Tag Archives: hugo pratt

Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese graphic novels is getting a live-action series adaptation via Studiocanal and Frank Miller

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Corto Maltese

Frank Miller ascendant? The week after the launch of the first two new series from his comic imprint Frank Miller Presents, news comes that Miller will be the creator, writer, and executive producer for a live-action adaptation of Hugo Pratt‘s Corto Maltese graphic novel series. In conjuction with Canal+, Studiocanal will develop six hourlong episodes.

Miller will be joined by Jemma Rodgers as EP and Silenn Thomas who is the CEO if Frank Miller Ink. Phil Tippett will oversee VFX. Studiocanal EVP Global Production Ron Halpern and Executive Managing Director TV Francoise Guyonnet will oversee for the studio.

Launched in 1967 by Pratt, Maltese is a sea captain whose adventures takes place in the early 20th century. The series ended in June 1989. The series ran from historical adventure to occult dream sequences. Animated films and an opera have been produced involving the character and a live-action film was to be released in 2020 but was cancelled due to legal problems.

Preview: Corto Maltese: MU The Lost Continent

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Corto Maltese: MU The Lost Continent

(W) Hugo Pratt (A/CA) Hugo Pratt
In Shops: Aug 12, 2020
SRP: $34.99

In this final entry of Hugo Pratt’s epic series, the master graphic novelist returns to the theme he first explored in the initial episode-the search for the lost continent of Mu, the mythical Atlantis. Featuring the return of most of the major characters seen throughout the long-running saga: Gold Mouth, Morgana, Tristan Bantam, Levi Colombia, Professor Steiner, “the Monk,” Cain Groovesnore, Soledad, and (of course) Rasputin… each with their own reason to find the mythical realm. Thus, the circle closes.

Corto Maltese: MU The Lost Continent

Preview: Corto Maltese: Ballad of the Salty Sea

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Corto Maltese: Ballad of the Salty Sea

(W) Hugo Pratt (A/CA) Hugo Pratt
In Shops: Mar 04, 2020
SRP: $34.99

Celebrate this milestone in the history of graphic novels, winner of the world’s first-ever “Best Graphic Novel” award, taking the prize in 1976 at the Angoulême Fesitval.

Originally serialized beginning in 1967, this book is universally acknowledged as Hugo Pratt’s masterpiece, in which he introduces Corto Maltese to the world. Corto is but one of a strong ensemble cast of characters whose lives permeate the entire 12-book series. It is here that we also meet the young and beautiful Pandora, her brother Cain, the mysterious criminal mastermind Monk, the grim and ferocious Rasputin, Lieutenant Slutter of the German Navy, and the natives Skull and Tarao. The Ballad of the Salty Sea is also hailed as the first example of the literary comic strip. Pratt was inspired by Conrad, Stevenson, and London, but even more directly by Henry de Vere Stacpool’s Blue Lagoon, from which the author got the idea of a small island in the Pacific which he named “Escondida.”

Corto Maltese: Ballad of the Salty Sea

Preview: Corto Maltese: The Early Years

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Corto Maltese: The Early Years

Hugo Pratt (w & a & c)

This short adventure tells the backstory of Corto Maltese first meeting Rasputin at the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The protagonist of this tale is not the 18-year-old Corto but Rasputin—

a deserter from a Siberian rifle regiment—and the writer Jack London, who was a war correspondent in the region at that time. London is already friends with Corto and introduces the sailor to the unpredictable Russian, who even as a young man kills with disconcerting ease and is ready to lie and betray without hesitation. It is, however, “the beginning of a beautiful friendship” that continues throughout the series. As a bonus, the book includes additional material that sets up the entire series, as well as several never-before published pages that Pratt intended for a continuation of the tale, in which Corto and Rasputin were to embark on a search for King Solomon’s mines.

TPB • B&W • $19.99 • 64 pages • 9-1/4” x 11-5/8” • ISBN: 978-1-68405-503-6

Corto Maltese: The Early Years

Preview: Corto Maltese: Secret Rose

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Corto Maltese: Secret Rose

Hugo Pratt (w & a & c)

Corto Maltese enters the crossroads of magic and the occult, astrology and history, religion and mythology in the first English-language translation of Pratt’s award-winning book.

Visiting the writer Hermann Hesse while researching alchemists with his old friend Professor Steiner, Corto drinks from the “source of the Alchemy Rose” and becomes immersed in a surreal and dreamlike adventure that involves Klingsor, the quest for the Holy Grail, Death, the Devil, and the Sandman, among others. This complexly plotted graphic novel is among Hugo Pratt’s most philosophical ruminations on the imagination.

