Corto Maltese: The Ballad of the Salt Sea

Hugo Pratt was a popular Italian comic book creator and his Corto Maltese character has a pretty big fan base. (See the Corto Maltese site too.) Corto Maltese is an adventurer, sailor, treasure hunter, sometime pirate. This story begins in 1915 when the Russian pirate Rasputin finds Corto adrift in the South Pacific. But from there the story gets a bit convoluted with a pair of kidnapped kids, Germans, Japanese, and various natives around the area. I enjoyed the artwork and the way the story moved briskly but I didn't get much of a sense of who Corto really was and found the story vague or just not compelling. Also sometimes the translation was a bit shaky. Maybe it's better in Italian but I don't think I'm going to be a Corto Maltese fan.