Last February, the family was driving back from a vacation in Death Valley. It was a long drive back to San Francisco and the children were sitting in the back watching a cartoon on a portable DVD player (fortunately with headphones). I had a long time to let my imagination wander.

It had been a long time since I had made comics for Oliver and Amélie. I wanted to start a new one. I had already made a dinosaur story, an under the sea story, a haunted house story and a knights and dragons story. That left many classic children’s themes yet to pick, and that day I was deciding between an outer space story and a pirate story.

Before long I knew there was great potential for fun if I combined the two themes. Yes. Pirates in space. That would be a great theme.

As I began crafting a story in my mind, I knew I wanted to take my cartooning to the next level. I wanted to create a more complex plot than the little stories I had made so far. And I knew that I wanted to take many more pages to tell the story. My other comics were all twenty-four pages because, quite simply, the little photo albums I put them in held twenty-four pages.

But now I wanted to tell a more grown up story. I wanted to let the story determine how many pages were required. Instead of the six and seven year old level of my other comics, I wanted to write more for a thirteen or fourteen year old reader. I picked this age knowing that it would likely take me until Oliver and Amélie were that age before I had finished the story. So it would arrive right on time.

The germ of the whole saga actually came to me in the form of a poem. I wrote the entire thing while watching the road pass by on that long day. The idea was that the poem would mention a kind of mythical hero. A crafty pirate in space called Meteor Mike. I don’t think the character will even be in the story, but I wanted to make it so that whatever planet the lead characters went to, they would find that everyone had already heard the story of Meteor Mike. The story had made its rounds throughout all the creatures and cultures in the galaxy.

The poem I wrote that day is included below. And I have to say in all honesty, it has major problems. There are rhythm problems I haven’t fixed yet, and some of the imagery isn’t clear enough either. I know because I’ve shown the poem to a few friends and they all responded with very different ideas of what was going on. So bear with me.

Finally, I’ll just give you the story straight out right now, so that might help you picture the events in the poem. You know, until I fix it.

The story is about an interstellar space pirate who roams the galaxy in a space ship in the same that way classic pirates roamed the high seas. He has a crew and they are generally a rabble. Now Meteor Mike is that too but also more. He is charismatic and has imagination and ambition. His spaceship comes upon an ugly beast that actually lives in outer space instead of on a planet. It has the strongest skin in the universe and it inspires Mike to attempt to collect a very unique treasure.

You see, I had once heard that the molecules of gold are fashioned in such a way that they could only be created in the heart of stars...that all of the gold here on earth, was actually created in the heart of the sun. So I have Mike actually fly into the heart of a star with the ugly creature as a shield. Once there, he gathers the gold and then flies out of the star. What happens next? Well, I’ll let the poem tell that part. And here it is, a work in progress, be kind.

Even as a tyke, to ol’ Meteor Mike
Pirating was his aspiration
and in less time, than to read this rhyme
he had a reputation

Meteor Mike was an Astro-Pirate
No planet was his home
With his rocket Dirty and his crew of thirty
he prowled the stellar dome.

Now this ragged crew, was to one rule true
They served a single pleasure
Using fearful tools, they preyed on fools
and relieved them of their treasure

Yo Ho Meteor Mike
Never learned his right from wrong
With a sword held high and a winking eye
He struck each rocket that would happen by
And then he’d sail along

Then a mornin’ came, finding Meteor Mike
Gazing down upon his hoard
Feeling very weary, almost teary
and said aloud,”I’m bored.”

So without remorse, he changed his course
He steered his rocket outward
To that galaxy arm, where fools come to harm
Trying to prove they’re not a coward

As he made his way, a giant beast of prey
floated out from behind a comet.
Was it ugly? Sure! Not unlike manure
Its breathe could make you vomit.

Now these beasts were rare, they had teeth to spare
and horns upon their haunches
They were bred for war, in the days of yore
Eating rockets for their lunches.

And besides its mange, one more thing quite strange
The beast can go anywhere it pleases
‘cause its skin, like steel, simply makes it feel
the extremes of space as breezes.

The crew made a yell, not just from the smell
of a beast they hoped to frighten
but their interest ceased when they saw the beast
had brought no purse to lighten

Then Mike shared his plot, right there on the spot
And with a single fact outlined
That in each star’s core, 50 tons or more
of a gold that can’t be mined.

So he steered his craft, right into the shaft
of the creature’s throat to enter
not just in the gut of the monster, but
even on to a star’s bright center

His saber drawn coaxed the creature on
down into the fiery flares
Then with the gold in store, there was nothing more
so he steered the brute upstairs

With the surface breached, Pirate Mike, he reached
For the lever to his rocket
And with all his might, heaved it to the right
and gave the beast a new eye socket.

Mike was then about to forget the lout
and leave him in his wake
But instead he turned to the creature spurned
and gave him all his take.

After that Mike found, he was quite renowned
though he never asked for glory
all his sins forgot, though there were a lot
‘cause he gave the world a story.

Yo Ho Meteor Mike
After years of treasure taking
learned that jewel filled pails
cannot tip the scales
compared to treasure making.


So, in case I hadn’t made it clear in the poem, the underlying message is that Mike found he did not care for gold as much as he liked doing something daring. That ultimately, what matters is what you make ( a reputation or a story of daring) not what you take. This notion informs the entire larger story I am writing. Oliver and Amélie will find, in their outer space adventures, that all the various intelligent creatures in the universe do have one thing in common, they all admire ballsy actions by people with imagination. And this is why the Meteor Mike story is familiar to all the planets they go to.

At any rate, that is only the background against which the story takes place. Of course there is a war between two factions, a mystery involving the oldest inhabited planet in the galaxy and a heck of a lot of crazy characters. Like I said, I’ve been working on the story for a year and I’m really happy with how it is developing. My outlines suggest it will be about three hundred pages in length. Damn, that is a lot of drawing! So far I’ve roughed out about sixty pages. So far so good.

Okay. That’s it. I just wanted to share the poem with you. In spite of its problems, I’m pretty proud of it. I think I can turn it into something really good.

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