Next thing I know, I’m in Venice, which happens to be Pratt‘s hometown. His art is charismatic, full of life and style and atmosphere. We all have gaps, y’know? A colleague of mine just admitted he’d never seen Lawrence of Arabia.įast forward to 2015, and I happen upon the Hugo Pratt exhibit at New York’s Society of Illustrators. Hey, I never professed to know all there was to know about world comics. Just as I discovered the blues through the Rolling Stones, Corto Maltese came to me through Frank Miller.įor decades, Corto Maltese to me was a politically important island nation that was the catalyst for the nuclear strike that preceded the climactic battle between Batman and Superman at the end of The Dark Knight Returns.īlissfully ignorant I was until a trip to France some years back, when I visited a Parisian comics shop and found books and books of Hugo Pratt‘s seafaring wanderer … Corto Maltese. Part 3: Why was Batman red? Who was the Kryptonian called Nembo Kid?

Part 2: What DC and Marvel Can Learn From Italian Publishers Part 1: The Italian Voice of DC Comics - Translator Francesco Vanagolli Why Italy? Because I just traveled there and there’s plenty to say comicswise! - Dan Welcome back to our recurring miniseries Comics: Italian Style. As he himself said: “I wanted to tell myself this fable and leave a testament of all those things that have been important to me.Trailing one of Europe‘s great comics characters through the twisty-turny alleyways of his creator’s hometown… and returning to explore IDW‘s new American editions. The myths of Parsifal and the Holy Grail, the wanderings of Hermann Hesse, and the Middle-European alchemical tradition weave their way into Corto Maltese’s path in a journey that begins on the pages of an ancient poem.Ī story dedicated to the magic of reading and of its symbols, in which Pratt makes his eternal curiosity dance, and ties together the plots of thousand-year-old legends. There is a whole range of strange characters pitted against Corto, who is finally acquitted at the end of a long (and very amusing) debate.Ī quiet stay in Switzerland opens the door to a surprising exploration of the subconscious.

Sleepiness is a big thief.”Ĭorto Maltese’s adventure this time is indeed highly surreal and dreamlike and is packed with references to a mythological background that changes according to the varied actions that involve the Holy Grail, Death, the Devil, the Sandman and others. “It often happens that i’ve forgotten the first word by the time i get to the last one of the same line.

The Secret Rose, is the ninth of the twelve titles of Corto Maltese that narrate the adventures of the romantic sailor created by Hugo Pratt in 1967 and now published by IDW Publisher in the USA.

Corto maltese idw