Broken Frontier

BOOM! Studios provides readers with yet another in a growing line of impressive anthology collaborations.

For whatever reason, pirates entertained a cult following since long before Johnny Depp had even heard of Captain Jack Sparrow. Whether it is because pirates do as they please and answer to no one or their affliction toward solving things with swords and cannonballs or perhaps even an odd sense of loyalty among madness, pirates are now mainstream. Of course, judging by the six stories within this offering, what makes pirates so damn cool is their stories.

First off, though BOOM! Studios has given readers only the highest production values since they entered the industry over a year ago, the cover price for this particular book is a little on the high side. However, once you get past that (if you can get past that), there is some really entertaining reading to be had. From the morose life raft of the opener, Jerky--which is somewhat similar to parts of a little comic story called Watchmen--to the deceitful wenches of Wolf on the Wave to the modern day doldrums-turned-high-sea-adventure of Namesake, there is a pirate tale of every sort that will find a favoring audience.

Though it may be considered somewhat sappy with its forbidden romance playing in the background, my personal favorite of the bunch was Paper Rose, written by Michael Alan Nelson and wonderfully rendered by Chee with the colors of Pam Rambo. The contrasting violence with a sweepingly poetic final love letter from a doomed pirate to his lover makes for quite a complex if not ultimately moving story that isn’t often seen in pirate stories.

Certainly not every story is going to wow every reader. For instance, while it was far from bad, I found Joe Casey’s The Walk to be rather bland, perhaps because he didn’t call for his artist to provide anything more than six splash pages of a captain calmly walking his first mate to the plank for mutiny.

BOOM! Studios has yet to really let me down with any of their current books. This is the third anthology book from them that I have read and I must say that I’ve been thoroughly impressed with each. If you’re willing to plop down a little more money for a comic book than you normally would, I would highly recommend just about anything with the BOOM! logo on it.