ALTESE

Hugo Pratt is among the greatest storytellers in all of literature,

but whats more, he also draws like a god.

Milo Manara
In his verbal-visual genius, it's impossible to distinguish between the art and the writing; in Pratt's
stories there's only one line. At first sight, Pratt seems to be inspired by all of the orientalism and
exoticism of the last two centuries, but instead of parasitically clinging to it, he criticizes it and turns
it on its head[he] recognizes his sources of inspiration but he bravely fights his battle with the
angel, he elaborates and resolves, as [Harold] Bloom would say, his anxiety of influence, and creates
stories that are solely and unequivocally his own.

Umberto Eco

Hugo Pratt at the opening of his exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1986. Photograph by Carlos Saldi.

SALDI/SIPA & DUKAS

Frank Miller
Wow, where has Corto Maltese been all my life? Apparently, he's just been waiting for this
beautifully translated, exquisite new edition of Hugo Pratt's masterpiece. A must-own for everyone
who cares about graphic novels.

Brian K. Vaughan
I read my first Corto Maltese story when I was ten years old and, ever since, this was
the version of Corto Ive wanted on my shelves. At long last, Pratts masterpiece washes up
on American shores the way it was intended to be seen and read, the way fans all over the
world have known and loved it for decades. If youre like me, rejoice: our long wait is over.
And if this is the first time youve experienced the world of Corto Maltese, I envy you.
Theres a perfect comic just waiting for you between these covers.

Matt Fraction
Corto Maltese was the first European strip to advance a mature, artistically serious sensibility
within the traditional adventure format. The elliptical narrative of the stories, the pervasive sense
of destiny and tragedy, the side trips into the worlds of dreams and magicall capped off with the
exotic, guarded nature of the herocombined with Pratts hard-won craft, worldly experience, and
scrupulous research to form a work of breathtaking scope and power.

Kim Thompson
I bet you thought you had a kick-ass graphic novel collection that included all of the essential works
by all the essential authors, but if you didnt have this brand-new, first-rate, high-quality edition
of Hugo Pratts masterpiece, then you did not have a kick-ass graphic novel collection.
Now you do. (And so do I.)

Brian Michael Bendis

$29.99 EuroComics.us idwpublishing.com

C
O
R
T
O
M
A
L
T
E
S
E

UNDER THE SIGN OF CAPRICORN

Hugo Pratt (1927-1995) is considered one of the great graphic novelists in the history of the medium. His strips,
graphic works, and watercolors have been exhibited at the Grand Palais in Paris and the Vittoriano in Rome, and a landmark
show in 2011 at the Pinacotheque in Paris drew 215,000 visitors, hailing Pratt as the inventor of the literary comic strip.
His far-flung travelshe lived on three continents and was multilingualgave him a healthy skepticism toward
nationalistic, ideological, and religious dogmas, as well as a sympathy for the underdog that was reflected in his fictional
creations, providing them a verisimilitude rarely seen in comics.
Born on June 15, 1927 in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, he spent his childhood in Venice, where he was raised
in a meltingpot of races, beliefs, and cultures. From his mother, Evelina Genero, he was exposed to esoteric studies, including
Kabbalah and cartomancy. His father, Rolando, a soldier in the Italian army, was transferred to Abyssinia in 1936, and the
family followed. When Hugo was just fourteen he was forced to join the colonial police. It brought him in contact with an
international menagerie of soldiers and the charm of those different uniforms, crests, colors, and faces would remain steadily
present in his work. Simultaneously he made friends with his Abyssinian peers, which allowed him to learn the local
languages and integrate into a world that most colonizers never knew. He eagerly read adventure novels by James Oliver
Curwood, Zane Grey, Kenneth Roberts, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others; and discovered the early American adventure
comic strips, particularly Terry and the Pirates by Milton Caniff, which impressed him so much that he decided to become
a cartoonist. After his fathers death in 1943, Pratt returned to Italy and, because of his facility in English, became an
interpreter for the Allied army until the end of the war.
His comics career began in Venice in 1945 and in 1949 he was invited with several other cartoonists to become part
of the thriving comics community in Argentina, where he lived for nearly twenty years, with a brief detour drawing comics
in London in 1959-1960. Pratts Argentine years were productivehe published many series including Sgt. Kirk, Ernie
Pike, Ticonderoga, Capitan Cormorant, and Wheelingand he discovered Latin-American writers such as Octavio Paz,
Leopoldo Lugones, Jorge Luis Borges, and Roberto Arlt.
In the early-to-mid 1960s he split his time between Argentina and Italy, and drew childrens adventure stories for an
Italian magazine. In 1967 Pratt and Florenzo Ivaldi published the magazine Sgt. Kirk to reprint his Argentine comics in
Italy. The first issue also contained nine pages of a new story entitled The Ballad of the Salty Sea featuring the enigmatic
sea captain and adventurer Corto Maltese.
Two years later he resurrected Corto for the French weekly magazine Pif and moved to Paris, while continuing his
travels throughout the world. The success of Corto Maltese in France spread first to Italy and then to many other countries.
From that point forward, all of Pratts works would ultimately be collected in graphic novels. He was made a Knight of Arts
and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.
In addition to Corto Maltese, Pratt also created the series The Scorpions of the Desert and four graphic novels in the
One Man, One Adventure collection, among others. He eventually moved to Grandvaux, Switzerland, on the Lake of
Lausanne, where he died on August 20, 1995.

