Title: El Gaucho
Author: Milo Manara, Hugo Pratt
Language: Portuguese
Adult content
Author: Milo Manara, Hugo Pratt
Language: Portuguese
Adult content
With Hugo Pratt in charge of the story, this comic is, as expected, rich in historical context, dark and violent in plot, cynical and mostly downbeat in character development. The starting point is an episode in the Napoleonic Wars, where England tried to profit from the weakness of occupied Spain and attacked Buenos Aires in 1806.
Pratt paints a vivid and detailed picture of the opposing forces, mixing in freemasonry, slaves emancipation, the desire for independence of the criollos, the rivalry between redcoats and sailors in the British expeditionary force.
His sympathies lies in general with the Argentine side and against British imperial ambitions.
The main actor is a drummer boy betrayed by his commanders and later caught prisoner on the shore. Disillusioned with his own side, he decides to remain in the new country and becomes the Gaucho from the title.
