Comes ‘Under the midnight sun’, the new album adventurer created by Hugo Pratt, by Juan Diaz Canales and Ruben Pellejero
Corto Maltese
Already cartoon teacher Hugo Pratt (Rimini, Italy, 1927 – Grandvaux, Switzerland, 1995) said shortly before his death: “I do not fear the idea that one day someone can resume Corto Maltese”.
Today insurance will smile and bless the resurrection of his legendary creation and alter ego adventurous two solid undertaken by Spanish authors Juan Diaz Canales (Madrid, 1972) and Ruben Pellejero (Badalona, 1952). “Draw it was a risk and at a time a dream. The most difficult challenge -asume the Catalan artist is that you are in the hands of a myth. ” And the myth is back in all its glory. The new album featuring Corto Maltese, under the midnight sun, will simultaneously october 1st at bookstores in Italian, French, Dutch and, with the help of Norma, in Castilian and Catalan, which also published a version in black and white.
Diaz Canales, writer of the multi Blacksad series, which has been given among others the National Comic and several Eisner, has created a new story that takes place months after The Ballad of the Salt Sea, Short’s first adventure published by Pratt in 1976 , though the character came appearing in magazines since 1967. It is 1915 and the First World War while bleeding Europe, the action moves to the frozen wastes of the far north, between Alaska and Canada. “The gold rush is history and all that environment is part of the mythology of Pratt. As a writer, he had a clear influence of all adventure stories of Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London, “explains Diaz Canales, who was commissioned to continue the series of Patricia Zanotti, director of the company Pratt manages rights and publisher of Blacksad time in Italy.
Jack London, celebrated author of White Fang, had been one of the historical figures used by the Italian artist and Under the midnight sun returns for Short ask your friend a favor that will take you to the Arctic: wants to take a letter to a former childhood sweetheart. It is not the only friend who return: do not miss the sarcastic Rasputin, Raspa, Russian army deserter gotten adventurer. “It has such a strong mythology … It’s like a Sherlock Holmes story not to put Watson. Limp, “he adds.
THE EQUILIBRIUM
“The most difficult challenge was to keep the necessary balance between respect for the work of Pratt and our role as the screenwriter -opina authors. We continue the series was charged because we are creators, not copyists. The secret was to find indispensable aspects, we understand that they are perfectly recognizable to the reader and they just open the album you get inside Corto Maltese, as the structure of four strips per page, which may sound silly but it is not. We could not get full-page vignettes or vertical, more modern structures, because people would not see Pratt. ” There therefore continues, “red lights that you can not cross but, as authors, provide own thing.” For instance? “Scenes that you know he would not have made but that work like Cartoon Short because we maintained its spirit, for example, dialogue, key to find that his so characteristic irony.”
A spirit and an atmosphere of Pratt Diaz Canales to blame for having devoted to comics after discovering a teenager in old magazines Totem his brother. “It was a shock. I thought, but you can do this with the comic? I saw that with just paper and pen, in a popular and reviled medium, could tell stories with the poetry, the power of evocation, those ideas … and silence? are so important, it’s sublime “get excited.
AFTER DIETER LUMPEN
Graphically, the character Pellejero overboard. The cartoonist’s silence Malka admits the undoubted influence of Short, who read already in the beginning in the 70s, on their own adventure, Dieter Lumpen (with script of Jorge Zentner). “It’s a benchmark. Over the years Pratt was changing the image of Short and tried to place me in a mixture without a specific face. I like the simplicity in line with the middle stage, when it is better defined. The idea was to capture the essence of the character and as author, give a value in itself, seeking a balance between his way of drawing and mine ‘says while sliding the pen on the paper with astonishing naturalness drawing a sketch of Shorted. I care much stained, to function equally well in color as in black and white version. ”
Under the indigenous population in the Great North, Inuit midnight sun appears, in tribute to the concern Pratt marginalized minorities, a legacy of his childhood. “His father was a military man and child moved to Ethiopia, where he was banished. That had to mark him as his generation, was a child of the war explains Diaz Canales. Pratt reflect very poorly resolved the problem of decolonization, the decomposition of imperialism that somehow ended up in the First World War. Her fondness for putting in their stories disadvantaged groups associated with backwardness, old and superstitious, but he gave the value and claimed “. Therefore on the album, he adds, there is a scientist whose savagery is opposed to a liberal education Inuit.
Corto Maltese
They are also faithful to the romantic adventurer “free and noble soul,” as he termed Pratt, strategically placed in the frame to historical figures, beyond the recurring London. One old love of the writer, is Waka Yamada, a Japanese former prostitute who fought for the rights of women, which track Diaz Canales found in an American book of his own library on prostitution and trafficking in women in the Far North . “You’ll documentándote and finding little gems or gold nuggets in real figures that make you think why invent if reality sometimes stranger than fiction in spades. In the case of black explorer Matthew Henson [who reached the North Pole in 1909 while Robert Peary but he was never honored by it because of the color of his skin] Gold Digger or Joe Boyle, Klondike A entrepreneur who created the first Alaska hockey team and was a spy and lover of Queen of Romania. ” But, he points out, “is not to make Wikipedia entries but what Pratt did so well, it was to keep the balance that resulted evocative.”
“I AM NOT A HERO ‘
Short insist both that which in The Ethiopian said, “I’m not a hero” – is a “complex character at all levels.” “It extends from 1967 until almost the death of Pratt, when did Mu and has a brutal evolution that began as heir to the characters of classic adventures Americans and travel literature and gradually Pratt was introducing esoteric elements, ideological aspects. .. There is no fixed Short She points Diaz Canales picture. To me it seduces me his ideological adventurer “aspect.
“There is a generation that does not know Short and the goal is also to reach it”, says Pellejero. “As a reader you want to experience new stories with him. Must keep living, “adds his colleague. It will. Their minds are already working on a new album that would come by 2017, of not advancing detail. “We look for gaps in its history. There are many areas we do not know where he was or anything about him. This allows us to fill them. ” In the final pages, a nod to fans: Pandora Groovesnore remember?
Courtesy Car Service Barcelona airport
EXECUTIVE CHAUFFEUR BARCELONA 