Corto Maltese #4
In the sweltering Orinoco River delta, Corto Maltese encounters Lieutenant Robin Stuart, a haunted English soldier gripped by fever and fractured memories of the First World War. As the lieutenant’s delusions deepen, his mind unravels into a haunting replay of cowardice and disillusionment, revealing the cost of survival in a world built on hollow honor. Written by Hugo Pratt, Dean Mullaney, and Simone Castaldi, with art and inks by Pratt himself, this issue of *Corto Maltese*—featuring Pratt’s signature cover pencils and inks—delivers a quiet, devastating portrait of a man broken by war, found in the silence after death with a smile on his face.
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In the Orinoco River delta, Corto meets an English soldier, Lieutenant Robin Stuart, who is having fever delusions. Corto gathers that he is a deserter of a regiment at that time engaged in the First World War. Unable to convince him to come away with him, he leaves him medicine. The lieutenant does not take it. His hallucinations become stronger, and he relives his life as a coward in which everyone praises him for having thought about his own survival instead of respecting the hypocrisy of the British military aristocracy. The next morning Corto finds him dead, but with a smile on his face.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).