Comic book hero Corto Maltese back to life, as suave as ever

Corto Maltese, the debonair sea captain anti-hero of a string of classic graphic novels, is to sail again in a new adventure, 20 years after his Italian creator died. The new book -- published later this month -- picks up from the end of "The Ballad of the Salt Sea", the story which launched Hugo Pratt's celebrated series in 1967 with its laconic hero returning from run-ins with pirates in the Pacific during World War I, to hook up again with the American novelist Jack London in the vast wildern