Chapter Four is now up in its entirety!

This week! Why, it's only more of Chapter Four. Plus, click through for a look at some recent book purchases and a tangential slide into the tricks and traps of using coffee-table decoration books as design resources.

If you've been waiting until Chapter Four is all up before diving in, now's your time! I just added the second half!

Read PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY starting with the new pages, or…

Read it from the start of Chapter Four, or…

Read from the beginning!

Thank you as always to the Secret Readers who make this work possible — take a moment to visit the Patron Acknowledgement pages and tip your hat to them. I am, basically, a stay-at-home dad who uses whatever available time he can find (or which is given to him by his generous partner) to make progress on this book, and in 2024, it's only my partner's income and the gifts of this project's Patrons that make it all possible. So: my thanks to her, and again my thanks to all you Secret Readers. I am deeply grateful.

If you would like to become a Secret Reader, all I can do is heartily encourage this course of action. I send out regular updates featuring work-in-progress (as of this writing, I'm sharing the pencil drawings for Chapter Five, which includes 100% more war elephants than I was expecting), nitty-gritty discussion of various aspects of the craft, recommendations for good things to read and watch, and, of course, finished coloured pages hot and fresh out of the comics oven! It's email you can look forward to.

Meanwhile, our kiddo will be in preschool for more of each day this year, which means I should have more time for drawing, which means it's possible that 2025 is the first year I release two finished chapters! That's what I'm looking forward to — you have no idea how happy this will make me — and I hope you'll join me for the journey.

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Speaking of journeys, to celebrate Kiddo's birthday, we took him on the ferry (one of his favourite things; he is literally playing pretend ferries with a cardboard box beside me as I write this) over to Victoria. We stayed a couple of days, saw the sights, had some good meals and — perhaps most thrillingly? — got to poke around Victoria's lovely book stores. And you know what I found? One of my favourite things: oversized books of visual reference. I bought four.

 Two illustrated companion books to the major Napoleonic War Nautical Adventure series of the 20th century! They are almost certainly very similar to each other but I do not care!

Aww yeah, that's the good stuff. Who goes where and how many are there, that's what I want to know.

These illustrations are exactly the reason I look for books like this. The O'Brian/Aubrey companion has the better presentation of the two books. The printing quality is better, the illustrations more plentiful, the layout easier to parse.

I guess there are only so many preserved contemporary illustrations of corporal punishment that are available. As anticipated, the books are very similar.

This will all come in very handy when PRACTICAL DEFENCE returns to the Cordelia. I do wish I had these books earlier, and I'm not sure how valuable they'll be to me once PRACTICAL DEFENCE is finished, but that sort of pragmatic thinking has no place here. It is not constructive to try to anticipate ways in which a book will be useful. It is there to inspire, encourage serendipitous connections, and, perhaps, occasionally, offer answers.

I also picked up this entry in the Time-Life series "The Seafarers." I'm looking forward to it. The table of contents gives an idea what sort of attitude the book has to its subject.

It's a mainstream publication from 1978 (or at least that's when this edition was published), so of course the attitude will be, "ooh look at these villainous scoundrels." As might be evident from the way PRACTICAL DEFENCE is unfolding so far, I am in general — and, realistically, only under ideal circumstances — sympathetic to The Pirate. I'm looking forward to seeing what this book has to offer.

Here's another book which wears the its publication date on its sleeve:

It's from 1988 and I believe is one of those coffee table books targeted toward interior decoration enthusiasts and, perhaps, the casual cultural appropriator. It's got a strong whiff of Orientalism and "othering" to it.

I would assume that the populace of Greece demonstrates exactly the same capacity for "pride and enthusiasm, serenity and joy," as any other arbitrarily-identified populace. The authors wrote another book in this series on "English Style," and if it doesn't have a matching spread describing the English as a "universally pale-skinned" people who "all seem to exhibit the same determination towards misery," I will know we cannot trust a single word they say. To balance their tone, they could mention the high quality of British radio comedy.

Anyway, this book is about how to inspire its reader to pick out the right chair to create a Mediterranean aesthetic in their downtown loft. I'm not here for the text.

I'm also only partly here for the imagery. Books like this take a lot of decoding; the visual equivalent to "reading between the lines."

Why would anyone leave that much peeling paint on their wall and mantel? In a modern context, it might signify that the person who lives here is well-off, such that they value the peeling paint because it creates a specific idea of "authenticity." It's rugged and un-prissy, in line with the display of weapons (so many swords that a few are just propped up in the corner).

What I would take from it is the quality of the light and the colour palette. The black baseboards and their detailing. The display of weapons, their details, and the character they suggest. I like the clock, though if I were using this for inspiration I'd look for something period-accurate. The antlers (?) to each side of the clock are a curious element — I wouldn't have thought to add them to the scene, and they look good, but they also look a lot like "decoration." It's tough to imagine the character who wants a wall full of swords but also thinks to place those symmetrical antler decorations. The peeling paint is a tricky one, because, generally, I wouldn't think someone would want peeling paint in their home unless they're after the aforementioned "rugged authenticity." At the same time, it does add texture and my job is not to make a historical document, it's to make something evocative and dramatic. Would I use it? Tough to say.

In the example above, am I allowed to use a chair like that? Probably not, it looks too modern, but then it is sometimes surprising what is and is not true to a certain period. But I like the beams on the ceiling, the doorway and its surround at the centre of the image, the way the cooking tools are laid out, the white stone (?) counter, the colours of all the different wood, and that bucket full of long rods on the right — what are those for? These are all things I might use to build an environment.

I keep a book like this at hand for the times when I need a reminder to shake things up, too. When I'm focused on story, or dialogue, or character movement, or just getting a page done, it's easy to be lazy and, if I need a door, just make a rectangular door with some arbitrary rectangular panels. But that's too generic. What sort of other ways might I make a window more interesting? Welp, flipping through a book like this, it's easy to identify varieties of panelling, placement of the handles and locks, some interesting ironwork… all the little details that make a door specific. Making comics takes so much impromptu set design, having something like this to pull from can be a real boon. Plus, as mentioned with the other books, it is there to encourage serendipitous connections.

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Back soon with more Chapter Five pencils!

Until then,
I remain,
the last and most lethal of the captains,

TC