"Corto Maltese: Beyond the Windy Isles" is about corruption, war, delusion and unrequited love

It's starting to get good.  I mean, really good.  The Corto Maltese series, which hadn't exactly impressed the pants off of me (even though I did like the first two issues, The Ballad of the Salt Sea and Under the Sign of Capricorn), is getting more and more complex in story and character depth.  The latest installment, Beyond the Windy Isles, introduces many new friends and foes of Corto's, and reaches new heights in originality and quality.

Hugo Pratt's famous sea adventurer begins this adventure in Venezuela, and, accompanied by Professor Steiner (whom we met in the previous episode, Under the Sign of Capricorn), Corto agrees to help Levi Colombia in his search for the legendary Eldorado.   In the process, Pratt will introduce our hero to magic mushrooms, native Indios, large bone crushing boa constrictor snakes, where Corto will come close to dying, as he often does.   At one point, as he runs into a daughter of a woman that used to love him, he once again proves to be more charming than is necessary:

"My mother loved you very much, Corto, but you messed up her 

life.  Are you now determined to screw up her daughter's 

life, too?  Your questions are very dangerous."

Pratt has done an exceptional job of advancing and progressing the story and plot of each episode.  It's easy to see that this is no comic for children, no subject matter for the young and naive, and as such should only appeal to the older, serious readers.  When Corto once again runs into Soledad Lokäarth, who's on trial for witchcraft in Barbados, and who remembers him as John Smith (from the previous episode) when she nursed him back to health after he suffered a case of amnesia, he genuinely looks confused.  Corto honestly does not recognize her, despite how much his ignorance of her may break her heart.  Pratt doesn't just show us old acquaintances who've ran into each other accidentally; he places them in the most dire of circumstances, where death lurks very near by, and doesn't negotiate with anyone, be they friend or foe.

"... this man was happy... he looked into the sweet dream

lagoon and saw things the way he wanted them to be..."

But perhaps the most memorable and eloquent part of Beyond the Windy Isles involves a mad British soldier, Robin Stuart, stranded on the Sweet Dream Lagoon, and suffering from fever and other psychedellic ills that have driven him out of his wits.  As Corto Maltese pays him a visit, accompanied by a friend guide, he attempts to help the poor soldier by getting him off this island that has produced so many hallucinations and visions, causing him to delve deep back into the madness labyrinth of his past.  Here he is visited by the friends from his war squadron, but mostly by Evelyne, that enigmatic love of his youth who's remained the one memory of his that still keeps him together.  This sequence is imagined and executed with convincing clarity, which is even more beautiful and poetic considering that when Stuart finally dies, with his eyes wide open, it is with Evelyne at his side, just as she was during the height of their romance.

"...there's something about you... that attracts me too much... 

I can not afford the luxury of falling in love 

with a vagabond like you, Corto Maltese!"

Beyond the Windy Isles clearly elevates the previously good material from The Ballad of the Salt Sea and Under the Sign of Capricorn into nearly great graphic literature, and promises even better adventures up ahead.  Corto Maltese is no longer a mysterious, enigmatic charlatan, which I, mistakenly, at first understood him to be.  He's a man of conviction, compassion and general good will towards all fellow men and women.  Well, towards women he does have a certain charm and hold that the rest of us male mammals can only dream of possessing.   I suppose them's the breaks for the world's most prolific and well known graphic novel sea adventuring captain.

"... I am a great sorcerer - I can make my enemies die of 

a heart attack, fly into the air... I can make them disappear 

and I can tame scorpions... but when it comes to questions of 

love I'm the most incompetent person in the world of sorcery!"

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