Arrr! The captain of me galleon has gifted me with yet another comic book. That’s two comics in one month, but, if ye average me comic reading over the past decade, I read about one comic every five years.
Arrrr!
The comic is called El Cazador, issue 1, October 2003 (wait, it ain’t October yet unless I overslept this morning). It is published by CrossGen; apparently there are other comic book companies than D.C. and Marvel. Even an old sailor like me can learn a thing or two. The comic is, appropriately, all about piracy. So, is this comic so grand a tale that I should immediately find a desert isle to bury it on along with me gold, or should I use it’s pages to ship-train the bilge rats? Well, I’ll tell ye.

Much unlike the comic of that scourge of the seas, Aquaman, which had great artwork on the cover but much more rudimentary drawings inside, the cover is, in my murderous opinion, the worst of the drawings (and the jpeg above doesn’t even do that justice; arrr!). It looks like they spent days drawing and painting each panel of this comic (see some samples here).
As for the writing, the prose remains quit true to the time period (far as I know), and the action depicts much piratey murderousness and the sounds of hell’s bells. It starts with an attack on a Spanish galleon, some pirates killing the crew while a mysterious pirate with a wooden hand watches over (and I think he’s missing an eye, but he’s always in the shadows).
When the stolen vessel sets sail, it’s found a saucy lass still remains aboard, and she kills the captain and takes over the ship, getting the crew to follow her in her pursuit of revenge with promise of great rewards. They call her “Lady Sin”, as her actual Spanish name is too much for a bunch of scurvy ridden bilge rats handle. She rechristens the ship “El Cazador” and sets sail to kill the dreaded Blackjack.
The comic ends with descriptions of some of the pirates and showing how written concept becomes painted panel (just like a DVD feature… but in a comic! Arrr!).
I have to say, it looks to be an interesting story of murderousness and revenge with much attention to the period. If the rest of the comics are this well drawn, I might follow the sirens call into a comic book shop (something I haven’t done since I was a wee lad). Then again, I still think that might make me a dork.
Arrr!