Pirates, pirates pirates! Ever since the 21st century lurched into our lives, everywhere you look there’s nothing but pirates!!
Capt. Jack Sparrow pwns the Man of Steel. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers win a Super Bowl. The Flying Dutchman terrorizes SpongeBob SquarePants. The blogoverse celebrates International Speak Like A Pirate Day.
Why the next thing you know, some darn kids will pirate music, television programs, comic books and movies - throwing everything into chaos!
Oh well, let it never be said that your friendly neighborhood Keeper doesn’t shamelessly exploit celebrate new and exciting trends.
Long before the fabled Dutchman popped up in Bikini Bottom, he went a few rounds with comicdom’s favorite Christ figure - the Silver Surfer.
How could such a titanic clash occur, you may ask? For that answer - even if you weren’t wondering smart guy - we must travel back to the final days of the Silver Age …
Specifically, Silver Surfer #8 - brought to us Merry Marvel Maniacs by Stan Lee and John Buscema (and you could tell this tale would put our hero in some deep spit because the pair dropped their usual Bullpen nicknames).
The issue opens, as most issues of the Surfer’s ’60s comix do, with Mephisto - Marvel Comic’s diva-esque lord of evil and overwrought exposition.
Really, you could just picture this guy starring in a satanic version of Sunset Boulevard: “I am big. The evil got small.”
As usual, Melodramatico is ticked by the Surfer’s inexplicable refusal to cheerfully accept eternal damnation.
After failing to fell his nemesis with real bad vibes, Marvel’s “Sort-Of-But-Not-Really” Satan comes up with a better idea: Dig up a dead pirate!
John Buscema could draw a heck of a dead pirate.
Because the Lord of Evil is - quite logically - a massive jerk, Mephisto forces the poor guy to recall how a once-honest sailor became a tattered corpse aimlessly wandering through eternity.
Actually, the guy should thank his lucky stars he only received the curse of the Flying Dutchman. In the DC Universe, The Spectre probably would have turned him into a cute, little guppy and fed the hapless ghost to a bunch of piranhas or something.
Anyway, the chatty Lord of the Netherworld scores the Dutchman some new threads, a nifty laser-eye and even pimps the ghost’s ride.
Due to the Dreaded Deadline Doom™, unfortunately, Silver Surferites had to wait a month for their hero’s epic struggle against the Flying Dutchman.
And how did the Sky-Rider of the Spaceways - who can fly through a sun as it goes nova and emerge unscathed - fare against an amped-up dead pirate?
Well, how do you think?
Yep, the Surfer pretty much kicks buccaneer butt and even sheds a tear because the poor ghost is so pathetic - ending the Flying Dutchman’s curse and forcing Mephisto to go all Snidely Whiplash.
Hmmmm. In retrospect, maybe the Flying Dutchman wasn’t the best example of swaggering, comic-book piratey awesomeness.
Still, he did have a long red jacket and a boat. That’s got to count for something, right?
