This page and the next started out as courtesy pages for those who haven’t read The Fourth (or haven’t in a long time), but I’ve found them to be extremely valuable as part of this story in their own right. In the past couple months, this crew of pirates has gone from Goldgills and a gaggle of background characters I never bothered to name, to a bunch of people I’m painfully fond of, who’ve come to life as I’ve patiently coaxed their personalities and backstories out of them. I hope you can tell a bit about their personalities from this page. It’s also been fun for me to consider their side of things and how they’d tell the story, which can basically be summed up as “Skärva is a big dingus”.
Louis is especially dear to me, and I feel bad that he wasn’t part of the grand adventure- then again, it makes for a great central struggle for his character. He’s a relative newcomer to the sea as it is, and has some confidence issues because of it. He may have not gone up the tower, but what you didn’t see in the pages of The Fourth is that as soon as his crew reached their ship again- well, imagine just being there guarding their prisoner and then you’re tackle-hugged by three salamandrians and wrapped up in a long-armed Lurkin embrace while they all yell “We’re rich, Lou! Rich beyond our wildest dreams!” And then Bones starts gushing about talking skulls and a Kraken and a burning town and Silverskull’s ghost all at once because he barely knows what to tell you about first and he wants to tell you about EVERYTHING. It was something like that.
Also: I made that drawing of Silverskull a while back, since I’d never drawn a decent depiction/reference of him when he was still alive. Decided I might as well put it in the actual comic! I upped the contrast a bit to fit in with the aesthetics of the page, but you can check out the original right here (click to enlarge):
Everyone (who’s a pirate) knows about Silverskull… but if you don’t, you CAN!
‘Til Monday, mates!
