Between heroism and cynicism: A review of "Morgan"

by Christof Morrissey

Hugo Pratt's last released comic album "Morgan" tells the story of a young Royal Navy officer commanding a torpedo boat (the famed MTB "Vosper") in the Adriatic during the last years of the Second World War. Through several short episodes beginning in September 1943 and ending with the close of hostilities in May 1945, Pratt traces the story of a duty-conscious young officer torn between heroism and cynicism. In the course of his adventures, Morgan rescues an RAF pilot and an Italian countess from the Adriatic, transports two British commando officers to the islands of Yugoslavia to establish contact with Tito's Partisans, pilots an observation balloon to wipe out a stubborn nest of German paratroopers, taxis more agents back to Italy to dispose of an Albanian collaborator, eliminates a dangerous spy on the streets of Venice, and finally closes out the war with an "enemy sinking."

The hardcover album, available in French from Casterman and in German from Kult Editionen, is attractively packaged. The coloring, in which subdued browns and greys predominate, conveys the alternately sun-bleached and muddy atmosphere of the wartime Mediterranean theater (the French edition is also available in black and white paperback, from Casterman). Pratt's rough drawings in some places almost suggest a draft done in preparation of a final version--but he often drew this way in his later years. As always, facial expressions, shadows, and pregnant silences are as important to moving Pratt's story along as the text. Pratt uses his hero's diary excerpts to record the passing of time and set up changed situations, as well as provide glimpses into Morgan's psychology, a technique Pratt employed to great effect in his masterful World War II series "Scorpions of the Desert." The episodes in "Morgan" are short and occasionally a bit thin--individually, they lack the depth, suspense, character development, and structure of "Scorpions". Taken together, however, they cohere as a portrait of a dutiful young officer frustrated by the unglamorous nature of his assignments--but who nevertheless gets himself involved in several hair-raising operations (Morgan personally kills over a half dozen of the "enemy" throughout 80 pages!).

As with Pratt's earlier "realist" war stories, there is little of the mysticism, tongue-in-cheek surrealism, and exploration of the "irrational" that characterizes his legendary Corto Maltese series. The hard-boiled realism of Pratt's World War II stories seems to underline his legendary explanation that Corto Maltese would disappear in the Spanish Civil War, after which technology and bureaucracy would make true adventure no longer possible. Another Pratt hallmark on display in "Morgan": no comics storyteller is better at winning our interest in "forgotten" theaters of war and in the fates of marginal actors in big historical dramas, or at intertwining historical research, old soldiers' stories, and pure imagination into a spellbinding narrative.

As in "Corto Maltese", Pratt gets the psychological balance between heroism and cynicism just right. Morgan frets about being the "postman" of the Adriatic and that the war will end before he has a chance to be a hero. He seizes every opportunity for personal involvement in the operations of the special agents he taxis around between Italy and the Dalmatian coast. Duty-conscious to a fault, Morgan is capable of carrying out quite ghastly orders in cold blood--but is always candid in his criticism of these missions that waste Allied lives.

As usual, Pratt succeeds masterfully in recreating a "romantic" atmosphere, a world that we--and his characters--realize is on the brink of disappearing forever. And there's an emotional storyline as well. Morgan's emerging long-distance love affair with a young lieutenant of the Womens Royal Navy Service represents the promise of peace. The clear implication is that only after the war can the affair be consummated. Then again, it would be entirely in keeping with Pratt's mixture of romanticism and realism if the two never saw one another again in the peace!

Another of Pratt's great strengths, and obvious pleasures, is his use of characters serving in colonial or paracolonial "auxiliary" roles. No doubt his own experiences serving as a teenager in Mussolini's home guard in Ethiopia and later being dragooned into the Wehrmacht's coastal security in Venice are at least part of the explanation for this passion. Pratt must know more about a wider variety of the war's obscure uniformed units than most military historians. As in his beloved Corto series and the somewhat darker Scorpions of the Desert, these characters enable him to explore some of his favorite themes: loyalty and betrayal, the search for belonging or for escape from an unwanted past, human corruptibility, the limits of collaboration with unloved authority.

In addition to all that, where else but in a Pratt comic album (or a Pynchon novel) can one find such a breathtaking mix of picaresque characters: beautiful but traitorous Italian countesses, sinister Chetniks, idealistic Venetian-Jewish MI6 agents, brave Albanian communists, salty German navy captains, doughty Irish infantrymen, love-struck upper-class RAF pilots, steadfast Maltese sailors of the Royal Navy, German-baiting riflemen of the "Italian Fascist Republic", willowy Scottish redheads piloting observation balloons, stout Canadian boat crews, mustachioed British special operations officers, and Luftwaffe paratroopers fighting to the bitter end? As with almost everything by Hugo Pratt that I've read, I found myself wishing that I was the one who'd written and drawn this fine book.