Corto Maltese: Vudù per il Presidente - Hugo Pratt

In Vudù per il Presidente, Corto Maltese gets mixed up in a very dangerous business - what else? - while in Barbados with Professor Steiner, but here the threats come not just from the living but the undead. In Port Ducal, Steiner tells him he has heard stories about the walking dead and that the president is rumoured to be a demon. Corto dismisses this as fantasy, even though he knows from his own personal background that stranger things have happened. It is revealed here that Corto's mother was a gypsy from Gibraltar and a witch, while his father from Cornwall is a nephew of an old devil from Tintagel. 

Corto's immediate problems however are more earth bound, rescuing Steiner from a prison cell in Port Ducal. Once base for pirates before the indigenous tribes wiped out the foreigners and proclaimed it an independent republic, the island still remains a dangerous place for foreigners. Corto attends a trial taking place of Soledad Lokaarth, who accused of occult activities, raising the dead on a sugar plantation that has been purchased from the president's brother. If she is found guilty of witchcraft the punishment according to the law is death.

It's apparent to Corto that the trial is nothing more than a scheme by Zola to take her land. Steiner wisely keeps away from getting involved, but is nonetheless astonished to hear that Corto has been executed by firing squad for mocking the trial as a farce, his body left for students of anatomy. Steiner, a friend of the president from a time when they were both studying in Paris, goes to see if he can get approval to collect the body of Corto, but ends up arrested himself. The President we discover is now a mummified corpse.

It seems like both men - and Soledad - have been put in an impossible situation, but Corto of course hasn't been executed. With the help of the masked great devil and some black magic, as well as an incredible mask that he has somehow fashioned for himself as a disguise, Zola is defeated and Soledad rescued. And Steiner. Soledad claims that she has seen him shot by firing squad in British Honduras and his name is John Smith. Maybe it was in a dream, either way it's a sad one. As ever, the artwork is magnificent, Pratt finding great character in the faces of everyone, particularly the angular faces of the natives of Port Ducal, but also in the more exotic voodoo masks.


Reading notes: Vudù per il Presidente by Hugo Pratt  (1971). Original black and white edition, Italian language, published by Rizzoli-Lezard. Read from Kindle eBook edition.

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