The pattern of the tyre tread, the roof buckles and the way the car leans according to the camber of the road are all taken into account. Pratt draws an old canvas-topped period car again and again, every time an original illustration, with no detail too small to omit in the creation of precision.
His figures, faces, and backgrounds are loose and impressionistic, often shadow drenched, yet whenever a form of transportation is required he becomes a technical draughtsman. Pratt the artist is a man of two approaches. The violence, passion and pattern of delicacy involved are echoed in Argentina’s most famous dance, hence the title. Among all this Corto is the equivalent of the chemical catalyst, unchanged himself, but causing turbulence, with the dealings of the rich and powerful at stake.
That experience provides first hand knowledge of complex social systems and interpretations of honour providing a constantly absorbing background to Corto’s attempts to track a missing friend, Louise Brookszovyc, last seen in Fable of Venice.Ĭorto’s arrival in Buenos Aires, the questions he poses, and the people he asks gradually unravel previously stable relationships, and as the body count rises more and more seediness emerges into the light. Tango is a far more personal story than most Corto Maltese graphic novels, being Hugo Pratt’s love letter to the city he called home and the culture he absorbed when he lived and worked in Argentina on and off for twenty years from 1949.
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