes us through the pages introducing us to the cast of characters and the world they inhabit it’s easy to see how everything works together to create the books ebb & flow.
I am a big fan of the work that Craig does and what we see here just reinforces that. The linework is fabulous and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to bring about the attention to detail is marvellously executed. There is something about the strong sense of comic book style art here that plays well with how we see the characters and their surroundings that really helps ignite the readers’ own imagination up, much like what happened to the British ship. Backgrounds are utilised throughout rather nicely and they help to bring us a nice depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show this great eye for storytelling. The colour work we see is gorgeous! How we see the various hues and tones within the colours utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is absolutely splendid work.
Oh what a marvellous breath of fresh air this is! Everything we see within these pages fits together better than a do it yourself Ikea kit. There is something wondrous about the idea of pirates, their booty and lawlessness that appeals to all of us in one form or another. This creative has captured that appeal and then some so will you be welcomed aboard or told to walk the plank?