Ive always wanted to write a pirate story.
Not so much a yarr and avast story, but something that captures the adventure, mystery and excitement of the high seas, the thrill of hunting buried treasure and danger at every turn. Sure, pirates are whats hip[ with the kids these days, but what really drew me, what really tempted me to begin laying out the geography and back story youll read about and walk around in while reading TODT HILL was borne from two things: Staten Island and THE GOONIES.
Lets take the first part last.
THE GOONIES, for those who havent seen it, was a movie that came out back in the eighties that followed a handfull of misfit kids as they searched for buried treasure beneath their town, placed there long ago by the pirate One Eyed Willie. An all ages, feel good high stakes adventure, THE GOONIES was one of those movies you could watch over and over on a Sunday afternoon, dreaming of solving clues, finding hidden doubloons and defeating the bad guys and getting the girl. Adventure, comedy, excitement, suspense and romance all in one package - and it even featured one of the Coreys, for good measure! THE GOONIES, along with the recent PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN flicks, evoked the kind of storytelling I wanted to convey in TODT HILL - fun, exciting feel good adventure. But how I did not know until I visited Staten Island this year.
See, my wife is from Staten, and on one of our earliest visits to her parents, she gave me a quick tour of the area and I was taken with what seemed like a patchwork set of communities. Low income housing gives way to pretty seafront and ornate, palatial homes run up against suburban ranches. Ive always been fascinated with SIs look. Its the borough that most people dont have much to do with as many of my friends say, its geographically undesirable. But I think the general LOOK of the island is aesthetically interesting, you know? One one hand it kind of looks like this lush, green paradise from the Goethals Bridge and as you get closer, its like descending into a hilly, almost labyrinth-like suburbia. For some odd reason I get this feeling like someone pasted a few different kinds of neighborhoods together and connected them to the mainland with three bridges.
My wife drove me into the area where the rich folks and mobsters live. The houses and views were breathtaking - but again, it was like several types of homes connected together with no rhyme or reason. It was like looking at a mosaic suburbia. On an island.
The wheels started spinning.
Ive always wanted to do a pirate book. Even before i saw PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and started reading SEA OF RED. Something about the sea and plunder, probably. But I dont want to do a straight old pirate story, you know same thing with horror. Who the hell wants to do another vampire story or another haunted mansion story. And then theres the prison story Ive always wanted to do. All of them ideas Ive wanted to construct but never had the spark to ignite it.
Until I visited Todt Hill.
A village constructed on the remains of a pirate cove, filled with hidden, stolen Peruvian treasure. Over the centuries, the islands grew around it, different types of families and different types of people moving in all drawn by the call of treasure. Suburbanites. Businessmen. Corporate Pirates. And a legion of undead Peruvians, searching for the gold thats rightfull theirs.
Todt Hill is the ultimate enclosed community, cut off from the rest of the world apart from a monitored high-security ferry. Families live and work alongside the mob, the pirates and the undead, all searching for the treasure, all combing the island to find a clue that might lead them to the prize. Yesterday, the Tompkins brothers found that clue.
TODT HILL is an all ages adventure story in the vein of POC and THE GOONIES that serializes every Friday at The Chemistry Set, a collective of writers and artists, including several Xeric Award winners, pooling their talent to provide readers with free weekly comics at the website http://www.chemsetcomics.com. The stories are in a variety of genres, including fantasy, thriller, Western, and straight-up adventure, and the collaborators aim to provide something for everybody. TODT HILL is a tale of ancient treasure, insular societies, immortal greed and the infinite possibilities of youth. Policeman Jacob Tompkins’ has just moved his entire family to the enclosed island community of Todt Hill – the first to do so in ten years. Yesterday, Jacob’s teenage son Mike and his disabled brother Gil discovered a secret map in their backyard that explains why, forever changing their lives and community… a community fueled by the rumor of an ancient, buried treasure. Centuries ago, pirates filled a cavern beneath the world with riches stolen from plundered English galleons and Peruvian ruins. Over the years, all paths to the hidden pirate cove were lost … save a map, left ashore the unknown island within which the treasure lay. Pilgrims lured by the unexplained siren call of the bounty populated what became Richmond Island and for ages no one even knew they were living atop the greatest treasure known to man until ten years ago when the zombie Peruvians arrived, searching for their rightful property. One month after, descendants of the treasure’s original “owners” – corporate pirates - followed with court orders and inheritance claims. The Paglia Crime Family moved operations off the mainland to find the buried gold and violence broke out between the varied groups. The Governor evacuated families - those that would leave - and destroyed all bridges, cutting the volatile island away from the rest of the state and country. Richmond Island – now renamed Todt Hill, or “Death Hill” - became the ultimate enclosed community: exiled from America (apart from those commuting for work and supplies aboard monitored high security ferries), the inhabitants of the Hill live and work alongside each other in their own insular societies - suburbanites, mobsters, pirates and zombies - that comb the island for clues that might lead to the secret caves below, each move they make threatening to destroy the uneasy peace that exists. The Tompkins brothers have found that clue and together with their new found friends including a zombie mechanic, a Mafia princess and the smallest pirate in the world, they’re out to find a buried treasure that will save a community and reunite their town 
with the rest of America.
TODT HILL, Page Thirteen is up today. The strip updates every Friday.
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