Corto Maltese

Corto Maltese is a series of adventure and fantasy comics named after the character Corto Maltese, an adventurous sailor. It was created by the Italian comic book creator Hugo Pratt in 1967. The comics are highly praised as some of the most artistic and literary graphic novels ever written and have been translated into numerous languages and adapted into several animated films. The series features Corto Maltese, an enigmatic sea captain who lives in the first three decades of the 20th century. Born in Valletta on the island of Malta on 10 July 1887, the son of a sailor from Cornwall, and a gypsy from Seville. In his adventures full of real-world references, Corto has often crossed with real historical characters like the American author Jack London and his nurse Virginia Prentiss, the American outlaw Butch Cassidy, the German World War I flying ace Red Baron, and many others. Publication history The character debuted in the serial Ballad of the Salty Sea, one of several Pratt stories published in the first edition of the magazine Sergeant Kirk in July 1967. The story centers around 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 French 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 Corto Maltese in Siberia, first serialised in the Italian comics magazine Linus.