The Manara Library Volume 3 Review: Totally Italian

Italian comic artists are known for two things: drawing smoking hot women and making weird comics that rarely make any sense to American audiences. Milo Manara is no exception.

“The Manara Library Volume 3” is a collection of comics with the main attractions being “Trip to Tulum” and ‘The Ape.” The first few stories leading up to “Trip to Tulum” focus more on philosophical existentialism than any actual storytelling. They may also weird-out some readers.

One of these comics, titled “John Lennon” is about the iconic singer’s entrance into heaven, what he saw there and how he livened the place up. Another called “The Wall” more about how art is more alive than the real world. That fact is punctuated with the mural the girl looking at is all in color while everything else is black and white. There’s not much plot in these comics as they seem to focus more giving a message than telling a story.

This is never truer than in “Trip to Tulum.” What begins as a story about an Italian director who is found in a jungle and then decides to film in an exotic location like Chichen Itza turns into one big philosophical journey. This causes the story to lose focus and drag on for 100+ pages. This will either bore or enlighten some people.

The stories do get better after that. They start to develop focus, lose the philosophical, existential angle and begin to tell actual stories. Some good examples are “The Journey of G. Mastorna a.k.a fernet,” “Blue Period” and Acherontia Atropos.” These stories show off that Manara’s true storytelling skill and are actually entertaining. Even surprising at times.

The downside is the other long story, ‘The Ape.” What’s supposed to be a retelling of part of “Journey to the West” about Monkey turns more into cramming as many naked women as possible into the story and one that makes very little sense. Not even the battle scenes are worth looking at.

Manala’s artwork is all black and white. What he draws well are women, sexy women- and tries to have them either naked or wearing sexy clothing. He’s a very good pinup artist which is no surprise as some of the best pinup artists are Italian and these women would be perfect in a pinup collection.

“The Manara Library Volume 3”has some quality stories and some that may not be to some people’s liking. The sexy women are enough for a pinup collection.