Pirate Cove
by Joe D'Angelo

Joe D'Angelo had the best stuff on the far side of the room at the APE convention. Boy was giving everything away for free. Two free magnets and an APE souvenir edition of Pirate Cove. Like us, he was having trouble giving things away. It's free. It's quality. No strings. Of course, this was Sunday afternoon and attendance was down about 75%—easy. I'll bet that for every freebie he didn't give away, we had five business cards that people picked up, read, laughed at and put back down. IT'S FREE! What's wrong with you?

So, I wander over to his table, a sea of tranquility in a goth madhouse and look at the magnets. The hardest part was picking only two. A picture of Death and the words, "You're mocking me, aren't you?" and a suedo hipster guy with the words, "Pay the bill, I wanna hit on that waitress." I'm not even sure they were the funniest ones there (out of ten?), but they were the ones I most wanted hanging on my refrigerator. The mini was 15 half-letter-sized grey-toned comics pages and a full color cover designed to advertise his web comic that's been running for three and a half years. With daily updates. The web comic is free. With no registration or ads. And it's funny. It's outrageous. It's nerdy. It's human. It's character driven. The art is a bit web-comicky, but not in a bad way AT ALL. Clear storytelling, the color examples are spot on, the character designs are distinctive and fun, the character voices are too. The lack of effort that would be required to turn this into a huge Cartoon Network hit is obvious from the first page.

Death collects the souls of dying cops in the funniest car chase since O.J.

The story in this preview recounts yet another annual attempt on (Randy) Death's part to claim the soul of his former friend (Louis). All their old friends do their best deter Death, but their own personal problems and Lous's missing lost soul keep causing everyone problems.Much of the humor comes out of the characters' combined realisation that these events are crazy and their frustration at having to keep dealing with the absurd. Also, Death's attempts to appear more 'Death-like' are a blast.

On the web, stories deal with an unscrupulous reality show producer, extra-dimensional dogs, trip to hell, back-stabbing mafiosos, adventure-archeologists and any popculture turnabout that occurs to D'Angelo on a daily basis. And it never gets tedious.

Good job, Joe. I look forward to reading it all. Get caught up in an icredibly long narrative (broken up into smaller story arcs) at piratecovecomic.com The stories are a lot of fun. Like a good newspaper strip, it's very easy to read the latest instalment without any prior knowledge, but the cumulative effect is impressive.

—Justin J. Fox