Reading Comics #88 "Rogues Revenge"

Maybe Susan Soares can explain it better than me, but for some reason I ended up following her posts on Facebook a few years back on Sky Pirates of Valendor, a comic book written by her husband Everett Soares.  For me, Facebook is a random sea of adventures like that, a placer where an errant "like" will get you a steady stream of updates about things you may or may not end up caring about.  (Actually, Facebook is a lot like blogging.  And tweeting.  And email.  Let's just say it's a problem with all social media.)

I did not, however, start reading Sky Pirates, and kind of felt bad about that.  I don't tend to automatically read just anything I've found on the Internet, since there's so much material out there and even when I'm selective about things I've had a chance to select personally rather than stumble across, the reward isn't always there.  Sometimes there's real treasure to be found this way, which was how I ended up reading one of my favorite books of the new millennium's first decade, TM Wells' The Patron Saints (more of a punk literature experience than religious tract, in case the title misleads you), not to mention discovering Manny Trembley.

Long story short, this Facebook experience with Sky Pirates continued for a while and I did not read Sky Pirates, though I looked it up a few times just to see what I was missing.  A few weeks ago I was perusing the material at Muse Comics in Colorado Springs when I saw they had a selection of used books, older graphic novels at reduced prices.  And randomly, there was Sky Pirates of Valendor Volume 1.  The only thing more random than this is the fact that Moya Dawson, an old colleague from the defunct PaperbackReader.com, is quoted on the back cover, which may in a roundabout way explain how I ended up following Sky Pirates on Facebook (as good a theory as any at this point).

Sky Pirates Volume 1 was published by Free Lunch Comics in December 2009, so it's certainly been floating around for a while.  If you want to know an even more remarkable detail that I could not possibly have contrived, the second volume is apparently due to be published this month, so this is actually an odd kind of publicity.

Now, you probably want to know what the heck Sky Pirates is.  It's basically an indy comic that's in the vein of sci-fi TV shows like Farscape, Andromeda, and Firefly, about a group of rogues trying to scrape together a living by taking on the contracts that will keep their ship in business.  As the title implies, they are indeed pirates who fly a sky ship.  It's science fiction and fantasy and steampunk.  There are elves and ogres and big giant bears acting like Chewie, specifically first officer Bryan Springhammer, who faithfully supports Captain Tobin Manheim, while Tobin's ex-wife (though this point is not made clear in the actual stories) Gearz along with Shyni are the token babes.  (Actually, Brian Brinlee's art in this volume takes the comic book stereotype of strippers representing the basic framework of most characters pretty seriously, male and female.  The art is not the main selling point.  It's merely serviceable.)

Probably since Star Wars there have been plenty of stories like this.  In fact, there's every indication that Sky Pirates was also inspired by its obvious immediate pop culture predecessor, the Pirates of the Caribbean films.  While I still have you thinking about screen parallels, I might as well say that Sky Pirates could easily be a TV show itself, and with its odd mix of genres would still be unique.

I've got to say that I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy Volume 1.  Soares is pretty good at establishing his characters, or at least the dynamics between them, and thus world-building.  And as Keith R.A. DeCandido's introduction makes clear, it also has the appeal of pirates.  I love pirates.  Most people love pirates.  And there are still so very few good pirate comic books.  Plus Bryan Springhammer is a big giant bear, or as DeCandido describes him a teddy bear.  All those TV shows I talked about had their (more or less) human versions of Chewie.  At least Sky Pirates isn't so bashful about stealing that element of Star Wars more directly.

I can only recommend you at least be open to stumbling across Sky Pirates of Valendor the way I did. You'll thank your good fortune.  It'll be the rogues revenge all over again.