Corto Maltese #1

Hugo Pratt's brooding cover art sets the tone perfectly for this Casterman edition of "La Ballade de la mer salée" — a striking black-and-white close-up of Corto Maltese, rendered with bold ink lines, his face half-shadowed and a pistol raised in his hand. The stark, high-contrast composition captures everything magnetic about the sailor-adventurer: weathered, watchful, and quietly dangerous. Published in 2017, this is a handsome entry point into one of Franco-Belgian comics' most enduring seafaring sagas.