Shorts


By Milo Manara, translated by Tom Leighton (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-087416-060-4

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 in a mature and contemplative mood today, so here’s a review of a rather quirky and philosophical confection by one of the world’s greatest graphic eroticists. Originally translated into English from the French edition Courts Mệtrages by Catalan in 1989, it’s another inexplicably Out-of-Print graphic gem desperately in need of a English language release…

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.

His training was in the classical arts of painting and architecture before succumbing to the lure of comics. In 1969, he started his career 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 creating material for Charlie Mensuel, Pilote and L’Écho des savanes that he created his signature series HP and Giuseppe Bergman for A Suivre.

As the 80’s staggered to a close he wrote and drew, in his characteristic blend of bawdy burlesque and saucy slapstick, the eccentric selection of satirical, baroque tales gathered here as a wry and penetrating assault on modern media and bastardized popular cultural which were increasingly being used to cloak capitalist intrusions and commercial seductions.

In these absurdist, voyeuristic, fourth-wall breaking, intellectually-challenging and exceedingly sexy black and white vignettes Manara highlights the diminishing divisions between Art and Selling, with tales intended to make your head throb as much as your nether regions…

The sensorial incursion commences with ‘Commercial’, as couch-potato is inexorably drawn into the Casanovan drama he is watching and the drama’s TV-contained characters are impeded in their roles by the intrusive presence of the sponsor’s unsavoury product – adult diapers.

All of these tales are visually influenced by icons of the Great Arts, such as Luciano Pavarotti and Fellini, whilst ‘Blue Period’ details the ruthless nature of commercialism as a photographic director goes to extraordinary lengths to reproduce a Picasso painting for an album cover. Sadly, under normal conditions, the human body just doesn’t bend that way…

‘X3’ offers to reveal your sex-portrait with a brief questionnaire survey carried out by aliens well-versed in the techniques of abduction and probing whilst ‘John Lennon’ delightfully describes what happened after the master musician got to Heaven and ‘Acherontia Atropos’ plays a very dark prank on a cameraman who signs up to film a genuine snuff-movie…

‘Untitled’ returns to the role of unsatisfied Casanova as the legendary lover suffers a unquantifiable loss and surreal challenge to his life-style, but ‘The Last Tragic Day of Gori Bau & the Callipygian Sister’ sinisterly shows the dark-side of underage explorations as a trio of kids invoke feelings and powers they are not equipped to cope with…

The allegorical ambuscade concludes with the calamitously comedic surreal science fiction yarn ‘And’ as an Earthman and an Arturian escape from a dying planet thanks to the power of a book which writes itself and predicts the future. If only the incredible chronicle had a spell-checker too…

Described in Manara’s beautifully rendered, lavish line-work this explicit, daringly deep and sexually charged selection makes intriguing points of social and creative commentary in an utterly seductive and fascinating manner, but even at its most raunchy, funny and challenging this tome is first and foremost a work of sublime pictorial entertainment desperately worthy of a new edition.
© 1989 Milo Manara/Staletti, agent, Paris. English Language edition © 1989 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.