New world record for Corto Maltese art

A watercolor of graphic novel hero, Corto Maltese, sold at an auction for a record 391,800 euros ($485,500), just months after a Tintin strip set a new world high for a comic at 2.65 million euros.

The artwork for a 1979 French edition of the novel in Africa (Corto Maltese - Les Ethiopiques) went for more than twice the original estimate, the French auction house Artcurial said on Sunday.

Maltese, a sophisticated sailor adventurer whose stories are set in the early decades of the 20th century, was the creation of the Venetian comic book writer Hugo Pratt.