The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life with and this time we’re offering Practical defenses not against the dark arts, but Pirates!
Practical Defence Against Piracy
Chapter One and Two, Episodes 1-137
Updates Thursdays (via Patreon)
Created by Tony Cliff
Reviewed by Mel Lake
It’s the first week of our Eisner nominee coverage! For the next five weeks, we’ll be reviewing the nominees in this year’s Eisner webcomics category. This week I dove into the world of Delilah Dirk and read “Practical Defence Against Piracy,” a charming and gorgeously drawn comic about a young girl who confronts the pain of shattered dreams and the difficulty of growing up. It’s a prequel to an existing series of adventure graphic novels being released as a webcomic.
Alexandra Nichols is an adventurer. We’re told this twice: once aboard a ship bound for England and once again on land, in a sleepy coastal town. The daughter of a diplomat, she is about to turn fifteen and looking forward to becoming an English lady after spending her childhood abroad. But Alexandra has a very different notion of what it entails to be a lady. She’s convinced that once she returns to England, her life will be filled with swords and horses, swashbuckling and traveling the globe. After a brush with pirates forces the ship to detour on the island where her mother grew up, Alexandra befriends the local kids and explores what she first thinks of as a dismal town. Then her mother starts training her in the ways of an actual English lady and Alexandra’s world shatters.
“Practical Defence” is a comic made by a professional illustrator with years of experience as a creator, so it’s not exactly in the same category as a Webtoon made by a teen in their spare time. The artwork and lettering are top-notch quality, with plenty of fun flourishes and rich, detailed backgrounds, plus a website design that is appropriately nautical and old-timey. The watercolor style and impressively clean lines are simply gorgeous. The colors are bright and vivid, too. Visually, this is an absolute treat. It reads like a graphic novel you’d pick up at a bookstore, which makes sense since this is the fourth book in a series and the others have all had some kind of print run, even if the series origin was with a webcomic back in 2011.
Since Tony Cliff has been drawing this character and her world for so many pages, he’s got her design down pat and there’s a confidence in the way so many of the elements are put together. From the gorgeous 19th-century sailing ships to quiet moments in the island town, Cliff masterfully and lovingly renders the people and places he draws, with expressive faces and beautiful colors. There’s never any doubt about the movement in the pages or which character is which—this is a professional-level graphic novel, available for free, on the internet. Isn’t that amazing?! That said, the book is formatted like a book, which can make navigation slightly tricky—there’s no infinite scroll and each page is a double spread like you’d find in a print book. This isn’t a comic I’d recommend reading on your mobile phone! My tablet worked well but using a desktop would be better, and ideally, I’d love to read this in print eventually.
I read all the pages available online, which means over one hundred. I was stuck on a long flight but felt like this story dragged only for a brief period in chapter two when Alexandra and her local friend are getting to know one another and she’s keeping watch for pirates. Chapter two is longer than chapter one and I kept expecting it to end near the part where Alexandra’s emotional conflict shifts from boredom to disagreement with her parents. The emotional journey of this young girl feels totally real and three-dimensional but for a story ostensibly about pirates, I’m looking forward to having pirates show up. When Alexandra and her mother have their major argument, the narrative shifts into a rhyming lyrical style that contrasts with the earlier, more standard first-person story. It’s a style choice that makes for a beautiful set of pages but the shift didn’t quite work for me.
Since the novel is still ongoing, your mileage may vary when reading an in-progress work. It’s such a well-crafted story that I heartily recommend it but have to acknowledge that for those who are looking for a complete story arc, you may be disappointed because the story isn’t finished yet. But for those who love following along as a story develops, this is a great one to jump in and join. Most of all, “Practical Defence” succeeds because it makes me want to check out the other books in the series and recommend them to the middle-grade readers in my life and anyone who might enjoy the adventures of a young, sassy lady adventurer.
