This box set on the main theme of war contains five of the last works of the cartoonist Hugo Pratt, the creator of “Corto Maltese”, before his death in the mid 1990s. Simply unmissable!
Before putting down his pen for the last time in 1995, the author and cartoonist Hugo Pratt had set himself the challenge of sketching various aspects of the Second World War, having lived through it as a teenager when he went to North Africa to accompany his father, who was part of the Italian army – he would even say that he was “Mussolini’s youngest soldier”.
To come full circle, towards the end of his life, Ugo Eugenio Prat (which was his real name), wrote “Saint-Exupéry, le dernier vol”, “Un pâle soleil printanier” [A pale Spring Sun, “Baldwin 622”, “Dans un ciel lointain” [In a Distant Sky] and “Morgan”, among others. These five stories are now available in a single box.
In “Saint-Exupéry, le dernier vol”, Hugo Pratt recounts the final moments of the French navigator’s life, with fond memories of Jean Mermoz and Aéropostale. “Un pâle soleil printanier” tells the story of a commando mission entrusted to two soldiers in 1945, to go to the mouth of the Italian river Po to neutralize several machine gun nests.
The shorter “Baldwin 622” presents a man in the middle of a discussion with a … locomotive, talking about the First World War! As for the plot of “Dans un ciel lointain”, it revolves around two Italian brothers, both in love with the same woman, who must fight against the Allies in the air, while the friend of one of them has become an officer in the enemy air force.
Finally, “Morgan”, published at the very end of the 1990s, which Hugo Pratt never saw completed in his lifetime, describes the journey of a British officer in the Royal Navy who, in 1943, soon finds himself faced with a high-risk mission in Yugoslavia. These five stories relate five visions of the war and constitute a posthumous work that will delight aviation enthusiasts as well as comic book fans.
Comic Book. “‘Saint-Exupéry, le dernier vol’ et autres récits” [“‘Saint-Exupéry, the Last Flight’ and other stories”] (story and illustrations), Hugo Pratt. Editions Casterman. EAN: 9782203223349
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