Ahoy, me hearties! Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, a goofy and entirely fictional holiday popularized in the early 2000s thanks to columnist Dave Barry. When most people think of pirates, they think of the 18th century pirates who pillaged and raided throughout the Caribbean, frustrating British and Spanish navies. Stories featuring fictional pirates like Captain Hook, Long John Silver (and more recently Jack Sparrow) captured the public’s imagination, leading to a fascination with pirate culture that endures to the modern day.
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Comics have had its own share of pirate stories, ranging from early adventure comics to tales set in the Marvel and DC superhero universes. To celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day, here’s five of our favorite comics featuring swashbuckling heroes, epic sea battles and rum (lots and lots of rum):
The Starjammers
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With a team that included a cyborg, a sultry cat woman and a giant reptile, the Starjammers aren’t your typical pirates. Founded by a group of ex-prisoners, the Starjammers were space pirates who fought against the tyrannical Shi’ar Empire. The Starjammers’ leader was Christopher Summers, father of the X-Men Cyclops and Havok, who had a personal grudge against the Shi’ar Emperor D’Ken. While flying home with his family, the Shi’ar abducted Christopher and his wife in mid-flight. D’Ken forced Christopher’s wife to become his consort and later murdered her after Christopher tried to escape. After meeting the Starjammers, Christopher took up the name Corsair and the persona and outfit of a dashing swashbuckler.
The X-Men first came into contact with the Starjammers while helping the exiled Shi’ar princess Lilandra retake her empire. After he learned that his two children were still alive, Corsair assisted Lilandra and the X-Men overthrow D’Ken and saved the universe in the process. The Starjammers became a fixture of Marvel space comics, frequently assisting teams like the Avengers, the X-Men and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Several Marvel heroes even joined the Starjammers temporarily, including Carol Danvers (then known as Binary), Havok, Polaris and most recently a teenaged, time-displaced Cyclops.
Fantastic Four #5
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In one of their earliest adventures, the Thing became the pirate Blackbeard and almost abandoned his superhero career to become an 18th century pirate. In his first appearance in a Marvel comic book, Doctor Doom coerced the Fantastic Four into traveling back through time to retrieve Blackbeard’s treasure, which contained several mystical gems. Meeting up with a pirate crew, Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch discovered that the Thing (who had disguised himself with a thick fake beard) was actually the legendary Blackbeard after he took command of the pirates and led them to victory over a rival ship. The Thing and his new pirate crew subdued his two friends and would have abandoned them if not for a timely storm that wrecked their ship and enabled Reed to take Johnny and Ben back to the present.
Tales of the Black Freighter
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A “comic within a comic”, Tales of the Black Freighter was a fictional comic that appeared in Watchmen as a narrative device to explore various themes and subtext in the books. In the world of Watchmen, adventure comics like Tales of the Black Freighter replaced superheroes as the most popular genre of comics, in part due to the “real life” rise of superheroes in the 1940s. The Black Freighter mentioned in the title was a phantom pirate ship who housed the souls of the damned, who haunted various sailors in one and two chapter stories. According to a fictional history found in the back of one of Watchmen‘s chapters, Max Shea (a fictional writer made up by Moore) wrote Tales of the Black Freighter while Joe Orlando (a real life comic artist) and Walt Feinberg (a made up comic artist) provided art for the series. Orlando contributed a single page of artwork for Tales of the Black Freighter used in one of the supplemental chapters, which is the only piece of artwork in Watchmen not drawn by Dave Gibbons.
Terry and the Pirates
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A popular and acclaimed newspaper strip, Terry and the Pirates was an adventure comic that starred a young American boy and his burly mentor fight Chinese pirates led by the sultry Dragon Lady. While the comic strip initially focused on modern day pirate adventures, the comic shifted in tone after World War II broke out, with many of the strip’s characters joining the military to fight against the Axis powers. Terry and the Pirates creator Milton Caniff won the National Cartoonists Society’s first ever “Cartoonist of the Year Award” for his work on the strip and Caniff’s work was a major influence on younger comic artists like Jack Kirby, Bob Kane and John Romita Sr. Although Caniff left the comic in 1946, Terry and the Pirates appeared in newspapers until the 1970s written and drawn by various ghost writers. Terry and the Pirates also inspired the popular Hanna Barbara cartoon Jonny Quest.
One Piece
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One Piece is about the young pirate Luffy D. Monkey and his motley band of Straw Hat Pirates. Luffy’s dream is to be the King of the Pirates, a goal he can only accomplish by sailing the infamous Grand Line and locating the treasure of Gol D. Rogers, the first King of the Pirates. Thanks to consuming a special kind fruit, Luffy can stretch his body like rubber, making him a formidable fighter. Throughout the series, Luffy gains an eclectic crew of pirates, each with invaluable abilities and a strong sense of loyalty and friendship to Luffy and the other Straw Hat Pirates. Praised for its dynamic and unique art style, One Piece is the bestselling manga series of all time, with 78 volumes currently in print and a story that’s still ongoing in the Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump anthology.
Honorable Mention: Nightcrawler
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Although he’s not a technically a pirate, the popular X-Men Nightcrawler modelled his personality and attitude after the swashbuckling heroes of classic Errol Flynn pirate movies. Nightcrawler picked up fencing as a hobby because of his love of pirate movies and quickly mastered the skill thanks to his natural agility and his prehensile tail. While he has a demonic appearance, Nightcrawler was always one of the more charming and gallant X-Men, always ready to cross swords with a supervillain with a smile or help a damsel in distress. Because of his playful demeanor, Nightcrawler is one of the more popular X-Men and it wouldn’t feel right to write a column about pirates in comics without at least mentioning him.
