The Ballad of the Salt Sea

In Fall 2026, Fantagraphics launches The Complete Corto Maltese with Volume 1: The Ballad of the Salt Sea, Corto's premiere adventure and the story that introduces him to the world.

Pratt plunges us right into the action with Corto bound to a makeshift raft adrift in the Pacific Ocean in 1913.

In short order, he is rescued by the Russian privateer Rasputin (yes, that Rasputin), and things only get more complicated and more treacherous from there.

In addition, this volume also presents Pratt's tale of Corto's youth, when, in 1904 at the age of 16 in Manchuria, he is asked by his friend, Jack London (yes, that Jack London) to help rescue a young Russian deserter named Rasputin in the midst of the Russo-Japanese War.

A modern Ulysses whose wanderings in the early decades of the 20th century take him to the most fascinating places on Earth, Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese is a hard-luck, hard-driving iconoclastic anti-hero who values freedom and independence more than wealth and status.

Treasure hunter, storm-tossed sailor, and itinerant adventurer, the irascible and indefatigable Corto Maltese has earned his status as one of the most popular characters in European comics.