Book Review 9: Corto Maltese: Under the Sign of Capricorn by Hugo Pratt

Title: Corto Maltese: Under the Sign of Capricorn
Author: Hugo Pratt
Release Date: January 6, 2015

This book, the first of twelve volumes, launches the definitive English-language edition of Hugo Pratt’s masterpiece, presented in the original oversized B&W format and with new translations made from Pratt’s original Italian scripts.

Frank Miller calls Pratt “one of the true masters of comic art.” Long before the term “graphic novel” entered the popular lexicon — ten years before Will Eisner’s A Contract with God — Hugo Pratt pioneered the long-form “drawn literature” story.

Corto Maltese set the standard for all adult adventure comics in Europe. By the mid-1970s, Corto was the continent’s most popular series and Hugo Pratt the world’s leading graphic novelist. Hugo Pratt’s peripatetic sailor was featured in a series of twenty-nine stories.

The adventures of this modern Ulysses are set during the first thirty years of the 20th Century in such exotic locales as Pratt’s native Venice, the steppes of Manchuria, the Caribbean islands, the Danakil deserts, the Amazon forests, and the waves of the Pacific.

EuroComics is working closely with Patrizia Zanotti, Pratt’s long-time collaborator, to present the complete Corto Maltese in a series of twelve quality trade paperbacks in Pratt’s original oversized B&W format.

Corto Maltese: Under the Sign of Capricorn collects the first six inter-connected short stories Pratt created in France in the early 1970s: “The Secret of Tristan Bantam,” “Rendez-vous in Bahia,” “Sureshot Samba,” “The Brazilian Eagle,” “So Much for Gentlemen of Fortune,” and “The Seagull’s Fault.”

Book Review 3: Neil Gaiman’s The Last Temptation 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

Title: Neil Gaiman’s The Last Temptation 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

Authors: Neil Gaiman, Alice Cooper, Michael Zulli and Dave McKean

Release Date: November 11, 2014

Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Coraline, American Gods) brings shock rocker Alice Cooper’s concept album to life in a surreal sideshow of the soul! Join a young boy named Steven on a surreal journey of the soul, as an enigmatic and potentially dangerous Showman seduces him into joining his carnival. Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of this seminal Gaiman work, returned to print for the first time in over a decade. Fully remastered in color, this Deluxe Edition incorporates complete scripts to all three chapters, black-and-white thumbnail art of pre-colored pages, an original outline of the project by Neil Gaiman, and a collection of letters between shock rocker Alice Cooper and the author!

“I’m really happy that The Last Temptation is coming out for a new generation of readers, who have not seen Michael Zulli’s glorious drawings, or know of the Showman and his wicked ways,” says Neil Gaiman.

“I wrote this a long time ago, driven by love of Ray Bradbury’s dark carnivals and of Alice Cooper’s own pandemonium shadow show. It’s time for it to shuffle out onto a leaf-covered street and meet the people who don’t know about Stephen and Mercy and show what’s coming to town.”