Space Pirate Captain MacTaggart

Space Pirate Captain MacTaggart is a Scottish-American series of comic stories, animations, and (originally) web serial novels. It is part of the Tails from the Federation collection of science fantasy/space opera stories.

The series focuses on the misadventures of a space pirate raccoon, Captain Jaws MacTaggart, a former soldier in the Stellar Federation, who has now turned her back on her superiors, and now fights against them in her spaceship, the Stellar Typhoon.

Assisting Jaws in her quest against the Federation are a crew of unorthodox misfits: Leslie Kennedy, a tough squirrel with a dark past; a cat known only as Blackmask, a lazy yet streetwise hood-cat; and Kyoko Mori, the Typhoon's shy and softly spoken Chief Engineer. Fighting against Jaws and her crew are the forces of the Stellar Federation, led by Commander Barratt, a grey wolf who was Jaws' former superior, and his meek vulpine subordinate, Captain Mandarin. They fight against Jaws in their battlecruiser, the Oshan Akuma-and almost never win, thanks to Jaws' competence and their own lack thereof.

The story was created by young novelist Craig Black and was developed by Jordann William Edwards, the executive producer of the Tails franchise (and creator of The Dynamite Twins and Friends), and Jake Elmer, the lead artist and illustrator of the series. Elizabeth Mogan contributes to the overall Tails as another executive producer, whereas Douglas Marshall is the science contributor, and Joey Carlon contributes to story editing. A spin-off of this series, Bloody Cutlass, was created by Edwards and Mogan to expand upon the character of Darkblade, a former antagonist of this series. It’s also been confirmed that Elmer and Carlon are working of a sequel, The Lumarions, which focuses on a younger crew battling a ruthless pirate from the Midori Empire.

Protagonists

 * Captain Jaws MacTaggart (Keiko Kaizoku) is a Japanese female raccoon and captain of the Stellar Typhoon and its crew. Jaws was a former Captain in the Stellar Federation Military Police, she was dishonourably discharged and exiled after an event that she doesn't like to talk about. Since then, she has turned her back on the Federation, and thus instigated a long and hard battle against her former commander. She is also a semi-cyborg, due to an artificial robotic arm received after a bout with Midori.


 * Sgt. Leslie Kennedy is a British red squirrel and the loyal First Mate to Captain Jaws MacTaggart. She had also worked under Jaws in the Military Police. After Jaws was stripped of her command and discharged, Leslie deserted, and was recruited into a new position as the First Mate on the Stellar Typhoon. Leslie is rather meek, cold and stoic on the outside. However, she is constantly haunted by memories of her past, and often wishes she could redeem herself. Her experience on the battlefield proves invaluable to Jaws and the crew of the Stellar Typhoon. However, it's also left her rather shaken, and the crew respect that enough to not challenge or question her about what happened back then. Though she is well respected by her fellow crew mates, Leslie has few actual friends among them, the most notable of which is Kyoko Mori. However, it's also been hinted that she has a fondness for Alasdair Geddes. According to Jacob Elmer, Leslie is somewhat similar to "Dirty Harry" due to her "bad ass" persona and the fact that she carries Smith & Wesson Revolvers as her main sidearms.


 * Blackmask is a yellow cat and Jaws' second mate, and the Stellar Typhoon's main weapons expert. She is a lazy yet streetwise hood-cat from East Oakland, California, Earth. After being raised in a single-parent household (her biological father was one of three "baby daddies"), she became a member of various street gangs, and this has helped her crewmates enormously in their battle against the Stellar Federation. Blackmask is lazy and annoying, and some of the crew members hardly get along with her, but she is somewhat friendly. Her lifestyle was greatly influenced by hip hop, and especially punk rock.


 * Kyoko Mori a Japanese female raccoon, Jaws' chief engineer and her niece. She is the very shy and sweetly spoken and is quite proficient technologically, and she can usually be found tinkering with some contraption of her design. However, the nature of her work means that Kyoko tends to shut herself away from the world at large. She is best friends with Leslie and is deeply in love with Alasdair.


 * Alasdair Geddes a Scottish male raccoon and a gypsy who's had his wings clipped (in his own words), Alasdair Geddes is the assistant Chief Engineer on the Typhoon. First coming to the Typhoon to escape his dreary existence on the planet Procyon VI, it is through Alasdair's eyes that we are first introduced to Jaws and her universe. Alasdair is one of the very few males in the Stellar Typhoon's predominantly female crew of pirates. However, this hasn't proven to be any trouble for him, as he's quite capable of working around the distractions of his colleagues. In fact, he's actually in a romantic relationship with his superior, chief engineer Kyoko Mori. He also has a passion for rock music and playing guitar.

Antagonists

 * Commander Zeus Barratt  is a Grey wolf and is the primary antagonist of the series, being the chosen emissary for the Stellar Federation, and in command of the battlecruiser Oshan Akuma (Ocean Demon). Barratt is proud, ruthless and slightly unstable mentally, but is nonetheless fiercely devoted to the service of the Stellar Federation. He repentantly tries fights Jaws and her crew trying to place them behind bars for their acts of Piracy, but fails in the process.


 * Princess Midori , also known as the Green Fox, is the ruler of the Midori Empire, and one of the major antagonists of the series. Like Commander Barratt, she is after Jaws, but she has one ultimate goal in mind: to gain omnipotence across all of time, space, and reality.


 * Darkblade is a German Shepherd and rival pirate who is captain of the Bloody Cutlass ship. He is infatuated with Jaws MacTaggart and has had a crush on her for a while. He was introduced as a semi-recurring antagonist in the series, before getting his own spin-off in Bloody Cutlass. Darkblade is considered to be the Captain Jack Harkness of the entire series; he describes himself as an omnisexual, and is the most perverted of any of the characters.

Other characters

 * Finbar MacTaggart is a gray raccoon and the captain of the Stellar Monsoon. He is also the husband of Jaws MacTaggart.


 * Kumiko Mori is Jaws' twin sister and Kyoko's mother. She works as an engineer on the railway. Like her sister, Kumiko has a rebellious streak, but hers is more a desire to go against the gender conventions of her generation. This is exemplified by her working as a locomotive driver in the Minato Dockyards; typically a man's world. She is also shown to take pride in her work, and develop a leadership attitude.

Controversy within the team
Recent controversy between the crew working on the series, had sparked massive tension. In July 2017, the crew has had a bout of infighting regarding the series itself, due to a simple mistake regarding pieces of fan art that January, and when the person who made said artwork stated that Jacob Elmer wasn't as important enough to the series as Craig Black or Jordann William Edwards. Jacob was put in a deep depression due to his lack of acknowledgement.

The end of the franchise
Edwards tried doing some damage control by bridging it all together in one shared continuity, but even that wasn't enough, as all of their ideas varied wildly from one another. After a ton of criticism on his own work (or lack thereof), he decided to cede control of the Tails universe and focus on his own TDT world.