This English edition of the first of Hugo Pratt’s stories
about his most famous character, was released 45 years after the original.
Loved by Italians and French alike, Corto Maltese has been translated into 15 languages,
yet there seem few English editions among them, making this book a most welcome
publication.
The story is set in the Pacific, amid factual events from
the First World War. Some of the characters are loosely based on historical
figures, for example the companion/nemesis of Corto: Rasputin, a ruthless
pirate, with whom Corto Maltese shares a strange kind of mutual dependency and begrudging admiration.
Hugo Pratt brings a psychological complexity to a genre,
started by RL Stevenson, and developed by Hergé, that often relied on clichés,
yet Pratt not only places his stories into real places and times, but his
characters are fully rounded as human beings, full of contradictions and
surprises, but never less than convincing.
Hugo Pratt combines swashbuckling adventure with meticulous
research, into details such as the Polynesian outrigger or the Fijian catamaran
or the uniforms of the naval officers. Yet, at the same time, his work is
sparse and minimalistic, using a few strokes of a brush or pen to describe a
cloud, the sea or a building. His lines and strokes are lively and
expressionistic, and it is as much about what he leaves out, as what he puts
in.
The publishers have made an admirable effort at colouring
Hugo Pratt's black and white cartoons. The colouring has been done by Patritzia
Zanotti, the partner of Hugo Pratt, and they imitate his wonderful
watercolours: scant, energetic and painterly. However, I do wonder if it would
have been better to leave it as close to the original as possible. The artwork
was done as black and white, and not intended to be coloured, so, despite an
excellent attempt, the colourisation is not so successful.
The artwork has also been changed to fit into a smaller
format, with fewer panels on each page, and this interferes with the rhythm of
the story. No one would dream of doing this to a painting, so why change this
masterpiece of comic art. In terms of the production of the book, I found the attention to detail lacking at
times, with some schoolboy production errors, and I wonder if this is down to
squeezing of budgets and time spent proof reading.
Despite these irritating mistakes, this book will grace any
comic fans shelf, and the wonderful story telling, characters, drama and
artwork, continue to shine through.
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