“Avatar: The Last Airbender” takes a journey back to the era of the original television show in the one-shot ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver,’ making a comic that is unlike any “Avatar” comic that has come before it, and yet something that captures a specific spark from the show.
Created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino
Written by Faith Erin Hicks
Illustrated by Peter Wartman
Colored by Adele Matera
Lettered by Richard Starkings and Jimmy BetancourtWhen Team Avatar is suddenly ambushed by the Fire Nation, Katara gets separated from the group. Unable to rendezvous with Aang, Toph, and Sokka, Katara must avoid capture by aligning herself with some unlikely allies! The normally sweet and sensitive Katara will need to explore her tougher side if she’s going to reunite with the rest of Team Avatar. . .
Written by Faith Erin Hicks (The Adventures of Superhero Girl, The Nameless City) and drawn by Peter Wartman (Stonebreaker), with colors by Adele Matera and letters by Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt, in collaboration with Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series writer Tim Hedrick!
Mark Tweedale: For the last eight years now, the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” comics have been coming out as a series of graphic novel trilogies, which has been great at capturing the epic scope of the original television show. But that format also felt a little restrictive too, which has on occasion led me and Paul to ponder what other stories it could tell with other formats, most notably the standalone graphic novel.
Well, now we don’t need to wonder anymore, as that’s exactly what ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ is, and it uses the format to explore the goofier side of this world. ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ could sit happily alongside episodes of the show like “The Chase” and “Bitter Work.” In fact, this story takes place in the middle of Avatar: The Last Airbender—Book Two: Earth, literally the day after the events of “Bitter Work.” Remember when Sokka spent a day in a hole in the group with a saber-tooth moose lion cub as company? Yeah, that was yesterday.
Book Two: Earth
Chapter Nine: Bitter Work
There’s a precedent for this sort of thing. “Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Lost Adventures” collects a bunch of short stories set throughout the run of the original television series, but at best these were missing moments. They were short snippets that showed us more of something very specific, like the fate of Wang Fire (a true Fire Nation soldier, may his memory live on). However, ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ goes further, not just filling in a moment, but something akin to a missing episode.
Paul Lai: We welcomed this departure from the trilogies, not because that format didn’t work, but because we saw potential in varying the storytelling pace. I read ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ both to appreciate the story’s own merits AND as a chance to test out our guess that some different-length “Avatar” tales might make for satisfying variety.
This 80-page dose of our Team Avatar heroes is also the first comics to come after the ‘Avatar-aissance,’ the revived explosion of interest in the show this past summer with its availability on Netflix amid pandemic quarantining and lockdowns. These Dark Horse follow-up comics have also gotten a burst of renewed interest and readerships, so there’s a larger audience for a story like this that can stand on its own, but is even richer sitting within the ongoing storyworld of the show and the comics.
Mark: Now really is the perfect time for a story like this. New fans from Netflix can jump right in without having to dive into the enormous back catalogue of the comics, many of which aren’t readily at the moment due to the pandemic causing printing delays. This story has virtually no barrier for entry.
However, due to ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ having to slot into the main series, there’s a bit of one-way continuity going on here. The story can reference events of other episodes, but it’s not like when you watch the television show you ever got a feeling like there should’ve been something between “Bitter Work” and “The Library.” Ultimately, it means the events of the story have to be inconsequential, and character development is limited. This could have been a negative, but writer Faith Erin Hicks uses this to lean into storytelling traits you’d find in episodes of the television show that served a similar function, and to give us some extremely authentic goofy Avatar fun.
Continued belowAnd it does this so well. ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ 100% feels like an episode of the show. I didn’t question it for a second. The only thing it was kind of missing was a Momo gag.
Paul: You and I have been heaping praise on these adaptations for years now, but I’m genuinely thrilled to talk about ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ because I completely agree: it works. The 80-page one-shot format completely works. The Hicks and Wartman team, coming off their debut trilogy last time, keeps getting better and sharper. The story, though it has that risk of feeling inconsequential because it sits in past continuity, totally shines.
And yes, no Momo gag, but some pretty good Appa moments, which to me are of equal value.
I’m happy to unpack where and why I think so many elements work so well, from the pacing to Wartman’s art, from the characterizations of our old friends Katara and Aang and all to the new pockets of the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation introduced.
And it’s this aspect of Katara that I think is showcased so wonderfully in ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver.’ It explores her vulnerabilities and strengths in equal measure, especially since this is still set within the early days of her trying to get used to Toph. She’s got something to prove here, and so what we get is a story about Katara where she’s not acting like Katara very often, and yet paradoxically that’s why Katara feels so authentic. The motivations are so strong and clear, there’s zero effort in connecting the character from the show to the character on the page.
