Comic notes:

• There's a lot of stuff in this comic which is directly inspired by experiences I had in school and beyond. This particular sequence is based on something that happened while I was in elementary school. There was this one kid that used to do backflips off of the monkey bars and he ALWAYS stuck the landing. Everyone thought it was so cool and impressive. They'd literally gather around and watch him do flips. It was THE big event at recess. Well, one day a girl also wanted all the plaudits too and she got up on the monkey bars, did a back flip... and landed on her back. She got hauled off in an ambulance. It was the talk of the playground for weeks (everyone thought she was an idiot for attempting it).
• This elementary school is directly based off of the one I went to, same playground layout. Farms all around it. Nobody was jumping off the roof, though. Horses or cows would occasionally get loose in the school grounds.

This is the origin story of the origin story! How did the pirates become friends? What was Ivanhoe like in school? After getting expelled and denied entrance to a private high school, Ivanhoe Scott gets sent to Black River Secondary where he meets his future best friends who later become the π-rates. Ivanhoe is approached by an older student named Kingston, who convinces him to dig up some "treasure" buried and abandoned by some gangsters. What follows is the camping trip from hell...

Minor Niner releases September 2025 as a digital download or print edition. The comic is 48 pages long.