The return of the magician

Hugo Pratt, creator of Corto Maltese, was a 'magician' whose work 'gained the power to transport everyone who read it to another place, in another age', from Forbidden Planet:

Not all writers and artists are magicians. They can’t all weave those spells; that’s why some books don’t transport you, but merely borrow your time – for a short while. But Hugo Pratt was, and his magic didn’t stop there, with just the creation of the character, because as many of you know, after you have read any one of the adventures of Pratt’s greatest creation, you simply have to have more – that is magic.

There is another explanation of course, it is that Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese books, complete with maps, and sketches of uniforms, and technical notes, and drawings, and historical details, and luscious watercolour sketches, and, of course, the rip-roaring adventures themselves, are just so rewarding that other ‘graphic novels’ seem pale and colourless in comparison.

The adventures of Corto Maltese are, after all, surely the adventures Tintin dreamed of having, if he hadn’t been a boy scout; and if he had instead, been a cigar-chomping, whisky-drinking, pirate-like adventurer, not a junior-reporter – and if he had preferred the company of a string of beautiful women, to Captain Haddock, and Snowy..

In 1970 Hugo moved to France where Corto Maltese became the main character in the magazine Pif Gadget, and from the mid 70s until he left France for Switzerland in 1984, Corto Maltese reigned over the seven seas, in his own Band Dessines, with his adventures translated into many languages. In a testament to the character’s success, in 1983, several magazines in France and Italy were entirely devoted to the adventures of Captain Maltese.

From 1984, until he died in 1995, Hugo Pratt lived in Switzerland in a house overlooking Lake Geneva; where his vast library of some 30,000 books, including his beloved tales by Conrad and London and Melville, could be easily housed. Corto Maltese brought his creator some well deserved fame and wealth, and in exchange Hugo Pratt brought joy, inspiration, adventure, and a little magic, to many...