Princeless - Raven: The Pirate Princess is a 2015 action/adventure fantasy comic book from Action Lab Comics written by Jeremy Whitley and illustrated by Rosy Higgins and Ted Brandt.
A spinoff of Whitley's earlier comic Princeless and Princeless: The Pirate Princess, the story follows Raven Xingtao, the Pirate Princess, as she seeks revenge against her brothers for stealing her inheritance. Raven begins the main part of her quest by assembling an all-female crew.
The series debuted on July 28, 2015, and ran for twelve issues before going on hiatus in late December 2016. The series returned on November 15, 2017, with the continuation denoted as "Year Two" and starting with a new issue #1 and a different artist, lasting 13 issues before "Year 3" began with another new #1.
Like its parent series, the comic is currently on an indefinite hiatus due to issues with the publisher.
This comic provides examples of:
- Amazon Brigade: The Raven's pirate crew is all girls.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished:
- Averted in the very first issue. While chasing Sunshine for pickpocketing her, Raven runs into a door and breaks her nose, resulting in a gush of blood. Sunshine also gets fairly banged up when Raven finally catches her and doles out a brief pummeling.
- Averted again in issue #12. Raven and Leilani beat each other bloody in a duel, and Raven even loses a tooth in addition to getting her nose broken again.
- Breast Attack: After getting a Heroic Second Wind in her duel with Leilani, Raven switches to fighting with her fists and punches Leilani in the chest multiple times, to her annoyance.
- Cain and Abel: Raven's brothers Magpie and Crow stole her title and ships. She wants revenge, and they want to kill her.
- Cast Full of Gay: Most of the girls on the ship are either confirmed or implied to be sapphic.
- Raven and Sunshine are lesbians.
- Ximena and Katie are bisexual.
- Quinn, Zoe, and Ananda are sapphic (into women but unknown whether lesbian or bi)
- Jayla is Asexual.
- The Cameo: The three women who run Katie Kling's guild are drawn in the likeness of Majorie Liu, Kelly Sue Deconnick, and G. Willow Wilson.
- Darker and Edgier: Relatively speaking. While still rather lighthearted and appropriate for older kids, the series is also more violent and romantic than Princeless and deals with more mature themes.
- Family Theme Naming: Ravens, crows, and magpies (the Xingtao sibs) are black birds. Their mom was a poet.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Sunshine is half elf. In one chapter, Des insults her for it and gets punched out.
- Handwraps of Awesome: Raven wears these during her mission to find Leilani and during their subsequent fight.
- Hate Sink: Much like Princeless, the series' villains are typically raging misogynists with no redeeming traits. Crow and Magpie's main reason for convincing their father to lock Raven in her tower and stealing her birthright is that they're egotistical jerks who didn't want to be bossed around by a girl.
- Hello, Sailor!: The majority of Raven's crew is gay or bisexual and most of them have paired up into dating couples.
- Hollywood Healing: Raven is a normal human, but her nose heals very quickly, despite getting fractured rather often.
- Love Triangle: Sunshine has a crush on Raven, but Raven is interested in Ximena, who realizes she likes Raven back.
- Mugging the Monster: Sunshine didn't expect the girl she stole from to be an experienced and renowned pirate who would chase her around town to get her money back.
- Pirate Girl: Almost the entire main cast is one.
- Running Gag: Raven getting her nose broken. It happens three times in about as many weeks.
- Silk Hiding Steel: Leilani, the healer. She's quite feminine, but is a challenge for Raven to beat.
- Strength Equals Worthiness: Raven seeks out Leilani, a powerful healer, after one of her crew falls gravely ill. The healer agrees to help only if Raven can defeat her in combat.
- Tap on the Head: Sunshine KOs Raven with a bottle at the end of issue #1.
- Teeth Flying: Leilani knocks out one of Raven's teeth in their duel.
- Terrible Interviewees Montage: Raven's attempt to recruit wannabe pirates at the local bar goes horribly, as most of them are men who are trying to hit on her, are insensitive about her race, or just too entitled. She almost doesn't hear Katherine's sincere audition to be a pirate against tyranny, having gotten so used to getting scummy pitches.
