The legendary sailor Corto Maltese, created by Italian artist Hugo Pratt (pen name Ugo Eugenio Prat), has found a new home in the United States with Fantagraphics, a comics publisher. In 2026, the publishing firm will undertake a project focusing on the famous comic series, first publishing a paperback collection of short stories, followed by six deluxe, full-color, hardback volumes of the entire collection. Since its first publication in 1967, Corto Maltese has become a literary icon that helped shape the history of graphic storytelling in Europe. His publishing career began with the publication of "The Ballad of the Salty Sea" — today recognized as one of the first graphic novels — in the magazine Sgt. Kirk, later appearing in the French Pif Gadget and Italy’s Linus in the 1970s, culminating in the launch of Corto Maltese magazine in 1983, published by Milano Libri Edizioni, a Rizzoli imprint. Corto Maltese's adventures take place in the early twentieth century, as he travels around the world, depicting an ever-changing world through the prism of irony and nonconformity. Although Corto Maltese has already appeared in other countries, Fantagraphics is the first to publish the entire narrative in full color in high-quality volumes tailored exclusively for the US market.