Paul: I love Katara as a character and I also felt warm to this characterization. To me, in addition to that vulnerability and strength, she gets to exhibit the best and most intriguing aspect of her personality: her moral center. For certain audiences, Katara gets a bad rap as maybe a little boring or a little judgmental. But as a person who is surrounded by Katara-like people in my life, I have always loved her characterization deeply because she combines two virtues that are often divorced. She’s very principled, often the conscience of the Avatar team, even persistently (or stubbornly) so. On the other hand, she has an adaptive quality that surrounds those around her with healing and tenderness. Like water!
Much of the story revolves around Katara’s moral center trying to find anchors among the new characters introduced in this story, the pirate Jiang and her shipmates of the Flying Wolfbat. Jiang’s a really effective new character and her pirate crew has the feeling of always belonging in the Avatar world but still original and distinctive. Much of the plot of ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ hinges on the moral ambiguity of this pirate crew that Katara has, by necessity, fallen in with.
To make Katara shine, the show often usefully employed this set up of Katara’s moral center finding its moorings in circumstances of shifting moral sands. A central example is how Katara held out the longest in Zuko’s redemption arc. (Haha—sorry, spoiler for the show’s biggest plot twist, but if you didn’t know about that, I’m guessing you aren’t reading this?) In the end, Katara’s resistance was an appropriate sense of justice. She reminded us as viewers that, if we hadn’t watched Zuko’s slow-earned transformation process, we should all be reacting to the prospect of his joining Team Aang with the same outrage.
In ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver,’ Katara gets to both assert and adapt her moral fortitude in the dance with Jiang’s pirate crew as they mask identities, steal goods, and combat Fire Nation troops. I read Katara’s self-directed mantra, “Be tough like Toph,” as the palliative and vulnerable side of her character buoying that fierce resolve that’s clearly within her, especially when things get shaky and scary. I love that.
Continued belowThose balancing (or dueling) aspects of our Waterbender’s personality also make for great cartooning, and Wartman gets to make hay with those subtle turns of Katara’s eyebrows and eyes and hair loopies, or those terrific ways Katara’s body language almost seems to be channeling Toph’s when she’s inhabiting her steely resolve.
Mark: Yeah, I absolutely agree. This is definitely definitely more of a character focused story—not in the sense of character development, but just spending time with the characters and having fun. So much of the humor relies on the characterization, and it’s a testament to the creative team that they absolutely nailed it. That said, the one note that struck me as odd was the way Aang and Sokka didn’t seem overly motivated to find Katara. It wasn’t a big deal, but I had to hiss, “Shh! Quiet you!” at a particular part of my brain so that I could really enjoy this journey.
Paul: Yes, that space and pace for the funny panels really stood out to me too. The extended melodrama with Sokka, Aang, and Toph negotiating what to do with the Fire Nation soldier that Toph had trapped in stone was a great, humorous sitcom bit of lightness, making room for repartee and goofiness. But I think it also sat on that same theme of our beloved characters questioning and forming their own moral principles among themselves, as a team, that is a hallmark of Avatar’s greatness.
Mark: I have to call out the lettering, because it’s not just that it technically looks good and serves the story well, it’s that it feels fully integrated here. ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ was clearly written and laid out with the sound effects in mind, to the point that they’re not just a plus to the story, but essential. There are comedy beats here that only work because of the sound effects, and it brings so much life to the comic (especially the bending).
Paul: Yes! Along with Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt’s lettering, this team, Faith Erin Hicks’s scripting and Peter Wartman’s art, along with Adele Matera’s colors, managed to make me think the unthinkable: I actually liked the comics work in here better—dare I say it—than most of Gene Yang and Gurihiru’s run. (Sacrilege! . . .You know how much I love that previous team, Mark.)
Yang and Gurihiru really played up the Avatarverse’s notes of wit, social significance, and polished storytelling. But I feel like this team hews closer to the TV show’s sense of spontaneity, subversiveness, and surprise. Maybe it’s the 80-page format, which allows for less density of plot and more pages to interject physical comedy and levity through reaction shots. Maybe it’s that feeling of “Pirate’s Silver” as kind of a pocket side-story, which the show was full of, rather than merely serving a bigger plot map. Or do you also have a feeling about whether Wartman and Matera have stepped up their art game to a higher level than “Imbalance”?
Mark: I think this is more a case of the Hicks–Wartman–Matera team servicing an aspect of the show that the Yang–Gurihiru team didn’t as much. I revisited The first five trilogies to figure out what it was that’s different, and it’s really in what they choose to emphasize. Gurihiru does a lot of push ins and pulls outs during sequences to emphasize a mood, which is great for dramatic moments like Zuko feeling close to his mother when they’re reunited or Toph feeling alone when her father disowns her. However, comedy beats were primarily emphasized with a single strong pose or expression, which acted as a sort of visual punchline for the previous set-up panels.
Continued belowBut the show’s humor doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes they just had a person with funny body language. There was no punch line per se, it was just fun to watch the progression of their actions.
