'Raven is a fearless young pirate as capable of legendary exploits as he is of epic fails. In this inaugural volume, he finds himself on the high Caribbean seas on the search for treasure meant for the Governor of Tortuga. Allied with the dreadful Lady Darksee, who hopes to gain a royal pardon, the terrible Governor must act quickly. But the impetuous and talented Raven has a grand plan to beat them to it.'
Raven: Nemesis is one of the new releases fro Europe Comics, and brings swashbuckling pirate adventures to the graphic novel market.
Set in the 1660's, the story follows Raven, a pirate that's considered unlucky by other outlaws, and it doesn't take us long to see why. When the crew of the ship he's on tries to capture a Spanish galleon things seem to go well at first. The pirates defeat the crew, Raven bests the Spanish captain in single combat and gets a fancy new sword, but when Raven discovers a young woman on board he tries to protect her from being raped by his fellow pirates. A noble endeavour for sure, but when he stashes her in the armoury for her protection, and the woman decides that blowing everyone up is the only way to save herself from sexual assault Raven's idea comes back to bites him, as both ships are blow to pieces in the subsequent explosion. The only survivor, Raven makes a raft from the remains and sails back to the pirate port of Tortuga.
As far as introductions go it's a pretty decent one. Not only do we get to see Raven in action and learn that despite his bad luck he's a pretty good pirate, but we also learn that Mathieu Lauffray isn't planning to pull any punches with this book, and that some pretty nasty things are going to happen. A young woman blowing herself up and killing dozens of people to save herself from being raped by a load of pirates is some pretty grim stuff.
And grim is probably the tone for most of the book. If you're looking for some fun and over the top pirate high-jinks like Pirates of the Caribbean, this isn't the book for you. There are brutal beatings, murders, and sexual assault in this books, and none of it is treated as fun. The fights are given a brutal feel to them, in part thanks to the style of art, and the characters really feel like they're getting hurt and suffering. I'm not sure how accurately the story is portraying life in these times and as a pirate, but it's certainly not sugar coating things or making it seem romantic.
Sadly, this brutality prevented me from really feeling like I connected with the characters a great deal, and by the end of this volume I didn't really have a huge sense of who Raven was. He seems like a man with a degree of morals to him, he did try to protect a woman in the introduction, but I don't know why. It shouldn't need to have a reason, protecting someone from rape should just be a given, but considering he's supposed to be a brutal pirate I wanted to know more about his sense of morals, the lines he won't cross, and the reasons why. Hopefully this will be explored in future volumes of the series.
The only other character that we really get to know in any real way is Lady Darksee, the main antagonist for the story. She's a pirate captain that's making shady deals with the local governor, and she's not adverse to really hurting people. There's a point where she consigns Raven to a brutal death, one that would have worked if not for the last moment intervention of an ally of his, and even uses sexual assault to harm an innocent woman, ordering one of her men to rape her in front of her father.
This scene is one of the most interesting insights into her character, as she's making this grand speech about being free, and how the young woman's only value is to be sold off to a rich husband and have babies, and that by taking her virginity she'll be freeing her from that life; but it's a horrible moment, and one that people could find quite triggering. I can't help but feel like this is supposed to mean something, to be some kind of insight into Darksee other than just showing her to be 'evil', but because we don't really have her backstory or motivations explored in this book it just makes her look like something of a monster.
But, this book is only the first volume, it's setting the table and laying out the pieces, and a lot of this character development and dives into their back stories could be coming later, so it's not a huge deal breaker here. However, if this isn't something that Lauffray picks up on later I will be a bit disappointed. Only time will tell how the series ends up, but for now it's a pretty decent start that could deliver some really great moments later on.
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