Broken Frontier

Out now from Great Big Comics is the first issue of The Voyages of SheBuccaneer - pirate bad girl adventure from the fertile minds of Heidi and Bill Hughes! Artist and co-creator Bill Hughes gave Broken Frontier this exclusive creator's commentary below on #1 and talked about Great Big Comics' future publishing plans...

The solicitation for the debut issue reads:

Her beauty is matched only by the savagery of her cutlass. The SheBuccaneer, along with the crew of the pirate ship Queen's Vengeance, searches the sea for the seven gems that will open the ancient gates of Eden and free her beloved Calico Jack Rackham from the devil's grasp. On her voyages she will battle dragons, cannibalistic giants, evil genies, lusty sultans and all the mythic beasts of the deep dark sea.

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We opened The Voyages of SheBuccaneer with a turning point in her young life... the hanging of her mentor and would-be lover: Calico Jack Rackham. She will be driven to the ends of the Earth by this tragic event. Finally, her consumption by this loss will reveal more about her human weaknesses and deeply tender heart than it will about her obsessive, dangerous stature as the Bad-Ass Babe of the deep blue sea.

All that said, The Voyages of SheBuccaneer is more about myth-telling, swarthy pirate adventures and high seas hijinks than it is about inward looking emotional evisceration. You're more likely to get a grin from this book than you are a cold sweat remembering why you didn't live up to your mother's expectations. In fact, our hope is that you'll gouge out yer eye, saw off your leg and hop the first merchant ship to troubled waters!

One of our first rules at Great Big Comics is: "If you do the cover, you do the guts!" I take more time on the covers, but you'll always know I'm committed to each and every page.

Cover

This all got started because Heidi and I were making movies and I hadn't drawn anything in over five years. One day I tried to draw something and couldn't! It was like finding out you had your arms cut off; only I still had a chance to do something about it! That's when we decided to jump off the deep end, open Great Big Comics and do bi-monthly comic books (all by ourselves).

In a lot of ways, comics are more satisfying than making movies. I know one thing, we get our stories out faster!

So, page one was the first page I did. You may see improvements as the series progresses, but I was happy with how it turned out. I wanted the feel to be dark, but not too dark and the colors to remain muted.

Page 1

There's a "good enough" mantra that I have to follow in order to get a book out every two months. You'll find I opt for fun over finesse more often than not. As a result, I've adopted an animated, economical drawing style. This allows me to keep all the story and character details Heidi wants as well the higher page counts we hope audiences will enjoy.

The Voyages of SheBuccaneer Pages 1 and 7

Page 7

When illustrating a book, I usually do it with music in mind. In a film, music is the emotional spine of a scene and its kind of like that in comics too. This page was very satisfying to me because I felt like the calm quiet mood I intended comes across nicely in the colors and light source..Ugh, I hope that doesn't sound weird. I swear I'm not a freak!

So anyway, I also liked this page because it focuses on the supporting cast. We always try to not focus solely on the title character. You pretty much know what these guys are up to. They're the chorus and the buffoons. Kind of typical, but some really fun stuff goes down for them in future issues.

The Voyages of SheBuccaneer Pages 10 and 11 (unused)

Pages 10 & 11 (unused)

This isn't my favorite page. I like it, but everyone else seems to like it more. It is important because, the next page was to show the SheBuccaneer taking Alazar out into the desert to make a man of him, so to speak. That was a real easy way for her to get him to do what she wanted. Upon review, we thought the SheBuccaneer would be craftier than that. So she plays on his ego rather than his libido. Besides, Sin City we aint! Here's the unpublished page anyway, just for fun.

Page 22

Heidi never indicates full-page art or spreads in her scripts, but I try and throw them in when I can (even though you won't see a spread till Book Three). She does write with a page count that allows an extra page now and again. The tomb reveal page was important to us because we had envisioned the scene in our original Tombs of Eden screenplay.

I also wrestled with this page a bit. Again, we generally have all-ages stories to tell, but I just couldn't see putting Eve in a bikini... or having her be less impressive than she is. It seemed like too much of a cop-out. So, kill me now if you can’t look at boobs... or maybe just don't get an issue of SheBuccaneer to begin with... actually scratch that last thought. Get an issue and suffer, that'd be best.

Page 29

I liked the amount of detail I was able to get into the Queen's Vengeance here. As it turns out, I guess I know more about old ships than I thought. I really liked the ship used in an old Robert Shaw film called Swashbuckler. That was a replica of the Golden Hind. In my research the Golden Hind is often referred to as the quintessential pirate ship. It’s smaller and faster than many of the more contemporary Man of War ships, but still beefier than a typical Rum-Runner's sloop of the time.

The Voyages of SheBuccaneer Pages 29 and 30

Page 30

And for the final page of Book One we wanted to give you a glimpse of our narrator Mr. Featherbone. He starts out a grey, thin, joy-less man. By the time he recounts his pirate adventures, he is a fat, happy, rosy-cheeked teller of tall tales. Again, another one of my full-page endeavors that Heidi describes as a collage.

So that's about it for Book One. You'll notice that the first three books will be self-contained stories. After these first three SheBuccaneer books, we will begin our three issue Matt Mercury and His Rocket Rangers series. Those will be all out mayhem. One really cool thing about them is the fact that we will show live-action "bridge" episodes on the web between books. You can see the trailer now on www.mattmercury.com.

When we come back, SheBuccaneer Books Four through Six will start our three- issue story arcs with cliffhangers and all that jazz! Book Four will begin with a titanic sea battle between the Vengeance and three Chinese battleships. By page two the Vengeance is in flames and the SheBuccaneer is in shackles... again. Oh, what fun!

For Book Seven, we're going to go back and give you a one-shot origin story for the SheBuccaneer. It'll be centered around a very famous, real-life, weeklong party on a beach with the crew of Jack Rackham's newcommand and the infamous pirate Black Beard. Oh yes, you will find out why she wears the twins!

As we spin our yarns, we're going to do our damnedest to keep the pirate lore accurate (dates, places, what not) while conjuring up the craziest monsters and most colorful characters we can. Just keep telling yourselves, "It could happen!" If you don't want to worry about all that, just keep your eyes on the pretty girl.

The Voyages of SheBuccaneer #1 is out now from Great Big Comics priced $3.99.