Corto´s Biography

Biografía de Corto Maltés
With this biography I attempt to give an idea of the set of the adventures of Corto Maltese so to let you know those stories are part from a plan made up by Hugo Pratt. A good way for this is to make an approachment to Corto Maltese's life. For the details of each story the best thing is read the comics.

Corto Maltese was born in 1887, July the 10th, in the Valeta (Malta). His father was a British sailor from Cornualles and her mother was a gipsy, nicknamed "the little girl of Gibraltar" , born in Seville . Due to the Origin of his father Corto Maltese is British. Corto's official residence is in La Antigua, in the Antilles, but his favourite residence (and the only one we see in the comics) is in Hong-Kong. And don´t forget that Corto Maltese lived good part of his childhood in Cordoba, Spain.

The first appearance of Corto takes place in the title The Ballad of the Salty Sea. Where maltese is gathered out of the water by his ancient friend Rasputin. In this story, introduced by the Ocean, Corto gives us a small track of his origins. He tells Pandora how a friend of his mother, the gypsy Amalia, was interested in reading the future of the young Maltese in his line of the fortune. But something happenned, in the hand of Corto there was no line. To a child of only 10 and grown in this kind of knowledges and traditions the fact of not having this line caused a big impression to him and he decided to make one himself and so he could become the only owner of his destiny. The way to make the line of fortune was using the blade for shaving of his father, the result was a long and deep bloody line of fortune.

But previously to what is told in The Ballad other things happened, thus in 1900 Corto Maltese traveled to China, in the heat of the war of the Boxers (June-August, 1900) where in his first combat operation destroyed a tube. Corto Maltese was 13 yo then. (This episode was told by the assistant of Hugo Pratt, Rafael Vianello and autentified by the author). In the revolt of Manchuria, at the end of 1904 , during the Russian-Japanese war (February 1904- September 1905), Corto met Jack London that was a war journalist at that time. There was also Rasputin, prisoner of the Russians because of his different point of view about the ending of the war. Corto will help Rasputin to escape and both embark towards Africa with the intention of searching for the gold mines of Etiopia. (Youth 1904-1905)
But in the boat a riot takes place and changes the direction towards Argentina, where they arrive in 1905 . In the Patagonia Corto and Rasputin met Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid and Etta Place, the famous outlaws of the United States.

In 1907 Corto was in Italy, in Ancona, where he met Djougatchvili, the future Stalin, by then a modest gate-keeper. Because of this friendship Corto will save his life 14 years later as shown in the Golden House of Samarkanda.

Back to Argentina in 1908. Between 1908 and 1913 Corto made a great trip: Marseilles, Tunisia, the Antilles, goes to New Orleans, India and again to China. For Juan Antonio de Blas, a specialist in the work of Hugo Pratt, Corto, in 1910, is the second official in The Bostonian, a ship that made the route between Boston and Liverpool. On board Corto made himself responsible of the defense of John Reed, future leader of the International Communist, by then no more than a cabin-boy accused by the Captain of the death of another cabin-boy. Corto demonstrates in the process that Reed is innocent but the Maltese has to pay with the inclusion of his name in the "black list" of captains.

This the story of how Corto became a pirate. In 1913 he is working for the mysterious "Monk" in the South Pacific. In October the 31 the crew of Corto incited to riot (with the purpose of stealing the armament that transported) and he was left in the middle of the sea floating to the drift almost crucified in a wood small platform. To the following morning, the 1 of November, Corto was rescued by Rasputin, as we commented before, that is also a member of the secret organization of the Monk. This one is the beginning of the Ballad of the Salty Sea and the first appearing of Corto Maltese within the work of Hugo Pratt.

Once they arrived at the island La Escondida (169º West longitude and 19º South latitude) Corto Maltese and his companions of adventure were told of the beginning of the War in Europe. So they began to deal with stolen coal in benefit of the German boats. In this adventure were also implied Pandora and Cain, two cousins who had been rescued by Rasputin some time before. Any day of January 1915 Corto Maltés and Rasputin left La Escondida towards the island of Pitcairn.

The South American adventures begin. In 1916 , Corto Maltese with the professor of the Prague University Jeremiah Steiner and a young Tristan Bantam, went to Paramaribo, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, Salvador de Bahia and to the opening of the Amazon River. In 1917 Corto is in Saint-Kitts, in the Antilles, the British-Honduras (Belize), Maracaibo in Venezuela, Honduras, Barbados, enters in the delta of the Orinoco and the Peruvian amazonian forest.

