The smallest flick of the artist’s wrist. Corto Maltese is always smiling but it’s a feline smile, the corners of the line of his mouth just barely creased. You can see the traces of early and consistent Caniff worship in Pratt’s faces, horizontal smears of ink to indicate mouths. But first he’s got some wry comments to make about Malraux, and doesn’t that woman have large breasts in the most literary way? At times, this album seems to live down to certain stereotypes held in English-speaking precincts regarding Eurocomics conventions - behold a tough guy stereotype from American adventure stories, your cowboy or your back robber or sea captain, sipping his drink at the bar before slipping out with the shadows to desultorily sock some local toughs on the jaw. A gripping mens’ adventure yarn in the mood of Caniff? Certainly not! A trip to visit Herman Hesse in the Swiss countryside of 1924, that sounds more the ticket. This is later Pratt at his most esoteric, clogged to the arteries with ambiguous literary references masquerading as pointedly elliptical conversation. The Secret Rose should probably not be anyone’s first exposure to Hugo Pratt.
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