"Everyone knows those things are only found in pulp novels," alien abductee Susie says in the first chapter of I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space. "Especially lesbians." That neatly sets the tone for Megan Rose Gedris' webcomic, which plays with pulp adventure tropes and girl-on-girl makeouts — and doesn't take either too seriously.
Ordinary secretary Susie Bell seems like a refugee from a romance comic, right down to the Kirby dots. But her mundane days admiring the other gals in the steno pool are over when she's kidnapped by a crew of gorgeous alien women. They quickly explain that they are lesbian pirates from outer space, and despite her distinct lack of antennae, Susie is one of them. Despite her initial misgivings and her tendency to respond to every situation with "Golly!" Susie finds a place for herself among the hard-drinking bandits — and, if she can confess her feelings, someone's bed.
From there, it's silly and sexy fun times for Susie and the rest of the crew. The lesbian pirates rob banks, battle sexist superheroes, rescue lesbian space princesses, nearly get eaten by cannibals, seek treatment in vampire hospitals (lesbian vampire hospitals, of course), and crash land on foreign planets — more than once. Gedris likes to play with art and narrative styles, and she affectionately toys with her influences here. At times she makes the art look like an old sci-fi pulp comic to the extent that she deliberately washes out some of the color and ages the digital paper. In addition to pulps, she borrows from Star Trek, The Odyssey, and superhero comics.
For all of its retrofuturistic fun — the beehive hairdos, the eyepatches, the bullet-shaped bras — Lesbian Pirates is an adventure comic. There's always something to steal or someone to rescue or some nefarious plot afoot. It's just in the midst of it all, there are ladies going on dates with each other, insane doctors who never quite finished medical school, and ill-timed discussions about whether it counts as cannibalism if you're eating humanoids of a different species.