Butterscotch (The Flavour of the Invisible)

By Milo Manara, translated by Tom Leighton (Eurotica/NBM) or (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-109-4 NBM or 978-0-87416-047-5 Catalan

If the cover images haven’t already clued you in, for some folks the graphic novel under review here will be unacceptably dirty. If that’s you, please stop here and come back tomorrow when there will something you’ll approve of but which will surely offend somebody else.

I’m feeling all grown up and continental today, so here’s a long overdue review of a milder masterpiece by one of the world’s greatest graphic eroticists. Originally translated into English by Catalan in 1987 it was re-released in 2002 under NBM’s Eurotica imprint, but has since languished in that great big limbo-land of the inexplicably Out-of-Print…

Maurilio Manara (born September 12th 1945) is an intellectual, whimsical craftsman with a dazzling array of artistic skills ranging from architecture, product design, painting and of course an elegant, refined, clear-clean line style with pen and ink. He is best known for his wry and always controversial sexually explicit material – although that’s more an indicator of our comics market than any artistic obsession.

He studied painting and architecture before becoming a comic artist in 1969, beginning with the Fumetti Neri series Genius, worked on the magazine Terror and in 1971 began his adult career (see what I did there?) illustrating Francisco Rubino’s Jolanda de Almaviva. In 1975 his first major work, a reworking of the Chinese tales of the Monkey King, was released as Lo Scimmiotto (‘The Ape‘).

By the end of the seventies he was working for Franco-Belgian markets where he is still regarded as an A-list creator. It was while working for Charlie Mensuel, Pilote and L’Écho des savanes that he created his signature series HP and Giuseppe Bergman for A Suivre.

In 1986 he wrote and drew, in his inimitable blend of social satire, bawdy burlesque and saucy slapstick, the incredible tale of the ultimate voyeur’s dream in Il profumo dell’invisibile, translated here as ‘Butterscotch’ …

The star is a rather brilliant and incredibly innocent nerd-physicist who has invented a lotion which can bend light rays around anything smeared with it. He also has an unnerving and utterly sexless fascination with prima ballerina Beatrice D’Altavilla – which is a pity as she is a heartless, sadistic bitch and the biggest slut in creation.

Honey is Beatrice’s extremely liberated, licentious and hot-blooded associate (Beatrice don’t do “friends”) and when she discovers the naked, semi-invisible man in the dancer’s bedroom she feels it her duty to show the innocuous stalker what his dream girl is really like…

Sadly there are none so blind as those who will not see, especially if we can’t see them either, and her various attempts to open his invisible eyes lead to violence and a bizarre sexual co-dependence (what with Beatrice being far too virginal and perfect for that nasty, dirty stuff…)

As Honey perpetually and ever-more frantically attempts to prove the existence of her invisible man – whose cloaking lotion smells powerfully of Butterscotch – her already low position in the ballerina’s entourage plummets and the abuses intensify.

Finally however, as Honey grows increasingly closer to the omnipresent, unseen (but regularly felt) voyeur, she finally shows him Beatrice’s true nature, leading to a tempestuous climax nobody expected and some might not survive…

Couched in Manara’s beautifully rendered, lavish line-work this highly explicit and sexually charged tale casts fascinating light on what people can’t and won’t see around them. Absolutely for adults only, Butterscotch is a captivating exploration of love, obsession and misperception.

Raunchy, funny and extremely hard to find, this is a book desperately worthy of a new edition.
© 1987 Milo Manara. English Language edition © 1987 Catalan Communications. © 2002 NBM. All rights reserved.