Set to Sea

Running up tabs at local bars by day and haunting the dock by night, Set to Sea's protagonist is a big lug of an aspiring poet who writes paeans to the seafaring life. When he gets shanghaied aboard a clipper bound for Hong Kong, however, he finds the sailor's life a bit rougher than his romantic nautical fantasies! In the course of this black-and-white graphic novel, he helps rebuff a pirate assault, survives a gunshot to the eye, and learns to live and love a Conradian life on the sea, all the while writing poetry about pirates, bad food, unceremonial funerals, foreign ports, and unexpected epiphanies. By the end of his life, he's found satisfaction in his adventures a receptive and appreciative readership. What more could one ask for? Drawn in an elaborate crosshatched style that falls somewhere between Gustave Dore's engravings and E. C. Segar's Popeye, Set to Sea is part rollicking adventure, part maritime ballad told in visual rhyme. Every page is a single panel; every panel is a stunning illustration, every illustration a part of a larger whole that tells a story in the deft language of cartooning.