Review by Frank Plowright
Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese is considered among the greatest achievements in comics, lyrical period adventures featuring an enigmatic hero and impeccably drawn. Fable of Venice and Other Adventures combines the tale of Corto returning to his hometown with three earlier adventures previously collected as part of Under the Sign of Capricorn.
It’s difficult to select just one Corto Maltese story as the best, but ‘Fable of Venice’ ranks as a favourite with a substantial body of readers and alone would be a five star experience. It stands at the cusp of Pratt on the verge of taking a leap into more metaphysical concerns, but without them dominating as they came to in subsequent works. There’s still a substantial plot as Corto searches for an allegedly magical emerald hidden somewhere in the city, threatened not only from those who also want it, but from the assorted factions in a city being swept by revolutionary fervour.
Corto frequently encounters Pratt’s exaggerated historical figures. Rasputin appears in one of the subsequent shorts, but ‘The Poet’ in the main story is a barely disguised version of the extremely conflicted, yet historically influential Gabriele D’Annunzio. He’s not yet the warrior who seized a city and against all odds held it for a year, but a dangerous man as subtly shown by Pratt in the way he can calm down loose cannon Stevani.
Mystical realism plays a part as Corto wanders from person to person, so gloriously detailed in Pratt’s art. The composition is tight, but the actual art is loose and energetic, with Pratt masterfully dovetailing light and shade, and when compared with the following stories produced several years previously it’s evident how Pratt has modified his storytelling. The earlier work has far greater reliance on faces in close-up, whereas in Venice there’s greater distance.
That’s not to say those other stories lack artistic substance. They’re early Corto Maltese material, but the confident work of an artist whose career already stretched back twenty years in assorted different countries. Why they’ve been extracted is puzzling. Pratt produced them as individual stories, but when previously published a continuity is evident as Corto sails from place to place along the South American coast. However, the three here showcase the mixture of adventure and tragedy, yet there’s also observation, humour and whimsy. Corto himself remains relatively unknown, his deeds evident, but his motivations not always so.
The conundrum for English language versions of Corto Maltese is that second-hand copies command high prices, yet no-one seems able to keep the series in print. We wish Fantagraphics better luck with their current reissues.
