CORTO MALTESE: DISAPPEAR DOES NOT MEAN DEATH

The Grandma and Corto Maltese in Venice

The Grandma is spending her last hours in Venice. After visiting old friends, she is going to walk across the city accompanied by Corto Maltese and they're going to travel to the past to remember the old Venice during the beginning of the 20th century.

Corto is an old Grandma's friend whose name is possibly derived from the Venetian Corte Maltese, Courtyard of the Maltese, today Corte Contarini del Bovolo, next to Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo. He's a laconic sea captain adventuring. His friends describe him as a rogue with a heart of gold. He is tolerant and sympathetic to the underdog.

Born in Valletta, Malta, on July 10, 1887, he is the son of a British sailor from Cornwall and an Andalusian–Romani  witch and prostitute known as La Niña de Gibraltar. As a boy growing up in the Jewish quarter of Córdoba, Maltese discovered that he had no fate line on his palm and therefore carved his own with his father's razor, determining that his fate was his to choose.

More information: World in words

Although maintaining a neutral position, Corto instinctively supports the disadvantaged and oppressed. The character embodies skepticism of national, ideological and religious assertions.

Chaplin, Hemingway and Corto in Venice

Corto befriends people from all walks of life, including the murderous Russian Rasputin, British heir Tristan Bantam, voodoo priestess Gold Mouth and Czech academic Jeremiah Steiner. He also knows and meets various real-life historical figures, including Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Butch Cassidy, James Joyce, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Frederick Rolfe, Joseph Conrad, Sukhbaatar, John Reed, White Russian general Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, Enver Pasha of Turkey and Sergei Semenov, modelled after Grigory Semyonov.

His acquaintances treat him with great respect, as when a telephone call to Joseph Stalin frees him from arrest when he is threatened with execution on the border of Turkey and Armenia.

Corto's favourite reading is Utopia by Thomas More, but he never finishes it. He also read books by London, Lugones, Stevenson, Melville and Conrad, and quotes Rimbaud. He is present when the Red Baron is shot down, helps the Jivaros in South America, and flees Fascists in Venice, but also unwittingly helps Merlin and Oberon to defend Britain and helps Tristan Bantam to visit the lost continent of Mu.

Corto Maltese in Venice

Chronologically, the first Corto Maltese adventure, La giovinezza, happens during the Russo-Japanese War. In other albums he experiences the Great War in several locations, participates in the Russian Civil War after the October Revolution, and appears during the early stages of Fascist Italy. 

In a separate series by Pratt, Gli Scorpioni del Deserto, The Desert Scorpions, he is described as disappearing in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

Corto has reappeared to spend some hours with The Grandma and it's not a casualty that he has choose this date: today, is an important day to repair more than 20.000 citizens who suffered illegal war councils. Today is a great day to repair a big part of our recent historic memory.

More information: Corto Maltese Official Web

Disappear does not mean death - Hugo Pratt