Jean-Pierre Pécau, a screenwriter specializing in historical comics, launches with his new series Captain Voodoo in a story of piracy but shaken by magic. Go out in the swords and potions to follow our review of the first volume.
A new historical series
The Captain Voodoo project started from a role-playing game created by the screenwriter. However, even if Jean-Pierre Pécau multiplies historical projects, this new series on the past shows originality by a harmonious mix between two genres from the first page. A slave ship, the Caliban sails to America but the goods, Africans, are too noisy. A sailor pulls out his pistol to punish them but he must stop his gesture when sea monsters emerge from the waves. This episode comes from the story of a former pirate in a tavern. A young man, Cormac MacLeod, listens religiously to this true story… Or is it a myth of an alcoholic? Through this Irish sailor, the reader enters a world of marginals. As in the stories of buccaneers, the search for treasure is the main issue. This is quite usual but we discover that there are also reprobates among the pirates. You can loot and kill ok but not resort to black magic. Indeed, one of them is excluded because he would have signed a pact with the world of the dead.
Piracy and magic
From this first volume, Captain Voodoo presents a rich gallery of characters who cross the figures of pirate novels and fantasy. Cormac, sailor by accident and devoid of experience, serves to introduce the reader to this secret world. A slave at the bottom of a hold of a ship going to Virginia makes him understand that he has a gift. The young Irishman can appeal to loas, geniuses. Without knowing it, he would be a voodoo priest. This slave, Lime Ba Yo, is his best friend but also the voodoo specialist. He found himself in the team of a privateer Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur who directed the Mouse. They are pitted against a darker pirate, Slow Death and a corrupt governor who uses pirates but also possesses a gift of immortality. All these characters meet an African monster thirsty for human blood but also two Robinsons. Far from wanting to leave their desert island, they scare away rescuers and even worry pirates.
Piracy and History
As in every work by Jean-Pierre Pécau, great history mixes with anecdote and invention. Captain Voodoo gives a new image of the slave trade because whites could become slaves. References to the Irish revolt of theseventeenth century are numerous. Through the choice of Cormac, we also penetrate the religious complexity of the time. This religious opponent has become a thief. An Irish Catholic soldier, he opposed the English Protestants and was sentenced to prison where he became a slave. This religious diversity is also reflected in the presence of a Jewish merchant and the evocation of Spanish sailors of the same religion. This historical precision is found in the dense voodoo vocabulary to make notions understood. A bokor is a priest of this religion. A human being can be possessed by a demon but also a deceased relative. The references do not only come from African voodoo because we also come across a profusion of myths of various origins: a Jewish golem and a boat goes to San Andreas, the island of ghosts. To succeed in weaving these two very different genres, it took all the talent of the cartoonist Darko Perovic. His very realistic style effectively renders the historical context even if it sometimes lacks precision. However, he knows how to install a gothic atmosphere through the striking images of cages with skeletons on a beach, a pirate ship resembling a haunted house and monsters evoking the cartoonist Caza. Captain Voodoo edited by Delcourt succeeds in his bet. The script skillfully mixes the genres of piracy and magic. This first volume is very dense because the screenwriter Jean-Pierre Pécau multiplies the narrative tracks and the characters. You can see other historical series by these chronicles on The Last Dragon and Indochina.
