Corto Maltese: no clock, no god, no flag, no nation

26.03.2008 \ Behind the projects, Journal, Upcoming projects

Longway Factory has been asked to design and develope a very special and international project about the figure of Corto Maltese. For more information stay tuned…

Corto Maltese is a comics series featuring an eponymous character, a complex sailor-adventurer. It was created by Italian comic book creator Hugo Pratt in 1967. The Corto Maltese series has been translated into many languages and is known worldwide. The character debuted in the serial “Una ballata del mare salato” (Ballad of the Salt Sea), one of several Pratt stories published in the first edition of the magazine Sgt.Kirk in July. The story concerned smugglers and pirates in the World War I-era Pacific Islands. In 1970 Pratt moved to France and began a series of short Corto Maltese stories for the comics magazine Pif gadget, an arrangement lasting four years and producing many 20 page stories. In 1974 he returned to full-length stories, sending Corto to 1918 Siberia in the story Corte sconta detta arcana (Corto Maltese in Siberia), first serialised in Linus. In 1976, Ballad of the Salt Sea was awarded with the prize for best foreign realistic comic album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Pratt frequently produced new stories in the following years, many first appearing in the comics magazine Corto Maltese, until 1988 when the final story Mu was serialised, ending in June 1989.

Corto Maltese (possibly derived from the Venetian Courtyard of the Maltese) is a laconic sea captain adventuring during the early 20th century (1900-1920s). A “rogue with a heart of gold,” he is tolerant and sympathetic to the underdog. Born in Valletta on July 10, 1887, he is a son of a British sailor from Cornwall and an Andalusian prostitute known as “La Niña de Gibraltar”. As a boy growing up in the Jewish quarter of Cordoba, Maltese realised he had no fate line on his palm and therefore carved his own with a razor, determining that his fate was his to choose. Although maintaining a neutral pose, Corto instinctively supports the disadvantaged and oppressed.

The character embodies the author’s skepticism of national, ideological, and religious assertions. Corto befriends people from all walks of life, including the murderous Russian Rasputin (no relation with the historical figure, apart from physical resemblance and some characteristic attributes), British heir Tristan Bantam, Voodoo priestess Gold Mouth and Czech academic Jeremiah Steiner. He also knows and meets various historical figures, including Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Hesse, Butch Cassidy, White Russian general Roman Ungern von Sternberg and Enver Pasha of Turkey. His acquaintances treat him with great respect, as when a telephone call to Joseph Stalin frees him from arrest when he is threatened with execution on the border of Turkey and Armenia.

Corto’s favourite reading is the Utopia by Thomas More, but he never finished it. He also read books by London, Lugones, Stevenson, Melville and Conrad.

Corto Maltese stories range from straight historical adventure stories to occult dream sequences. He is present when Red Baron is shot down, helps the Jivaros in South America, and flees Fascists in Venice, but also unwittingly helps Merlin and Oberon to defend Britain and visits the lost continent of Mu.

Chronologically, the first Corto Maltese adventure, La giovinezza (The Early Years), happens during the Russo-Japanese War. In other albums he experiences the Great War in several locations, participates in the Russian Civil War after the October Revolution, and appears during the early stages of Fascist Italy. In a separate series by Pratt, Gli Scorpioni del Deserto (The Desert Scorpions) he is described as disappearing in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.This is a list of the twelve Corto Maltese novels in chronological order. Original titles - French or Italian - are given first, followed by English ones. Please note that not all the albums are available in English and some NBM albums do not correspond to any original French or Italian title. French editions were published by Casterman, Italian by Edizioni Lizard.

• 1905 (French) La Jeunesse (black and white 1981, colour 1985); published in Italian as La giovinezza (colour 1983); in English as The Early Years
• 1913-1915 (French/Italian) Una ballata del mare salato/La ballade de la mer salée (black and white 1967-1969; colour 1991); in English as The Ballad of the Salt Sea
• 1916-1917 (French) Sous le signe du Capricorne (black and white 1971; colour edition as - episodes 1 to 3 - Suite caraïbéenne, 1990; and - episodes 4 to 6 - Sous le Drapeau des Pirates, 1991); various episodes are availablle in English as separate editions
• 1917 (French) Corto toujours un peu plus loin (black and white 1970-1971); various episodes are availablle in English as separate editions
• 1917-1918 (French) Les Celtiques (black and white 1971-1972); in English as The Celts
• 1918 (French) Les Éthiopiques (black and white 1972-1973); in English as Corto Maltese in Africa
• 1918-1920 Corte sconta detta Arcana (black and white 1974-1975), better known under its French title Corto Maltese en Sibérie; in English as Corto Maltese in Siberia
• 1921 (Italian) Favola di Venezia - Sirat Al-Bunduqiyyah (black and white 1977; colour 1984), in French as Fable de Venise, in English as Fable of Venice
• 1921-1922 (French/Italian) La maison dorée de Samarkand/La Casa Dorata di Samarcanda (published simultaneously in France and Italy, black and white
• 1980, colour 1992); in English as The Golden House of Samarkand
• 1923 Tango… y todo a media luz (first published in Italian, black and white 1985; editions in other languages normally use the same Spanish title)
• 1924 (Italian) Le helvetiche - Rosa alchemica (colour 1987; also known as La rosa alchemica); in French as Les hélvétiques, in English as The Secret Rose
• 1925 Mu (first published in Italian, first part in 1988-1989, second part in 1988-1989). In French as Mû (black and white and colour editions, both 1992). Not available in English.

