Mushroom Heads begins and ends in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where the antiquarian Levi Colombia finances an expedition to the equatorial Amazon led by Corto Maltese and Professor Steiner, on the trail of the legendary Eldorado. Banana Conga is based on a story by American writer Art Buchwald, taken by Pratt and reworked to explore the idea of a foreign presence forced to leave Mosquito, a small town on the east coast of Honduras. The dangerous and lethal enemy...

The protagonist of this tale, actually, is not the 18-year-old Corto, but Rasputin, a deserter from a Siberian rifle regiment, and the writer Jack London, who was a war correspondent in the region at that time. London is already friends with Corto and introduces the sailor to the unpredictable Russian, who even as a young man kills with disconcerting ease and is ready to lie and betray without hesitation. It is, however, "the beginning of a beautiful friendship" that continues throughout t...

With this book Pratt leaves behind the short story form he'd used for twenty-one interrelated tales and presents a truly epic graphic novel. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the First World War, Corto Maltese is engaged by the Red Lanterns--a Chinese secret society made up entirely of women--to find an armored train laden with gold that belonged to the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II. They aren't the only ones lusting after the treasure. The adventure, which shifts from the hi...

The secret of Tristan Bantam: Tristan, who has inherited precious papers that tell of the lost kingdom of Mû, has a dream that portends an apparently incomprehensible fate. At Paramaribo, in the sultry heat of Dutch Guyana, Corto finds himself entangled in a sordid tale about a stolen inheritance, while surrounded by such strange characters as Kerster, an unscrupulous lawyer; Jeremiah Steiner, a former university professor, and Madame Java, “hotel” manager and expert knife...