Let me give you the high points of what has happened so far in The Wannabe Pirates. Captain Errol Flemm wants to be a pirate. He wants the crew to sing four part harmony, rescue maidens and sail around looking for treasure, like he thinks all good pirates should do. He has a semi-loyal sidekick named Mr. Jeremiah Sneeze. I won’t spoil it here, but they have an amusing discussion about how far his loyalty should go and what he should be willing to do. In the end, Mr. Sneeze compromises.

After that is settled, they run into a little trouble trying to acquire a ship and a crew. Even though there are many applicants, they end up with a mute pig-latineer named Poco Boco who serves as crew. You would think that they would be able to ‘pirate’ starting immediately. But it’s not that simple.

It appears there are certain requirements to being a pirate that maybe you aren’t aware of. Watch out for the parrots, that’s all I’m saying. The parrots are so cool. They are also a very creative twist on the pirate genre.

The art has a regular, consistent quality with good linework and some shadows. The backgrounds are usually textured and the color has a good vibrancy to it. The only downside is that it looks (to me) like it is done as a cut and paste with vector images of the characters.

I want to stress that the character designs are well done and there is some repetition of poses, but the mix seems pretty good. Some comics purposely use this cookie-cutter sort of technique very effectively, so it’s not necessarily a bad approach. For this comic, the pasted character images leaves them with little in the way of implied motion. I would say that’s an important piece of the swashbuckling feel. For me, that left Wannabe Pirates a little lacking.

Not too much, though. I have only one other small quibble with Mr. Sneeze’s intermittent pirate lingo and his little catchphrase “Ya think.” It was funny as a one-off but it was less so the next time. I’m not sure why I wanted the characters to speak all-piratey all the time.

Then I simply remind myself that Wannabe Pirates is a humorous pirate comic. It’s light reading and the storytelling is fairly well paced. It’s not a bad pirate comic, actually. It wouldn’t be good for my health, but I’d join this crew. Rating:

Also: There are plans for doing the Wannabe Pirates as a 3-D cartoon. The title bar has the 3-D version of Captain Flemm and there is a 3-D version of the ship. And here is a color shot of Poco In Peril. The animated adventures are supposed to be released starting in September. I’m interested to see how that works out.

The Wannabe Pirates
http://thewannabepirates.com
by Largent & McCrary
review by Delos Woodruff
(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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