Peter Farrugia delves into the swashbuckling, adventuring life of El Corto Maltese thanks to the artwork exhibition currently showing in Valletta.

St James Cavalier is currently hosting an exclusive exhibition featuring comic book hero Corto Maltese, in a series of 40 custom print boards and original sketches that open the character’s madcap world to an eager, new audience.

A Belti by birth, the character spent his youth in Gibraltar but never completely forgot Malta, and Pratt’s stories have him return to the island from time to time

Created in 1967 by Venetian artist Hugo Pratt, Corto Maltese has become a cult hit with international fans. It’s a quintessential example of the European graphic novel genre taken to new heights by an interesting mixture of pulp and literary tropes.

The exhibition, entitled Ici Commença l’Aventure, was opened by the French Ambassador to Malta and featured a talk by author and editor Marco Steiner about Corto Maltese (The Spirit and the Journey), followed by questions from the audience. The Corto Maltese comics are popular with a growing group of graphic novel readers, ready to rediscover this classic in all its dimensions.

The character of Corto Maltese is dynamic and multi-faceted – at once an adventurer, a sailor and a scholar with mystical leanings. Not unlike Ulysses, Corto is a wayfarer who is drawn to the mysterious realities behind worldly appearances, never content with a simple adventure. He is out to explore the innermost depths of the lands he visits.

The exhibition grew out of a collaborative effort between Wicked Comics (organisers of Comic Con) and the French Embassy. Corto Maltese’s particular claim to local fame is that the character was born in Valletta, the son of a Cornish sailor and a gypsy from Seville. You’d be hard pressed to find a pedigree more suited to the kinds of swashbuckling, dazzling and downright strange adventures Corto finds himself thrown in throughout the comics.

Corto Maltese’s creator Pratt (1927-1995) lived a life almost as colourful as that of his famous comic book character. A native of Venice with English ancestry, Pratt spent time in Ethiopia (while it was called Abyssinia) and suffered internment in a prison camp at Dire Dawa (a city famously described as “somewhat like a cluster of tea leaves in the bottom of a slop basin”) where he would buy comics from the guards.

Some of Pratt’s stories are good old-fashioned pot-boilers, interspersed with melodramatic double-crossing and daring escapes. Others explore a more existential angle, taking their hero to the heart of the human condition in a furry of literary allusions and philosophical questioning.

Ostensibly the exhibition sets out to introduce this unique character to the Maltese public, as a figure we can all feel somehow invested in.

A Belti by birth, the character spent his youth in Gibraltar but never completely forgot Malta, and Pratt’s stories have him return to the island from time to time.

Perhaps the thing that places us, here in Malta, in a perfect position to appreciate these stories is our Italian fluency (though with the growing popularity of American media, familiarity with that language is in stark decline) – being able to read the graphic novels in their original language, rather than through a translation, gives the full flavour of Pratt’s world.

From the 1960s minimalist artwork to a certain un-PC-ness when it comes to gender relations, there’s a delightful sense of stepping back to a different time beyond the stories themselves.

Reading the Corto Maltese comics might not be to everyone’s taste, but visiting the exhibition will certainly benefit anybody with an interest in narrative art.

With a host of other events at last weekend’s Malta Comic Con and a growing national comics scene that presents Maltese language as well as English offerings, the particular charms of graphic novel reading are being brought to an ever-growing audience. And Pratt’s stories of Corto Maltese stand as a testament to the versatility and perennial appeal of the medium.

Ici Commença l’Aventure shows at St James Cavalier till early January.