Corto crossed the Atlantic and arrived to Europe in 1917 . The Celtics begin in Venice. Later on he will go to the Adriatic Sea, during the battle of Carporetto (24 October 1917). He also was in Dublin and assisted to an Ireland fighting for Freedom and went to Stonehenge, in England, where appeared sorrounded of prattling crows and tale fairies in the title A Dream of a winter morning. In the Spring of 1918 Corto was in France.The April 21st Corto watched to the sky just for seeing how the Red Baron was defeated. The beaches of the North Sea finish the Celtics.

When the etiopics begin have passed almost 12 months, Corto Maltese is in Yemen. Cush the Danakil Warrior, makes his first appearance within the first episode "In the name of Ala compassionate and merciful". The September 13 Corto crossed to the British Somalia, as shown in "The last shot". Then returned to Ethiopia (in Of other Romeos and other Juliets ), and later will make an incursion in German Eastern Africa next to the leopard men.

Corto returns to Hong-Kong, where lives in a district "of bad reputation, in the low side... a zone full of thieves and pretty women". Corto reads about the ends of the War the November 11 of 1918. There was also Rasputin, within a great raincoat, impatient to live new adventures. Thus Corto Maltese in Siberia begins. Commanded by a secret Chinese society, the Red Lanterns, they started searching for a gold loaded conboy property of the Russian Imperial family. But it wouldn't be an easy task, because it was being transported in an armored train commanded by the admiral Kolchak. In 1919 , Corto arrived to Shangai, after crossing three frontiers: Manchuria, Mongolia and Siberia. A quite problematic area, the confrontation place between the Bolsheviks and the Russian troops maintained by the Western powers.After the destruction of the general Tchang's train in February of 1920 Corto returns to his house of Honk-Kong badly wounded. This Asiatic adventure finishes within the Chinese province of Jiangxi, April 1920 .

After being in Asia, Corto Maltese made a stop in Venice between the April 19 and the 25. A Magical place where Corto lived a story that almost is a theatrical play: Fable in Venice . In the following adventure Corto is in Rodas searching for a new treasure. His new travel through Asia begins and will take us from the Turkish coasts to the Afghan mountains. A great adventure that tells us a year in Corto´s live looking for the treasure of Alexander Magnus. Corto disembarks in Adana, crosses Turkey until Azerbajian. There he will be stopped by the soldiers of the Red Navy, and saved himself from being shot with the help of a phone call. Corto crosses the Caspian Sea from Bakou to Krasnovodsk. Rasputin appeared again within the Emirate of Boukhara. Finally they arrived at Afghanistan where the treasure is waiting. The Golden house of Samarkanda ends when Corto and Rasputin cross the border of Pakistan in company of a colony of British soldiers.

June 1923, Corto Maltese is in Argentina. In Tango Corto investigated the disappearance of Louise Brookzowyc, that we saw in the title Fable of Venice . At that time Corto will have to go against the "Warsavia" (or Warsaw), a prostitution network which the young woman was working for. Corto had a new meeting with Butch Cassidy and Esmeralda, old friends . Finally he found the main responsible of the death of Louise. He left Argentina the night of the 20 of June.

In 1924 , Corto took a walk by the Swiss corners. Gathered in the Helvetians . With professor Steiner he will go to Montagnola just to met the writer Herman Hesse. In spite of his skepticism, Corto will be confronted with the Swiss imagination. Inside a Dream he drinks the filter of Paracelso and becomes inmortal. We have left the doubt... It was in truth a dream?

In 1925 Corto Maltés, invited by Leví Columbia, takes part in the search of the continent of Mú. The last adventure of the Maltese in a comic.

In December of 1928 Corto is in Harar, Ethiopia, with the novelist Henry de Monfreid and Teilhard de Chardin. A watercolor of Hugo Pratt appeared in the Corto Magazine testifies it. In 1936 Corto took part in the war of Spain. In 1941, Cush within the work the Scorpions of the desert tell us: "it seems to be that Corto disappeared during the war of Spain". But to be disappeared does not mean to die.

On the other hand Corto didn´t die during the war of Spain. If we read the introduction of the Ballad we find a letter, dated in 1965, where Pandora tells how Corto is living with her family and the sad he is after Tarao´s death. "I see uncle Corto walking alone or sitting in the garden, watching to the sea, with the lost glance"

Las ilustraciones que aquí aparecen son ©Hugo Pratt. Se publican con carácter informativo y sin interés económico alguno.
Si los editores mostraran su disconformidad con la publicación de las mismas se retirarán de inmediato.