After two issues, "Pirates" is shaping up to be a really gorgeous book, with a sort of headstrong style that reminds us of Jamie Hewlett (the artist for Gorillas and Tank Girl). Rival gangs of reckless hobo teenagers live crazy careless lives on and around Coney Island, modeling their dialect and values on those of old-timey pirates while battling cops and each other and, most likely, inner demons. First let us say: the only thing cooler than the art are the fierce characters, who all posses the kind of a charismatic strength that makes you want to follow them right off a pier. Next, let us say: is this comic maybe not in the very best of taste?

Old-timey pirates lived horrible, perilous, desperately short lives, leeching off of society without ever deliberately providing anything in return. It's fun to romanticize them now, since their danger is gone and they don't exist, with kitchy movies and skull flags and days whereupon we all talk about barnacles. That's what the kids in "Pirates" are doing: filling their days with marauding and eyepatches and "yo ho ho," and it's all very fun. But. They're also homeless kids, and in real life, they'd be living horrible, perilous, desperately short lives while leeching off of society, too. And we can't help but feel like it's a little crass to be romanticizing an awful way of life that's still, even now, slowly and unpleasantly killing the people who live it.