Book One: Water
Chapter Four: The Warriors of Kyoshi
I mean, there’s no punchline in that sequence, it’s just escalating lunacy and it’s fantastic. It also 100% relies on body language to work, which is why it played out over a single shot. And the show does this sort of stuff all the time.
So I went back to look for these “locked off” panel sequences in the comics. There are four each in ‘The Promise’ and ‘The Search,’ six each in ‘The Rift’ and ‘Smoke and Shadow,’ only one in ‘North and South,’ and five in ‘Imbalance.’ Roughly a third of these are inserts to emphasize an action, like a door opening or a photograph being tucked away. The rest are mostly to emphasize an action in bending or a dramatic beat. I could count the times it was used for body language comedy on one hand (and two of those were Momo gags in ‘Imbalance’).
Meanwhile ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ does this seven times over a mere 80 pages, and every instance has some element of body language humor in it. So I get the feeling this comic probably tapped into an aspect of the show you felt was muted or missing in the other arcs. And I can’t help but feel like this is Faith Erin Hicks’s influence, because she does this stuff in her creator-owned comics all the time. It’s one of the reasons I love her comics so much. That said, I haven’t yet read Peter Wartman’s “Stonebreaker” or “Over the Wall” (they’re on my wishlist), so I’m not familiar enough with his visual storytelling to say if this is a device he regularly employs too.
Paul: Mark, the way you broke that down is why I love talking Avatar with you.
Mark: Likewise, Paul. Everytime we discuss one of these comics I end up appreciating it more by the time we’re done.
Paul: If we weren’t oceans away, I’d have fun sitting for a coffee and an Avatar reading with you, Mark! As it stands, the person I read these books with is my daughter, and as she matures as a reader and a consumer of culture, I can’t help but feel a special excitement these books and their fictional world exist for her as she enters early adolescence. I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about the importance of fictional worlds (futurist, magical realist, and/or ancient/legendary/mythic) that expand in a parallel, imaginative counterstory for non-dominant cultures and communities. Just today, our daughter’s friend’s Halloween costume, an awesome full-on Suki cosplay, just stunned me with the thought that they can fantasize and inhabit such identities. These future leaders. These kids who’ll save us all.
Mark: That’s awesome.
I just want to quickly touch on the future of the series. As you know, ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ is the first in a trilogy of planned one-shot graphic novels focusing on the ladies of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Next up is Toph (in a story that’ll also feature Suki quite a bit too, I believe), and then one more to wrap it all up nicely for a cohesive library edition. Who’d you like to see for the third one-shot?
Paul: Great question! I’m a fan of Suki, so I would be a happy reader if Suki wasn’t just a B-plot to a Toph book. But if these books are sustained by a solid and loyal fandom, I wonder if they could take a chance on a Mai story. If there’s a character from the show and subsequent comics who seemed to have a huge role, many layers, and not enough screen time, I would say it was Mai. Centering a story like ‘The Pirate’s Silver’ around Mai would finally give the character and her complicated loyalties and motivations some room to breathe and stretch. What about you?
Mark: This is one case where I wish they were doing a tetralogy instead of a trilogy. There’re so many characters I’d like to see explored more. Suki and Azula are obviously top of the list contenders, especially since Azula has undergone so much development off panel. I’ve mentioned in previous reviews that I feel like we need an “Azula Alone” story.
Continued belowBut then I’d also love to see a story about Kiyi. She’s this little kid that’s been plucked from a simple village life and thrust into a palace with new family members she didn’t know she had. I love the way we’ve seen her interact with Zuko, but I also want to see how she handles the difficult time her mother is having, living in a place that’s full of the ghosts of the worst times in her life. And I also just want to see her with Iroh, because you just know those two are going to get along great, and she will be a huge fan of Iroh’s pearl milk tea creation.
It’s not a story we urgently need or anything, but Kiyi’s perspective on the Avatar world is something I’d like to see explored. But then I’ve always welcomed unexpected perspectives. The Momo and Appa episodes of the show were so wonderful and so unlike anything else, and I think it shows how versatile the Avatar universe can be.
I must say, given the departure that these one-shot OGNs represent for the series, I’m really anticipating the eventual library edition with the creators’ notes. That’s something I always enjoy, but in this case I think it’ll be especially interesting.
Paul: Same, Mark. This past summer, we read The Rise of Kiyoshi by F.C. Yee, the novelized story of Avatar Kiyoshi many generations before Aang.
It’s really outstanding. I hope I can tuck it right next to this new trilogy (or tetralogy? . . .Come on, Dark Horse!) on my shelf as a reminder of a new period of Avatarverse expansion, when the world feels just that much more like we need stories like these.
Mark: Yeah, I find myself looking forward to these books more and more lately. I know ‘Katara and the Pirate’s Silver’ isn’t essential Avatar, but I’d argue it was quintessential Avatar. It’s such an excellent distillation of what makes these characters great.
Final verdict: 9.0 – The already great franchise takes a pirate’s gamble on a new format and pace, and strikes gold.
