The style is similar in many ways to that of Milton Caniff in “Terry and the Pirates” and follows the conventions of the American superhero genre – but the lines are still unsure and a far cry from later work. The “ L’ asso di picche” series, the artist’s first, introduced the first super hero to Italian comics, and was a homage to characters from America’s Golden Age of comics, from Bob Kane’s Batman to Lee Falk’s Phantom. On his return to Venice at the end of the Second World War, Pratt and a few friends founded the publishing house Uragano Comics, which from 1947 onwards became Asso di Picche – Comics, named after one of his leading characters, a crime fighter in a yellow costume. In 1943, his father gave him one last gift, before being sent to a British POW camp from which he would never return: the book “ Treasure Island” by Robert Luis Stevenson, which left an indelible mark on the young man’s imagination.Īll the experiences lived and places visited during childhood and adolescence – Venice, Africa, cinema, poetry, theatre, mythology, adventure novels, war and contact with different people – would find a place in his work and feed the rich Prattian universe. In this period, he became obsessed with adventure novels – James Oliver Curwood, Zane Gray and Kenneth Roberts were among his favourite authors – and read his first American comics, including “Terry and the Pirates” by Milton Caniff. In seven years spent in Africa, Pratt discovered the military world, war, the desert with its infinite horizons, and met men and women of many nationalities.

His style on the page would reflect this passion by striving to balance text and drawing: in his most mature work, dialogue and action alternate with silent panels where illustration alone has the power to fire the reader’s imagination.Īt the age of 10, Hugo was sent to Abyssinia (in what is today Ethiopia) where his father was an official in the Italian colonial army. He was fortunate to receive plenty of stimulation from the female figures around him: his mother with a passion for tarot cards his grandmother who took him to the cinema and encouraged him to draw what he’d seen on the big screen and his actrice aunt who would take him to the opera and taught him Jewish myths and the Kabbalah.įrom his maternal grandfather, Eugenio, a Venetian podiatrist and poet, Hugo inherited a passion for poetry and language through which words conjured up profound yet immediate images.

Pratt spent his childhood in Venice, the city that would become the setting for many of his stories. Hugo Pratt, the nom de plume of Ugo Eugenio Prat, was born in Rimini, Italy, in 1927, but from birth he was already a citizen of the world: his father had Anglo-French roots, while his Venetian mother and maternal grandparents had originally moved to Italy from Turkey.

Umberto eco corto maltese