The Birth of Dynamite's Blackbeard
by Kiel Phegley, Staff Writer
When Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale helped bring "The Blair Witch Project" to life in 1999, the filmmakers(Sanchez as co-director and Hale as producer) blurred the lines between fiction and reality to create a newer vision of horror than cineplexes had seen in years. A decade later, the pair are aiming to do the same in comics, but rather than push pure fiction into a realistic realm,they're bringing real life into an epic narrative with "Blackbeard: The Legend of the Pyrate King" from
Dynamite Entertainment.
Written with frequent collaborators Robert Napton and Jamie Nash and drawn by artist Mario Guevara with John Cassaday covers, "Blackbeard" is surely not a horror project like Sanchez and Hale's most famous effort, but rather the biographical story of the legendary 18th Century pirate captain. The book promises unleashes more than a few tantalizing tales of extreme piracy when it ships this October, but the creators were quick to tell CBR News that not all of the worst bits came at the hands of Blackbeard himself.
"It's a matter of context. Blackbeard was a villain in a world of tyranny," co-writer Jamie Nash told CBR."During a time of slavery and oppression, Blackbeard employed democracy on his ships, had Africans serve as crewman and even as his quatermasters and right-hand men. Even merchant crews were harshly treated by their captains – often beaten and killed for insubordination– and often forced into service or 'pressed' as it was called. It was so bad, the merchant crews weapons were kept locked away lest they use them against their merciless captains. I think within the context Blackbeard waged his reign of pirating...it's a grayer shade than might be expected."
Keeping close to the historical record of the world Blackbeard lived in stands key for the creators, who started their exploration of the pirate's history years ago. "It started with me getting into pirates in general and then finding out more about Blackbeard, in particular," said Hale, who with Sanchez preps early story drafts to be scripted as comics pages by Nash and Napton. "I approached Ed and Jamie about doing a screenplay based on Blackbeard's life and we worked on that for well over a year. We ended up with a150+ page screenplay that would have easily cost $200 million to produce."
