Milo Manara (born Maurilio Manara in 1945) is perhaps the most famous living European comics artist and writer.
I’ve never had any interest in comics but recently I have developed an obsession with European comics, an obsession kicked off by Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella and solidified by my discovery of Guido Crepax. It seemed logical enough to move on to Milo Manara. I have to say that I think that compared to Forest and Crepax Manara is a lesser talent.
The comics in this volume are all overtly erotic. I have no problems with eroticism in comics, if done well. The eroticism in Barbarella is playful and witty. The eroticism in Crepax’s comics is much more strange and complex and sometimes disturbing but it’s done very stylishly, Crepax is always classy, even when he gets dark and disturbing. In this volume of Manara’s work he is too often merely crudely sexual. It feels a bit grubby. And it’s too obvious.
Il Gioco (Click or Le Déclic) dates from 1985 and is one of Manara’s best-known erotic comics and was followed by several sequels. Or perhaps it’s more a series of four linked stories.
Click is a one-idea story, although it’s an amusing idea. A sex therapist has developed a micro-machine that can be implanted in the brain. It’s controlled by a small transmitter about the size of a cigarette pack. The device is claimed to be a surefire cure for impotence. Another unscrupulous therapist, Dr Fez, steals the device and decides to find out if it will work on women as well. He wants to try it out on Mrs Claudia Christiani, a woman notorious for her lack of interest in sex.
The device works spectacularly well on Claudia, leading her into all manner of embarrassing situations. That’s pretty much it for the plot. Then there’s lots of explicit sex.
Click! 2 rehashes the plot of the first comic. The only difference is that Manara introduces some environmentalist themes which seem to be tacked on for no particular reason. There’s lots of explicit sex.
Claudia is a crusading TV journalist and she’s a particularly annoying member of a particularly annoying breed.
She becomes even more annoying in Click! 3. There’s a plot strand about forcing a girl (by very unpleasant means) to use psychic power to find diamonds. There’s a crazy guru in the jungle. And lots of explicit sex.
Click! 4 is even more stridently political with Claudia lawyer husband defending an evil chemical corporation. As usual Dr Fez shows up with his transmitter to send Claudia into more sexual frenzies.
The other story in this volume is Rendezvous in B-flat. One again there’s a political subtext, and once again it doesn’t amount to much more than telling us that politics is crooked and corrupt which I think most of us kinda already knew. It’s the story of a would-be politician who gets into debt with a loan shark. His wife has to repay the debt, in a very unpleasant way. It’s a pretty nasty story.
I don’t find the eroticism in these stories to be genuinely erotic at all. To be interesting eroticism has to be more than a succession of explicit sex acts. Manara just goes straight to crude sex. And it’s pretty crude and pretty nasty. It’s also relentless and it gets a bit tedious.
I’m not usually sensitive to such things (I’m not the sort of person who reads books looking for things to be offended by) but the level of sexual violence directed at women is a bit hair-raising.
I found these comics to be lacking in style and wit and I didn’t really enjoy them at all. Your mileage may vary of course.
I’ve enjoyed some of Manara’s later comics quite a bit so I’m not writing him off by any means.
Jean-Claude Forest and Guido Crepax are more to my taste. I highly recommend Forest's Barbarella and Crepax's Evil Spells.
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