Joe the Pirate
Writer: Hubert
Artist: Virginie Augustin
Translation: Ivanka HahnenbergerLetterer: E.K. Weaver
Publisher: Iron Circus Comics
Publication Date: February 2026
How much can we forgive our bastards?
Joe the Pirate is a comic about Joe Carstairs, a queer person by every definition of the phrase. She lived fast, loved many women, and was, to some degree, an icon. And yet, over the course of the graphic novel, one begins to get the sense of an undeniable darkness lurking beneath the surface of the flashy cars, quick wit, and beautiful women.
The key is, in many regards, the silence. What goes without saying or the answers that are deferred. For example, consider the fact that Carstairs was disowned by her mother and lacks the funds from her wealthy grandmother. How, then, is Joe able to pay for any of the extravagant parties and career as a boat racer? Equally, throughout the comic, we see a cavalcade of sexual interests for Joe, many of whom come and go? Why do they leave? Indeed, Joe herself asks this question at a number of points. Who would want to leave her?
There are hints — both in Hubert’s script and Virginie Augustin’s art — that Joe is a bastard to the people she loves. Sleeping around with other women, negging them to stay with her, even having a midlife crisis and buying an island. (Said island being in the Bahamas and previously occupied. But those people don’t matter, they’re “unenlightened.”) In one of the book’s cleverer moves, Augustin draws Joe for the majority of the book as an unageing child the size of an adult.
In many regards, Joe’s bastardry stems from their desire to remain a child. To act as the king of an island without having to engage in the responsibilities of life, be it holding down a steady job, keeping at a sport that other people are capable of beating you at, being a lover who’s actually there for the women she romances, or actually being engaged with the literal, actual Nazis and pedophiles on your fairytale island. It’s a performance, an act, a show. But you can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding.
That is to say, the comic is a hoot. Hubert’s script paints a picture of an unsympathetic, but never uninteresting, person growing throughout the turbulent 20th century. And Augustin paints the world with an air of cartoonish wonder to highlight the devastating reality. It’s not about that century’s secret heart or framing it as a means to comment about various modern figures. Instead, it explores the life of one person shielded from the horrors of the 20th century in such a way as to be complicit in them.
The graphic novel is a treat. It’s honest in all the best ways and dishonest from a genuine place. It’s about someone who subsumed themselves into a performance without truly understanding what, exactly, she was shaping herself into.
Also, it’s queer as fuck.
Joe the Pirate is out this month from Iron Circus Comics
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