The Pirate Balthasar - THE END

This is it... the end of the comic. (sure I have more things to come but this arc is complete). I hope you enjoyed it reading it as much as I had fun drawing it. Stick around for more crazy works from yours truly and... I will be trying to compile the volume tomorrow and upload it in the download section.

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

Chapter 20 - final curiosities

Okay, sorry for the delay. It took me a while to actually sit down and write the final curiosities. Today was nothing short of... surreal!

I don't know about you but I've waited for two years to hear Kane say these words.

Kane has witnessed two big events in very little time: Castalia being poisoned and Pifo willing to give his life for him.
Two people making powerful choices because he gave them the freedom to choose.

This affected him immensely and made him realize that because he supports others, the others support him... so maybe he can risk a little more and dare to be free.

Choices always have consequences. Choices are what move the story forward and a character is determined by the choices he makes. As he chooses, he is.

"True CHARACTER is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature." Rob McGee.

Okay, so yes, the girls are pretty recognizable as babies. I had used the same joke in the previous exposition.
Can you tell who is who?
Of course you can, just as some of you guessed correctly the first time this image appeared.

And talking about the previous appearance.

Spot the differences. Ahahaha, sorry I played another little prank on you.
Why is Villy Kane dark in the exposition and not blond like in the flashback?
Well, the first time, as Kane tells the story the one imagining the stuff in gray is the listener, that is Castalia. It is not really a flashback, it's a simple exposition of facts.
Now, Castalia had never seen her dad. She just assumed he looked a bit like Callimaco but then she thought he would have brown hair. If you noticed, in this same exposition, we never see Kane's face either. Okay, so I cannot spoil his face before time but the truth is... she cannot imagine it.

The flashback, instead, belongs to Villy Kane himself and he clearly remembers what he looked like when he was young.

So Josh and Kane's mother was called Eve.

To clarify one thing: I used English names here but actually the boys are Italian, and before they were given their pirate name, had Italian names. So to tell you the truth in that balloon I should have written: Caino and Abele.

Just so you know... Italians would never call a child Juda or Cain or Herod because these dudes are super duper super-villains from the Bible.
In fact these names are used to offend people: you are such a Juda (traitor). You are such a Cain (a very bad person with murderous intention).
Poor Kane was charged with such a burden.

"That not truuuuue, that's impossibleeee!"
Sorry May the 4th still too close... but I always wanted to crack the most famous line a supreme ordeal could ever deliver in a movie!
Oh, Luke! Luke! LOL

Except he is not her father! XD
I'm easily amused, I know.

Some of you thought that Castalia was going to gamble.
Do you remember how the comic started? Kane cheated.

She is using Kane's dice... that's why Kane says that it's no "if" it's "when".

The key to the ending of The Pirate Balthasar is all in one page, one simple key page I placed at the beginning of the story.

This one page established a lot of things.
Also if you re-read the comic you realize that many things that appear to be one way actually do mean something different instead... including Kane's midsummer night's dream.

Il Pirata Baldassarre - Capitolo 20 FINE

Fine del capitolo e del fumetto MA... ricordatevi di tornare per un ultimo update con Intermezzo ed Epilogo.

Open publication - Free publishing - More commedia

The Pirate Balthasar - Chapter 20 END

End of chapter 20, remember to stick around for the intermezzo and the epilogue! :D

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

Chapter 20 E curiosities.

So Cassandra will be vomit-zilla for a while.
I think you noticed... poor girl is in the third month and that's when you get the annoying nausea and vomit stuff happening.
Now she cannot eat anything... but do not fear, fourth month is around the corner and she'll start to feed... even on you, if she has to.

In case you were wondering these are catholic vows.
As we know Martin is a catholic but everywhere we went we met catholic priests, friars and monks.

So if you go back to Father Guido marrying Castalia and Kane you can see why he is so unusual and Kane was in a hurry to have Castalia say yes... before the friar changed his mind.

Ah, here's is something curios. A few months ago, when we were playing "whose hands are these?" somebody said that Cat cannot get married.
I was quite surprised by the comment, not because it was true, but because I though it was mentioned in the comic before... while I was leaving this for last.
So I was trying to figure out why people were saying that - actually it's a friend of mine who said that hahahaha - but anyways: yes, poor Cat cannot be registered because he does not really have a name and doesn't truly exist.
He was a possession, not a person, most of his life.

So even if, let's say, Kane wanted to do a speed marriage like he did for himself and Castalia... there would still be the question that the marriage cannot be registered.

So Callista would rather not go even through a ceremony because she think it would make Cat feel uncomfortable.

The doctor of the plague actually existed. You can google them and see that they had stuff inside the long nose of the mask to avoid getting the plague.

I thought it would be cool if they were the messenger of the Pirate King since they are sent to remove... a plague.
In my head they should also be assassins.

