The Paper Man

 

By Milo Manara (Catalan Communications)
ISBN0-87416-022-7

The lush and sensuous art of Milo Manara has always outshone his scripting – at least to English speaking sensibilities – but on occasion his pared-down writing produces little comic gems, such as The Paper Man.

This sparse and gritty epic of Love and Death on the American frontier ostensibly tells the tragic tale of a young man looking for his Truly Beloved in a trek across Arizona, and his chance meetings with pop-culture mile-markers. These include a weather-crazed Preacher, a demented veteran of the long-past War of Independence, and the erotic and sensual Sioux maiden White Rabbit, all depicted against a backdrop of the most hallowed clichés of the Western, exported as cultural icon from Hollywood to the rest of the world.

By following this inept and innocent everyman through increasingly harsh incidents with US cavalrymen, wagon-trains, drunken and malevolent cow-pokes and, of course, marauding “Injuns”, none of whom actually conform to their stereotypes, Manara looks at the common-place in a fresh if somewhat reductionist manner, without losing sight of the fact that the reader always wants an enthralling story, beautifully rendered.

This untypical western with its starkly sumptuous art and crushingly tragic ‘final reel’ owes more to Brecht than to Ford or Huston, but nonetheless remains powerfully true to its roots, and is achingly easy on the eyes. Minimal but wonderful, lush and Spartan, this is a Wild West story for every adult to enjoy, regardless of when they last put on a cowboy hat.

© 1982 by Dargaud Editeur, Paris for Milo Manara.
English language edition © 1986 Catalan Communications. All Rights Reserved.