Corto Maltese, towards darker areas

Propelling Corto Maltese into the throes of the 21st century was a daring challenge. Bastien Vivès and Martin Quenehen tackled it with enthusiasm and talent. Their first album, Black Ocean (2021) took the gentleman of fortune from Japan to the high mountains of South America. On October 18, The Queen of Babylon was published. A second part, harsher, darker and more daring in the reinterpretation of the myth. Venice, Sarajevo, Turkey, Iraq... against the backdrop of the post-Balkan war, of his hazardous dealings linked to arms trafficking, of a search for treasure in the legendary lands of Babylon, Corto forges a path strewn with dark pitfalls.

There he will lose Sémira, a young Bosnian survivor transformed into a fierce warrior with whom he is in love, and will literally experience a descent into hell. With the tandem of Bastien Vivès and Martin Quenehen, Corto loves, suffers in his being and his flesh to be reborn without part of his dreams. Passing through Le Figaro, the authors discuss the genesis of their new Corto Maltese.

LE FIGARO. - Before Black Ocean, what was your meeting with Corto Maltese?

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Martin QUENEHEN. - For me, Corto is an explosion! I literally built myself around this figure. Like Bastien, it was Pratt’s art that seduced me. The dreamlike, the incredible and romantic scenarios, the shared dreams: a new and different world opened up with each adventure. And when I discovered Bastien’s work, I saw in him the new Pratt. And not just in terms of graphics.

How are they similar?

M.Q. - What they have in common is the art of surprise. In each Bastien album I am amazed by the page that follows or a line. Like Pratt, Bastien makes a comic strip that is unlike any other. He is an artist, a designer who dares to take a unique and sensitive look at the world.

Bastien Vivès, how did you approach Corto Maltese graphically?

Corto has had a thousand faces as Pratt, from Burt Lancaster to David Bowie. I was more inspired by Pratt's head, with a small, handsome nose, while keeping the eyes very close to the eyebrows, as his creator designed them. I simply kept the earring and the sideburns, the elements that characterize him. In fact, I sketched it as I fantasized. This is the advantage of carte blanche and a character like Corto. It is less coded than others, like Asterix, for example. Pratt created Corto in order to draw him, in quotes, throughout his life, with an evolving line. If I was able to make comics, it’s thanks to authors like him or Munoz or Alex Toth. When I started, some people felt that my drawing didn't hold up, that it was unfinished, close to a storyboard. But fortunately there are authors like Pratt to make this kind of drawing accepted. He found real writing.

Martin Quenehen, how did you react as a deep admirer of the character?

M. Q. - Corto, it's not enough to ape him. This hero is not just a cap, an earring or a jacket but a spirit, which I recognize under Bastien’s brush.

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B. V. - When I made the first sketches of Corto, the resemblance to the original character was not obvious. But as soon as he evolved into comics, we were face to face with him. By his attitude, his approach, his way of exploring the world. For me, Corto is more of a silhouette than a character.

In The Queen of Babylon, Corto appears particularly mistreated and undergoes a very violent act which permanently distances him from that of his creator. A way to break with the myth?

B. V. - If we consider Corto sacred, then the album is full of profanity (laughs)! It is true that we granted ourselves a lot more freedom than in the first part. The barbaric act of which Corto is a victim is the only idea for a scenario that I had. I already wanted to do it in the first part, but I held back so as not to shock the readers too much. We had to get there. We took the character into darker areas. More than ever he has become our Corto. And above all he is in love.

M. Q. - This is the risk we took and it is at this price that we can hope to be worthy of such a free hero. Corto comes from comic literature and goes beyond the usual codes. Pratt is one of those who broke the shackles of comics, to put them in the hands of new readers. Corto is the spirit of adventure confronted with both enchantment and cruelty. With The Queen of Babylon, we wanted to explore a darker side. Black Ocean allowed us to develop our childhood as Corto, but after childhood... we inevitably go towards death. But Corto is a myth, he cannot die! Then he makes a descent into hell, in every sense of the word, as in the greatest myths from those of the Mesopotamians through Orpheus and Eurydice.

Like Orpheus, Corto sees the one he loves slipping away. He continues the adventure so as not to completely sink. Like a curse...

M. Q. - He is, in fact, struck by a form of curse. That of continuing to wander in the impossibility of finding true love... Sémira also contains a mythical dimension. I associate her with Lilith and Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, both equally elusive and indecipherable. Unlike Gina, who is a real person. This is among other things what I liked about Pratt, his characters from the imagination but also from our own history. Gina Haspel is authentically a CIA agent who practiced torture.

Bastien Vivès, in terms of misadventure, you are experiencing a very real one, with an investigation opened for “dissemination of child pornography” against you…

B. V. - My job is to draw comic strips. It is fiction, derision, sometimes absurd, and I have never been convicted or even prosecuted for anything. We are talking about the book Petit Paul, the Nanterre public prosecutor's office has, in 2018, already closed a complaint that had been filed! We are in a state of law, where justice does its job. It is she who defines the cursor of freedom of expression, which is so threatened and which our world so needs. I received several death threats, not fictitious, but very real. I filed a complaint and their perpetrators will be judged in early 2024. All this saddens me deeply and it is for this reason that I have decided not to speak in public for the moment.