One of the true masters of comic artthat rarest, most valuable sort of talent in any field,
an authority on times and places beyond your own.

HUGO PRATT

Praise for HUGO PRATT and CORTO

Long before the term graphic novel entered the popular lexicon,
the Italian cartoonist Hugo Pratt pioneered the long-form drawn literature story in 1967 when he
introduced Corto Maltese in the epic adventure The Ballad of the Salty Sea.
Pratt set the standard for all adult adventure comics in Europe and by the mid-1970s Corto was the
continents most popular series and Pratt the worlds leading graphic novelist. His books remain best sellers
in Europe and are published in a dozen languages, yet until now Corto Maltese has been poorly represented
in English.
This volumethe first of twelveat long last affords Pratts masterpiece an American edition in the
original oversized black-and-white format in which Pratt created the work.
The EuroComics editions feature new translations from Pratts 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).
Hugo Pratts peripatetic sailor was featured in a series of twenty-nine stories. The adventures of this
modern Ulysses are set during the first thirty years of the 20th Century in such exotic locales as Pratts native
Venice, the steppes of Manchuria, the Caribbean islands, the Danakil deserts, the Amazon forests, and the
waves of the Pacific. The stories in this volume take place in 1916 and 1917.

The waterfront of Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana (now Suriname), as it looked when Corto Maltese docked his boat at its port in this volumes first story.

EDITED AND DESIGNED BY Dean Mullaney

Lorraine Turner
Patrizia Zanotti

ART DIRECTOR AND CO-COVER DESIGNER

CONSULTING EDITOR

Lettering font based on hand-lettering by Frank Engli.

EuroComics.us
EuroComics is an imprint of
IDW Publishing
a Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC
5080 Santa Fe Street
San Diego, CA 92109
www.idwpublishing.com
Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors
1-410-560-7100
ISBN: 978-1-63140-065-0
First Printing, December 2014
IDW Publishing
Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/Publisher
Greg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/President
Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist
Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief
Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer
Alan Payne, VP of Sales
Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing
Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services
THANKS TO:

Diana Schutz, Greg Goldstein, Dana Renga, Bob Schreck,

Scott Tipton, Justin Eisinger, and Alonzo Simon.
1970 Cong S.A., Switzerland.
Corto Maltese and Hugo Pratt Cong S.A.
Art 2014 Casterman, Bruxelles.
Translation 2014 Dean Mullaney and Simone Castaldi.
All rights reserved.
The IDW logo is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All rights reserved.
The EuroComics logo and colophon is a trademark of The Library of American Comics, LLC.
All rights reserved. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the comic strips in
this publication may be reprinted without the permission of the publisher. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by
any information and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Korea.

UNDER THE
OF

SIGN
CAPRICORN
A CORTO MALTESE Graphic Novel

Translated by Dean Mullaney and Simone Castaldi

An imprint of IDW PUBLISHING

Chapter ONE:

The Secret of
Tristan Bantam

CORTo MALTEse was relaxing on the quiet

veranda of the JavA InN in paramaribo,
dutch GuiANA. even in repose, it was
obvious that he was [a man of destinY.]

SUDDenly the SHow was

interRupted

With a deliberate gesture HE lit one of those thin

cigars that are only smoked in Brazil or New
Orleans--as if he were performing for
an invisible Audience.

My
Apologies
TO
Everybody,
My:

Get lost, you

bastard. I don't
want to see you
here any
more,
Jeremiah!

My ApologiES to
you, too, if you
want.

What's the MatTer?

Don't you feEl well/

Its been a long time

since I Felt well and
unfortunately there's
nothing you can do
about it.

I never said I wanted

to do anything about it...
so far as I'm concerned,
you can go to helL@
Someone who speaks
his mind! I'll try to
follow your Advice.
Goodbye!

You're right,
Corto Maltese.

hE wasn't always like this. There

was a time when professor
Jeremiah Steiner
belonged to a
distinguished elite,
sought after by
the very best of
international
society.

A touchy character,
that Jeremiah.

PRofesSor StEineR?

Yes, ProfESsoR
StEiner of the
UnivErsity of PrAgUe.

with all he drank from Prague to

Paramaribo, however, He has no more
thirst for philosophical
knowledge.

10

He wAs an importanT
man. What he wrote
and tAUGHT is still
the subject of study
AND rEsearCh.

All that's left for me

to do is moderate his
great thirst for rum
and keep him away
from here for a few
hours.

YOU judgE others based on

your own view, Corto Maltese.
But this time youre wrong.
I have the HiGhEST ESTEem for
Professor Steiner.

HerEs a nEw aspecT oF YOUR

PERSONALity. you never struck
me as the charitable type. Do
you DO it FOr his OWN GoOd
oR because he doesnt pay
for WHAT HE Drinks?

Good Day!
Is this Madame
Javas Inn?

THEN you KNEW My FatherRonald Bantam?

RONALD BANtAM?
You are the son of
Ronald Bantam?

My NAME is

YES, Maam. My father

told me a lot about you
before he died.

Ahem! Pardon me, [Madame Java,]

but I see that youre busy at the
moment. IlL go down to the port
and have a look at my boat.

very welL.
IlL see you
tonight.

11

I am
MadAMe Java.

Your FATHER was a dear

friend and his death
saddens me.