And without a doubt ‘The Ballad of the Salt Sea’ already shows tendencies to reduce the pictorial content to a minimum, something that went on to be considered typical of Pratt’s work. The multitude and complexity of its characters, the morally dubious anti-heroes, the landscape that itself became an active character in the narration as well as the extensive research Pratt conducted for his stories were groundbreaking. Firstly, it was astonishing in its clear design and unusual length of 165 pages. However, it raises the questions of whether Pratt did stretch the medium’s boundaries to include abstraction into his narration or whether this is only due to the detail she chose and if comic panels can actually be analyzed without taking at least the scene as a whole into account.Ĭorto Maltese was bursting with innovations when its first story ‘Ballad of the Salt Sea’ appeared in installments in 1967. And indeed, from the three-panel-detail she presented alongside her article one might get the impression that Pratt ventured into the abstract in his comics. In her article ‘L’héritier des maîtres de l’aquarelle’, Emmanuelle Lequeux (2011) wrote that Hugo Pratt evoked the history of abstract art in his work Corto Maltese.

Transitions: New Directions in Comics Studies.

Nordic Network for Comics Research (NNCORE) Conferences.

Graphic Details Symposium: Talking About Jewish Women and Comics (2012).

Gesellschaft für Comicforschung (ComFor) Conferences.

Frames: Jewish Culture and the Comic Book.

First International Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels: Sites of Visual and Textual Innovation (2011).

CRAS (Colloque de recherche en arts séquentiels).

Comics & Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness (2011).

The International Bande Dessinée Society.

The Bi-Monthly/Trimonthly/Intermittent ComFor Update.

Rummaging Around in Alan Moore’s Shorts.

Comics Forum Online: Annual Review and Conference Call for Papers.

Death and the Superhero: Strikeforce: Morituri.

Comics and Philosophy: From Maus to She-Hulk.

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