I have a feeling we'll see more of them in the future stories.

The epic entrance... and Cat is too short.
Hahaha sorry. I was noticing these days that whenever you watch action movies, like the Avengers, or even movie posters... they all have epic pose and slow motion walk into the scene in a very epic manner and so I wondered... what if one of them is super short?
There goes Cat out of the frame so you cannot see how truly scary his face is... hahahaha.

As you remember.... Kane's grandpa died when he was away - the two years he spent in University.

Now he is piecing everything together and finally realizes that Gilber Sullivan was behind everything, including his grandfather's death.

The thought clearly hurts him: first of all Gilbert Sullivan is the King; second of all... to manage to kill the Duke Cosimo - who never trusted anyone - he must have employed such a trick; his grandfather might have died not knowing even suspecting his own son; if he did know Sullivan was behind it he might have been even more broken hearted since they had known each others for years.

Another little prank here.
Gilbert Sullivan attacks in slow motion and he is very very old.

If you notice even though there is a quick reaction from everybody it takes them a while to actually do something because he is old.
And even though, up until that moment, Kane had pushed him around and bruised him a little... I mean, an old man staggering with a dagger (lol) how to stop that?

A young one is one thing but an old, very very slow one...
Castalia might jump on him without thinking on it twice but Kane wants for her to stay back.
As weak and slow as he looks... he still is the very same man who killed his grandfather and therefore cannot be trusted.

The Pirate Balthasar - Chapter 20E

Actually there are 12 pages instead of 10 in this update hahahaha.
Some juicy extra.

We are but one week or so away from the ending:

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

The Pirate Balthasar - Chapter 20 D

7 new pages for you guys to enjoy today! May the 4th be with you! :D

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

Curiosities and little tricks...

 Let's not take Quoque too literally, we know he cannot talk properly.

What he meant here is clearly the fact that Pifo does not go around saying to the entire World that Quoque is a Balthasar.

Our little buddy here does understand that there must be a reason as to why Kane changed his brother's name and keeps quiet.

He does not go around shouting "Amil Amil!". ;) That's all the Pulcinella secret he is talking about.

Now we know that the doctor's name used to be Itzak.

Kes knows and want to name their baby after the daddy. Ain't that cuuuuute! Aw! <3









And now la Pièce de résistance!

Ahahahaha! Sorry, I played a little trick on you.

But I hope you guys had fun with it... go check chapter 15, around page 12, to revisit the scene!

It's super funny when you re-read it the second time and actually you'll see that Castalia's reaction had a completely different meaning.

The Pirate Balthasar - Chapter 20 C

The update is here. I hope you like the surprise in the final page (in case you want to go and check again... chapter 15, around page 12)

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

Shakespears sonnets and masks.

I'm back from Bali, sorry I did not have internet everywhere and I kept posting pictures of the sketches I was doing mostly on The Pirate Balthasar tumblr (that's because blogger does not have an application for ipad) but it was hard to update everything else. But back to our curiosities... :D

The sonnet Kane is reading is Shakespeare 116, which speaks of marriage of true minds.
Although there are many possible interpretations to this sonnet the reason why Castalia gives this to Kane is quite clear: because love is a lighthouse and a sailor might understand the metaphor.

The storm came in and almost swept her away, and of all the reactions she might have had - because she almost died - she is giving Kane the bravest: the world is dangerous and scary but it does not matter because you are in it. That's the interpretation she gives to the poem.

Did you remember when she scolded Kane about not understanding things unless they are written in a book? There! She found a book he can understand. This puts his mind at peace.

Just imagine what Kane must have gone through while Castalia was sick, in bed. He kept telling her that he was not going anywhere without her, that's a scary thought, if you stop to think about it.
He probably thinks, now, that Castalia is the lighthouse too and therefore understand that what they have really is a marriage of true minds.

The fact that she found the book all by herself, going through God knows how many in his collection, it's something that shows dedication, patience and the will to continue with the life she has, no matter what the cost.

So the mask has to come off... why now?

Because of what she just told him: comes what may... I'll take it all.
She already almost died and no matter how much he tried to protect her, it still did not work. So he can only trust her to take the truth in her hands and decides to share with her a heavy burden.

Now we know that Kane's mask is meant to protect others.
Think about it, if you don't know about it, you cannot talk about it. Of corse the protection is meant mainly for Josh. But in a way it's also meant to take attentions away from the ones around him, by making himself and easy target.

Imagine if you knew, what reaction would you have when you see Josh, you would think: is this him or his brother?
Or if they stand next to each others, people would look at them all weird.

Also there are less chances the information might leak while somebody is drunk.

So why not just cut their hair differently? I would not be enough. Assassins don't go for details, when it comes to take lives, they take it then... ops, I made a mistake, and go after the right one.

