Corto Maltese

Corto Maltese is an Italian adventure comics series, created by Hugo Pratt in 1967. It features an enigmatic sea captain who lives in the first three decades of the 20th century. The comics are highly praised as some of the most artistic and literary graphic novels ever written and have been translated into numerous languages.

The character debuted in the serial Una ballata del mare salato (Ballad of the Salt 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 (see Franco-Belgian comics), 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 Corte sconta detta arcana (Corto Maltese in Siberia), first serialised in the Italian comics magazine Linus.

In 1976, Ballad of the Salt Sea was published in book format and was awarded the prize for best foreign realistic comic album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

Pratt continued to produce new stories over the next two decades, many first appearing in the eponymous comics magazine Corto Maltese, until 1988 when the final story Mu was serialised, ending in June 1989.

On October 7, 2014 Italian publisher Cong who owns the rights to Corto Maltese, announced that a new album was being made by writer Juan Díaz Canales and artist Rubén Pellejero. The album was released in Europe on September 30, 2015 with the French title "Sous le soleil de minuit" (under the midnight sun) and takes place in 1915. In connection to this, it was announced that a further album would follow

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