Pirate Technics by Toby Morris

Pirate Technics is really just one big metaphor, but not all comics that are really metaphors are filled with such an exciting array of action, pirate robots, music references and zombie robots. The territories of rock and dance have had their conflicts in the past, but they must band together in this two-issue story to save their homelands from the invading P.O.P. zombies.

"Much of Dance is lost," says Admiral Droptinus, "In fact only the frontline - Drum'n'bass - is still firmly in our hands." Pirate Technics is a story about the cult of 'popularity over personality', who invade the pages in the form of robot zombies, whom all the genres must band together to fight. Well, except emo. "Boo hoo! Autumn leaves! Type-writers! Cola!" "Thanks emo," says young upstart Jett Feedback, "but we probably won’t need your help." But despite all the moralism, Pirate Technics is still an entertaining story. It's funny.

The story does feel as if it could've taken up a bit more space, although Toby Morris's story doesn’t fill the entire second issue – shorts by Martin Molloy and Rodney Smith do that, so that occasionally the pace is too fast, and you feel like you're missing out on things. But Morris's art is great, bold and detailed at the same time, and very striking, even if the subjects are robots. Very cool rock'n'roll robots. Whilst you may recognise Morris’s work from the pages of Tearaway, he’s far cooler than Tearaway. Pirate Technics is just an example of this.