Visual Adaptation & Sequential Art
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. | Written by Martin Gately | Art by Anthony Summey
Pirate Blood is a serialized graphic adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ unfinished novel, following Johnny Lafitte across a sprawling adventure of piracy, romance, crime, and survival.
Working from scripts by the late Martin Gately, I was responsible for translating the story into finished sequential art. My role encompassed visual adaptation, character and environment design, page composition, pencils, inks, color, lettering, sound effects, and the visual presentation of the series. The project required me to move between intimate character moments, period environments, large action sequences, and increasingly elaborate adventure imagery while maintaining a consistent visual world across the full run.
From Script to Sequential Art
Martin’s scripts established the story, dialogue, and dramatic action. My job was to determine how that material would function visually as comics: deciding what to show, how to break action into panels, where to place emphasis, and how to control pacing and clarity within the fixed format of the weekly strip.
That process meant treating the script as the beginning of the visual problem rather than simply illustrating individual moments. Panel size, composition, character placement, expression, camera angle, environmental detail, lettering, and transitions all became part of shaping how the reader experienced the story.
Excerpt from Martin Gately’s Script:
PANEL ONE: Scene: The Portuguese’s cabin – night. Wide shot of the Portuguese’s cabin with Johnny standing and The Portuguese, Pedro and Lil drinking at the table. A champagne bottle and glasses are prominent. In the background, on her hammock, the Queen of Diamonds (Daisy) is still largely in shadow.
- CAPTION: Johnny has been released from the brig and taken to see the Portuguese.
- PORTUGUESE: Well, you did me a good turn and didn’t trick me.
- PORTUGUESE: Now, what do you want?
- JOHNNY: I want to join you as a mate.
Character Design and Continuity
The long-form nature of Pirate Blood required a large cast that could remain recognizable across changing costumes, locations, time periods, and emotional situations. I developed character sheets to establish facial structure, body type, clothing, and recurring visual traits before carrying those designs into the finished strips.
These drawings also served as production references, helping maintain continuity as characters reappeared throughout a story produced over several years.
Reference and Problem Solving
Some of the most challenging sequences required solving physical actions that were difficult to invent convincingly from imagination alone. For an extended underwater sequence, I used photographic reference—including posing myself across a stool—to study how the torso, limbs, clothing, and gestures might read when the character appeared suspended and moving through water.
The reference was never intended to dictate the finished drawing. It gave me physical information that I could reinterpret through staging, exaggeration, anatomy, and composition to make the action clear and dramatic.
Building Environments in 3D
Complex recurring environments sometimes required a different kind of problem solving. For the engine-room sequence aboard the tramp steamer, I constructed the environment in SketchUp, allowing me to establish the machinery, pipes, walkways, doors, and vertical relationships before drawing the finished panels.
The model was a perspective and staging tool rather than a finished image. Once the camera position was established, I could use that structural information as the foundation for the drawings while adjusting composition, characters, detail, and emphasis for the needs of the story.
Sequential Storytelling
Across the series, the visual demands of Pirate Blood changed constantly. A single storyline might move from dialogue and character acting to elaborate environments, underwater action, weather effects, violence, comedy, or quiet emotional scenes.
The following strips represent three different aspects of that storytelling range.
Atmosphere & Dramatic Staging
A nighttime storm sequence uses environment, weather, changing shot scale, physical action, and sound effects to build toward the lightning strike that completes the page. The sequence demonstrates how atmosphere can become part of the storytelling rather than simply serving as background.
Action & Spatial Storytelling
An underwater escape through the flooded machinery of the tramp steamer required the action to remain readable inside an unusually dense environment. The sequence moves from submerged pursuit into the larger vertical engine-room space while maintaining geography, direction, and escalating danger.
Character & Emotional Storytelling
The birth of Johnny’s son offered an opportunity to move away from the series’ larger action sequences and allow performance to carry the story. Gesture, expression, pacing, and changing proximity move the scene from nervous anticipation to the quiet final image of Johnny holding his child.
Sustaining a Serialized Visual World
Producing Pirate Blood over an extended run meant doing more than completing individual pages. Characters, environments, props, costumes, visual motifs, and locations had to remain coherent while the story continually introduced new challenges.
The project became an extended exercise in visual problem solving: interpreting another writer’s script, researching unfamiliar subjects, designing characters and settings, constructing reference when necessary, staging action, and carrying all of those decisions through to finished sequential art.
It remains one of the clearest examples of my professional practice as a visual storyteller: taking written narrative and building the visual system required to make it work as comics.
Credits
Pirate Blood
Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Adaptation written by Martin Gately
Artwork by Anthony Summey
Artwork responsibilities included visual adaptation, character and environment design, page composition, pencils, inks, color, lettering, sound effects, and series visual presentation.
Pirate Blood and related characters and trademarks © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Artwork reproduced for portfolio purposes.
