corto maltese the ballad of the salt sea

In 1937, Pratt moved with his mother to Abyssinia (Ethiopia), joining his father who had moved there following the conquest of that country by Italy. He was also related to actor Boris Karloff (né William Henry Pratt). This EuroComics edition features new translations from Pratt's original Italian scripts by Dean Mullaney, the Eisner and Harvey Award-winning editor of the Library of American Comics, and Simone Castaldi, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Hofstra, and the author of Drawn and Dangerous: Italian Comics of the 1970s and 1980s (University Press of Mississippi).īorn in Rimini, Italy to Rolando Prat and Evelina Genero, Hugo Pratt spent most of his childhood in Venice in a very cosmopolitan family environment. The story captures the imagination of the reader from the opening pages with a tight, compelling storyline that can be interpreted on different levels. The pace of the narrative and the drawings are very modern and Pratt permeates the adventure with an extraordinary atmosphere of the great outdoors. The action begins in November 1913 in the South Seas as feelings of the Great War were already looming but the romantic ideals of the nineteenth century were still alive. Pratt was inspired by Conrad, Stevenson, and London, but even more directly by Henry de Vere Stacpool's Blue Lagoon, from which the author got the idea of a small island in the Pacific which he named 'Escondida.' The Ballad of the Salty Sea is also hailed as the first example of the literary comic strip. It is here that we also meet the young and beautiful Pandora, her brother Cain, the mysterious criminal mastermind Monk, the grim and ferocious Rasputin, Lieutenant Slutter of the German Navy, and the natives Skull and Tarao.

Corto is but one of a strong ensemble cast of characters whose lives permeate the entire 12-book series. Originally serialized beginning in 1967, this book is universally acknowledged as Hugo Pratt's masterpiece, in which he introduces Corto Maltese to the world.

Celebrate this milestone in the history of graphic novels, winner of the world's first-ever 'Best Graphic Novel' award, taking the prize in 1976 at the Angoul�me Fesitval.

Corto maltese the ballad of the salt sea