TPB • B&W • $19.99 • 80 pages • 9-1/4” x 11-5/8” • ISBN: 978-1-68405-402-2

Corto Maltese: Secret Rose

Preview: Corto Maltese: The Golden House of Samarkand

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Corto Maltese: The Golden House of Samarkand

Hugo Pratt (w & a & c)

Corto Maltese sets out on another globetrotting adventure after the discovery of a Byron manuscript in a mosque on the Isle of Rhodes. Set in the years 1921–22, the action soon shifts to Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Caspian Sea, following the footsteps of the legendary Silk Road, as Corto Maltese searches for the fabled treasure of Alexander the Great. A parade of fascinating characters are introduced, including the Whirling Dervishes, Joseph Stalin (with whom Corto is on a first-name basis), the Hashinin sect of assassins, the Turkish general Enver Pasha, and the return of Venexiana Stevenson and Rasputin (who has just escaped from the dreaded prison known as “The Golden House of Samarkand.”)

TPB • B&W • $34.99 • 144 pages • 9 1/4” x 10 5/8” • ISBN: 978-1-68405-186-1

Preview: Corto Maltese: The Ethiopian

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Corto Maltese: The Ethiopian

Hugo Pratt (w & a & c)

When Corto Maltese arrives in the Middle East and Africa in 1918 the shifting sands and loyalties reveal colonial powers still battling for domination over each other and the indigenous people. The desert of Yemen, controlled by the fading Ottoman Empire, is the setting for “In the Name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate,” where Corto meets Cush, the Danikil warrior with whom he establishes a close yet conflicted relationship. In “The Coup de Grace” the stubborn racism of an English commander of a small fort in British Somaliland leads to conflict with Cush and the Dervish army of Sayyid Mohamed, whom the British call “The Mad Mullah.” The action moves to Ethiopia amidst inter-tribal conflict in “…and of Other Romeos and Other Juliets,” as Cush introduces Corto to the mysterious and powerful shaman Shamael, who hears the voices of the dead and of devils. German East Africa is the background of “The Leopard-Men of the Rufiji,” where Corto is engulfed in a dreamlike atmosphere that reveals how African justice operates outside the constraints of “white” law.

TPB •  9.25″ x 11.625” • 96 pages • B&W • $24.99, ISBN: 978-1-63140-696-6

CortoMaltese_Ethiopian-Cover

Dark Horse Comics Eisner Nominees Announced!

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April 5, MILWAUKIE, OR–Comic-Con International has announced the nominations for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards 2012!

Dark Horse Comics has 11 nominations, including two each for the anthology Dark Horse Presents, Jeff Jensen’s Green River Killer, and Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo.

The nominees, chosen by a blue-ribbon panel of judges, reflect the wide range of material being published in comics and graphic novel form today, from nursery rhymes and World War II battles to high school angst and pulp fiction.

Named for acclaimed comics creator Will Eisner, the awards are in their twenty-fourth year of highlighting the best publications and creators in comics and graphic novels.

 

EISNER AWARD NOMINEES 2012

Best Short Story

“The Speaker,” by Brandon Graham, in Dark Horse Presents #7

 

Best Continuing Series

Usagi Yojimbo, by Stan Sakai

 

Best Anthology

Dark Horse Presents, edited by Mike Richardson

 

Best Humor Publication

The Art of Doug Sneyd: A Collection of Playboy Cartoons

Chimichanga, by Eric Powell

Milk & Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad, by Evan Dorkin

 

Best Reality-Based Work

Green River Killer: A True Detective Story, by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case

 

Best U.S. Edition of International Material

The Manara Library, vol. 1: Indian Summer and Other Stories, by Milo Manara with Hugo Pratt

 

Best Writer

Jeff Jensen, Green River Killer: A True Detective Story

 

Best Lettering

Tom Orzechowski, Manara Library, with L. Lois Buhalis

Stan Sakai, Usagi Yojimbo

 

Ballots with this year’s nominees will be going out in mid-April to comics creators, editors, publishers, and retailers. A downloadable PDF of the ballot is available online, and a special website has been set up for online voting: www.eisnervote.com. The results in all categories will be announced in a gala awards ceremony on the evening of Friday, July 13, at Comic-Con International.

About Dark Horse Comics

Since 1986, Dark Horse Comics has proven to be a solid example of how integrity and innovation can help broaden a unique storytelling medium and establish a small, homegrown company as an industry giant. The company is known for the progressive and creator-friendly atmosphere it provides for writers and artists.  In addition to publishing comics from top talent like Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Neil Gaiman, Gerard Way, Will Eisner, and best-selling prose author Janet Evanovich, Dark Horse has developed such successful characters as the Mask, Timecop, and the Occultist. Additionally, its highly successful line of comics and products based on popular properties includes Star Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Aliens, Conan the Barbarian, Mass Effect, Serenity, and Domo. Today, Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent comic-book publisher in the United States and is recognized as both an innovator in the cause of creator rights and the comics industry’s leading publisher of licensed material.