ABOUT HUGO PRATT

Born in Rimini in Romagna to Rolando Pratt and Evelina Genero, Hugo Pratt spent all his childhood in Venice in a very cosmopolitan family environment. His paternal grandfather Joseph was of English origin, while his maternal grandfather was a Marrano Jew and his grandmother was of Turkish origin. He was also related to the actor Boris Karloff, whose real name was William Henry Pratt. In 1937, Hugo Pratt moved with his mother to Abyssinia (Ethiopia), joining his father working there after the conquest of that country by Mussolini’s Italy. Pratt’s father was a professional Italian soldier who was captured in 1941 by the British troops and in late 1942 died from disease as a prisoner of war. The same year, Hugo Pratt and his mother were interned into a prison camp at Dirédaoua where he bought comics from guards and later was sent back to Italy by the Red Cross. In 1944 he was at risk of being executed as SS troops had mistaken him for a South African spy.

After the war, Pratt moved to Venice where he organized spectacles for the Allied troops. Later Pratt joined the Venice Group with other Italian cartoonists, including Alberto Ongaro and Mario Faustinelli. His inspiration could be traced back to his reading of authors like James Oliver Curwood, Zane Gray, Kenneth Roberts, as well as the comic books by Lyman Young, Will Eisner and mainly Milton Caniff. Their magazine, Asso di Picche, launched in 1945 as Albo Uragano, concentrated on adventure comics. The magazine scored some success and published works by young talents like Dino Battaglia, Rinaldo D’Ami and Giorgio Bellavitis. The character Asso di Picche (”Ace of Spades”) was a success, mainly in Argentina, where Pratt was invited in 1949.

In the late 1940s, he moved to Buenos Aires where he worked for Argentine publisher Editorial Abril and met Argentinian comics artists like José Luis Salinas, Alberto Breccia and Solano López. The passage to Editorial Frontera saw the publication of some of the most important series by Pratt. These included Junglemen (written by Ongaro), Sgt. Kirk, Ernie Pike and Ticonderoga. The latter were all written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld, one of the major writer of Argentinian and perhaps world comics. Pratt taught drawing in the Escuela Panamericana de Arte directed by Enrique Lipszyc. He often travelled to South American destinations like Amazon and Mato Grosso. During that period he produced his first comic book as a complete author, Anna della jungla (”Ann of the Jungle”), which was followed by the similar Capitan Cormorant and Wheeling. The latter was completed after his return to Italy.

From the summer of 1959 to the summer of 1960 Pratt lived in London where he drew a series of war comics for Fleetway Publications, with British scriptwriters. After that he returned to Argentina, despite harsh economic times. From there he moved again to Italy in 1962 where he started a collaboration with the child comic book magazine Il Corriere dei Piccoli, for which he adapted several classics of adventure literature, including Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

In 1967, Pratt met Florenzo Ivaldi, and with him created a comics magazine named after his hero, Sgt. Kirk. In the first issue Pratt’s most famous story was published: Una ballata del mare salato, which introduced his best known character, Corto Maltese.

Corto’s series continued three years later on the French magazine Pif. Due to his rather mixed family ancestry, Corto had learned snippets of things like kabbalism and lots of history. Many of his stories are placed in real historical eras and deal with real events: the 1755 war between French and British colonists in Ticonderoga, colonial wars in Africa and both World Wars, for example. Pratt did exhaustive research for factual and visual details, and some characters are real historical figures or closely based on them, like Corto’s main opponent, Rasputin. Many of the minor characters cross over into other stories in a way that places all Pratt’s stories into the same continuum.

Pratt’s main series in the second part of his career include Gli scorpioni del deserto (five stories) and Jesuit Joe. He also collaborated with his friend and pupil Milo Manara for Tutto ricominciò con un’estate indiana and El Gaucho.

From 1970 to 1984, Pratt lived mainly in France where Corto Maltese became the main character of a comics series initially published, from 1970 to 1973, by the magazine Pif gadget, which brought him the recognition both of the general public and of the critics. Published as comic book, this series was translated into fifteen languages.

From 1984 to 1995 Pratt lived in Switzerland. He owed his international success to Corto Maltese, a very psychologically complex character resulting from the travel experiences and the endless invention capacity of his author. Wanderer by nature, Hugo Pratt continued to travel from Canada to Patagonia, from Africa to the Pacific area. He died of cancer on 20th August 1995.

Pratt has cited Joseph Conrad, Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville and Jack London as influences, along with Milton Caniff and Will Eisner.

On Friday, July 15, 2005, at San Diego Comic-Con’s 17th Annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, he was one of four professionals that year inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame.

One of the series created by Pratt, entitled “The Scorpions of the Desert” in English, has been resumed after Pratt’s death: In 2005 a Sixth volume in this series was released, drawn by Pierre Wazeem and entitled “Le chemin de fievre”. A Seventh album was scheduled by the French publishers Casterman for release in March 2008. Casterman have also on several occasions hinted at the possible future release of a further episode in the Corto Maltese saga.