Before he and I knew each other, I had followed his career quite closely for years and was constantly backtracking through his inspirations and teachers. I first learned of Pratt through the admiration I had with my eventual friend and mentor, Paul Pope. Pratt himself eventually became regarded as something of a maestro, attaining levels of reverence held only for the highest echelons of European comics, yet most Americans have never heard of Corto (aside from the aforementioned movie) let alone his creator. In Europe, Corto’s visage has adorned everything from t-shirts to Dior ads. At first resembling nothing more than a supporting character, it didn’t take long for the reading public to see Corto as the star of the show. The character of Corto Maltese was born out of the imagination of an Italian comic book artist/writer named Hugo Pratt, and into the pages of a magazine called Sgt Kirk in the year 1967, when the Gentleman of Fortune floated into the story tied to a raft in the middle of the Pacific.
It wouldn’t be for another 16 years that I’d learn what that particular Easter egg meant, or how much of an impact it would have on my life. It was mentioned in passing by reporter Vicki Vale, who’d shot an article for TIME magazine about the small, fictional war torn nation.
I first heard the name “Corto Maltese” when watching the original Tim Burton Batman movie as a boy.
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