The mask is not only something to differentiate the brothers, it's something to grab attention.
Have you ever read the explanation Frank Miller gave to batman logo's being so bright and smacked in the middle of his chest? It's because it attracts attention to that area and villains would shoot him there (where he has a bulletproof vest) instead of shooting his leg, shoulder, arm. It's psychological.

So Kane thought that the mask would create the mystery, attract attention on him, it's all part of the fame and curiosities that would point at him as a target and not at his brother or his men.
An assassin is told: the pirate Balthasar, you can't miss him, he wears a mask.

The danger is focused on Kane himself, everybody else is safe.

So sorry for those who thought there would be a scar or something else, truly Kane would not be the type to cover a scar, cocky as he is, he would wear it with pride.

Usually a mask is there to hide someone's identity, like for Zorro.

This case is the opposite: the mask is there to truly identify him as The Pirate Balthasar, the one and only.

As for the tan line... you already forgot, mumble mumble, Castalia once said that the reason why Kane likes to go on the crow's nest to read is because he can take the mask off and sun bate! XDD (he is still a bit vain, after all).
The skin reaches a level of saturation after which it cannot get any darker.
Now if I were to draw all the tiny tan lines these guys should have around their eyes, because being in the sun they squint, or around their necks (because they all have red necks), there would be no way for me to come out alive from making this comic.

As I once said, I took the decision to simplify many things: the rigging, the saltiness and the wind in the air, the level of noise, the sailing language. It's not like I started super detailed and then simplified it, I tried to stay coherent since chapter one.

All of this to help the story flow faster and  I leave it to the imagination to fill in a lot of the gaps.

Besides, if you think about it, Disney's Pocahontas did not even have fingernails but everybody just assumed they were there.

The Pirate Balthasar - Chapter 20 B

Tadaaaaaa!

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

Curiosities: pregnancies and contraceptives.

 So Kes is pregnant (hurray) and she figured out because well... she fainted.
I used something that happened to a friend of mine to depict this moment because, when it happened to her, it was quite funny. We were talking about something that makes you sick and she passed out and we got seriously scared.


But in the end she was pregnant, LOL. Now my friend was never the kind of girl who had a very precise period, it came, it went, it skipped... so she had no way to figure out that she was pregnant until she hit the floor.

Not all women go through the same kinds of problems when they get pregnant. Some of them feel nausea, others don't, some can eat like crazy, others lose their appetite in the first months of pregnancy.
Nevertheless blood pressure does go down a lot and a feeling of weakness and dizziness may occur. Some faint too.

Another friend of mine was never hungry and had no cravings, another one ate like crazy for a bit, then stopped, then ate again, and another friend of mine could not eat anything but chicken for a while since everything else smelt gross to her. My sister had a very serene pregnancy both times. She had nausea and vomited at first then relaxed the rest of the way but could not move much from the fifth month onward. The friend who could only eat chicken could bend down and do a lot of things instead, she was quite agile.

So... all women take it differently, just as every woman lives her period differently (some suffer, others don't).

In our case, Kes had not been eating and drinking... if you remember she has not been hungry for quite some times and then probably due to the poison alarm she did not have a single sip of water, that's what cause her blood pressure to go down and that's why she suddenly fainted.

Contraceptive. Of course if you go online both wikipedia and durex have an interesting page on the history of condoms.
Condoms existed since the dawn of times, they were made of animals intestines and the first rubber one had to wait for rubber to be invented in 1832.

At some point men just knew how to fabricate home made ones.
My feeling is that doctor would know too and it would use them (and he would probably teach his crew too or force them to use them to avoid illness on board).

But let's face it the usage of such contraceptive methods was mainly to avoid catching venereal diseases.

Once married you either calculate fertile days with your wife or you just be very careful and... pull out.

Anyways if contraceptive methods are not 100% safe these days (just read the small print on condoms, they don't guarantee for you 100%), imagine back in the days.

Whatever happened here the doctor's being careful was not enough. Maybe all it took was just this one time... and ain't it all it takes, just one time? Nowadays too - that's why, kids, be very very careful and get informed! (especially you, girls, don't just rely on your partner to take care of everything. Get informed yourselves!)

Well, in our case, even the most educated amongst them all... scored... see?
Morale of the story: second case of baby on boooooard!

Wanna bet on who is going to be giving birth first? Will it be Kes or Rose?

The Pirate Balthasar - Chapter 20 A

Since this is the final chapter I've decided to release more often, so each release would be around 6 or 7 pages which makes the release more or less weekly. Isn't it amazing? The final chapter already!

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

Kane goes maskless

In more or less 20 days, Kane will drop his mask.

 Do you remember our first game/contest?







Will he really look.... like this? XDDDD