Review: Isaac the Pirate, Volume One

Isaac the Pirate: 1. To Exotic Lands
By Christophe Blain, translated by Joe Johnson ($14.95; NBM/Comics Lit, 2003)

In a perfect Direct Market, savvy comics retailers would have taken advantage of the Pirates of the Carribbean sequel opening this holiday weekend to carve out a chunk of Spider-Man 3’s endcap display in favor of some pirate-flavored offerings, and featured prominently in that mix would have been Christophe Blain’s exemplary Isaac the Pirate: 1. To Exotic Lands. NBM’s english translation of Blain’s engaging tale of a young Frenchman, Isaac Soper, who stumbles into a life of piracy while pursuing his dreams of becoming a famous painter, is several steps above the improbable adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow on the literary ladder, but still manages to capture the energy and unpredictability of a life at sea.

Isaac is a prideful dreamer, the proverbial starving artist, as passionate about his painting as he is about the love of his life, Alice, whose long-suffering support he pushes to the limit when he secretly purchases an expensive preparatory study by a deceased master painter, from which he plans to paint his own naval series that will bring him fame and fortune. “They’ll create a sensation, I’ll earn three or four times as much! I want to paint sailors, boats. We’ll live in a wealthy port city, full of merchants, I’ll become an official painter.” Unmoved, Alice insists he copy the study and resell it, which sets off a series of events that finds Isaac in the employ of the egomaniacal pirate Captain, John “the Pillager”, headed for the South Pole in search of an undiscovered New World, of which he is charged with documenting its existence. This New World, will of course, bear John’s name.

Joe Johnson’s translation of Blain’s prose is seamless, exhibiting a depth of storytelling that, while the norm for European comics, is still an exhilarating breath of fresh air in Western comics. Blain does an excellent job of pacing his character-driven story, deftly switching between Isaac’s many adventures at sea and Alice’s efforts to sustain a life for them in Paris, while avoiding easy stereotypes by offering up a three-dimensional character in the enigmatic pirate Captain, John, whose ambitious desires and conflicting emotions make him as compelling character as the two leads. The trio’s evolving relationships, with each other and those around them, develop nicely, organically, as they variously struggle with issues of loyalty and temptation, pragmatism and destiny.

As impressive as Isaac’s story and character development is, it is Blain’s artwork that lifts the whole to a higher level. His characters are distinctive thanks to cartoonish exaggerations like Isaac’s sharply pointed nose that becomes even more distinctive once it is broken in a fight, a milepost on his journey from Isaac the Painter to Isaac the Pirate. A variety of settings demonstrate Blain’s range as the streets of Paris, the claustrophobic confines of a pirate ship, and the frigid Antarctic all come to vivid life on the page, and he’s equally adept at depicting a genteel garden setting on a lush [Caribbean?] island as he is violent hand-to-hand combat.

Isaac the Pirate perfectly embodies NBM’s ComicsLit mission of offering “the most intelligent comics the world has to offer,” and fans of pirate tales, action adventure and romance, as well as those of straight-out excellent storytelling married to distinctive artwork, will be well-served by it. Also, anyone who’s been hooked by First Second’s many excellent translations of European comics should definitely check out Isaac out.