Broken Frontier

Oni Press is pleased to announce the debut of POLLY AND THE PIRATES, a new six issue comic by Eisner-nominated creator Ted Naifeh. In this all new series Naifeh returns to familiar ground, creating the adventures of a young girl who finds herself in surprising surroundings.

Polly has grown up in a prim and proper boarding school, far from any kind of adventure, and she likes it that way. But when she discovers that she’s actually related to the Pirate Queen, she’s got to find her inner-adventurer. Hijinks and high adventure await in the world of the pirates, can Polly rise to the occasion?

Fans of Naifeh’s COURTNEY CRUMRIN will find a different, but equally lovable kind of hero in Polly. Naifeh explained, “One thing that led to the creation of Polly was the desire to take a character in the opposite direction of Courtney Crumrin. Unlike the alienated outsider with a love of trouble, Polly considers herself a good girl. She's a reluctant adventurer, preferring the comfort and security of her boarding school with its three square meals and cozy bed. Her personality lies somewhere in between Shirley Temple and Bilbo Baggins. And like Bilbo, there's enormous potential inside her, just waiting for an adventure to draw it out.”

Not only will Polly have to come to terms with her pirate heritage, she’ll also face a bigger challenge—boys. “Dealing as it does with an older girl, there are certain elements in this book which make it much more romantic than Courtney. These elements are called boys,” Naifeh added.  “There will be quite a bewildering number of good-looking young men in this story. Alas, none of them are interested in the prim, proper Polly. It's only when she takes on the persona of high seas pirate adventurer that they take notice.”

One thing that Polly does have in common with Courtney is a fully realized fantasy setting with its own internal logic and design. “Ted doesn’t just create characters,” editor James Lucas Jones commented, “He creates whole worlds. Like Wonderland, Narnia, or Middle Earth, these are places that readers will want to escape to.”

The setting for POLLY AND THE PIRATES is based close to home for Naifeh. “Polly's world is based loosely on San Francisco in the gold rush, when the city was just starting to bloom.  I do love my city, its history and its oddity, and as I walk the streets, I find myself constantly inspired. My neighborhood is packed with Victorian houses, and to me, they seem very nautical. So in Polly's fictional world, half the city is built on tall, Victorian style houseboats, including her boarding school, which rocks her to sleep at night. It's a place where houses look like boats and boats like houses, where the line between the comfort of home and adventure on the high seas is blurred.”

POLLY AND THE PIRATES #1 will feature 32 pages of black and white story and art, with a full color cover. With a cover price of $2.99 it will ship to comics books stores in September 2005. Future issues will ship on a semi-monthly basis.