Broken Frontier

Alice in Wonderland meets El Cazador when a prim and proper young girl comes face-to-face with her pirate heritage.

Young Polly comes from a fine, upstanding family and attends a fine, upstanding boarding school. Or so she thinks. She learns the truth when she falls asleep one night, awakes on the deck of a ship, and discovers that her mother wasn’t so fine and upstanding at all. In fact, she was Meg Malloy, Pirate Queen of the High Seas. Polly’s mother is gone, believed to have died in childbirth, and without a captain, Scrimshaw, the ship’s quartermaster, has concocted a plan to install Polly the ship’s captain. He also knows of buried treasure stolen from The Pirate King, but unfortunately has lost the map that would lead to riches beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. The truth proves to be too much for Polly. She jumps overboard and escapes, but falls into the hands of an even more conniving pirate, Captain Claudio, Pirate Prince and one of the Pirate King’s many bastard children. He wants the treasure as well, and blackmails Polly into helping him find it. But in caving in to Claudio, Polly betrays everything she admired about her mother. Can she redeem herself and live up to her mother’s legacy? And just who is the writer of the pirate tales that enthralled her even before she learned of her true heritage?

Though ever in the mood for a good pirate story, I began Polly & the Pirates #1 thinking "Not my sort of comic at all." However, I finished issue #3 thinking "What a delightful comic." Ted Naifeh, best known for his series Courtney Crumrin, has crafted a fun and entertaining tale that probably appeals to the young at heart more than it does to the young, but that’s a strength rather than a weakness. It’s truly an all-ages comic, a great read as much for its tale of how a young girl learns how to grow up as for its intrigue and swashbuckling adventure.

It’s a marvelous world that Naifeh sets up, one in which a little girl can fall asleep in a boarding school, wake up in a world of pirates and lost treasure, and then return before anyone notices that she’s gone. But though much more fantastic than ours, Polly’s world has just as much greed and duplicity, and Naifeh balances the real and the fantastic well. I also liked how he keeps the story moving briskly, with plot developments growing out of characterization rather than randomly—the Pirate Prince taking advantage of Polly’s concern for her reputation when he blackmails her, for instance. And as far as character, Polly herself is the best thing about Polly & the Pirates. To snatch a line from the Oni Press website, think "Shirley Temple Bilbo Baggins." She wants to be a good girl in the eyes of society, and is certainly more a good girl than her friend Anastasia. But though the words of her teacher and headmistress Miss Lovejoy are always in her ear, she’s a young girl with much greater potential. Still, she may have harder time living up to society’s expectations than becoming a pirate.

Naifeh’s art is simple and direct, another strength given the nature and tone of Polly & the Pirates. Though not cartoonish at all, he has a lightness of touch that accentuates the comic and fantastic elements of the story but doesn’t lose the sense of danger when he needs to convey it. It’s an admirable balancing act. With her oversized head and eyes, Polly is cute without being cutesy. Likewise, the pirates look characteristically so, but not so menacing that one couldn’t picture them in a children’s book. But most appealing in the artwork is the world Naifeh builds. It’s a place that seems thoroughly strange and whimsical with its own rules and logic, but also grounded in what we would recognize as reality. The huge Victorian townhouses set on boats are a very nice touch that displays the level of imagination and creativity that Naifeh brings to his story.

Comics need more characters like Polly and more creators like Ted Naifeh. That said, the best thing I can say about Polly & the Pirates is that it’s a shame that it’s only going to run six issues.