The Manara Library Volume Four Review: Halfway There, But No Prayer

The work of Italian erotic comic author Milo Manara is still alive in “The Manara Library Volume Four.” This collection features two early stories starring Giuseppe Bergman and it’s only half interesting.

The first story, “HP and Giuseppe Bergman,” has Giuseppe going to South America for an adventure financed by a large company. He meets a mysterious person named HP who is his guide throughout this adventure. What he gets into may be more than what he bargained for.

The story reads like a poorly-produced travel show where Giuseppe will “talk to the camera” once in a while to give his thoughts. The situations he gets in are in essence his fault because he wanted an adventure and he got one to last a lifetime.

This is one of Manara’s better-written stories in that he cools it with erotica and focuses on the story. It’s well-written and has quite a bit of interesting and colorful characters. To top it all of, it is always fun and a riot to see a whiny loser go into a dangerous environment and make a complete idiot out of himself. This is like a comic version of “An Idiot Abroad.”

The only downsides are when Manara’s “groovy” imagery come into play and kills the pacing of the story. Manara may draw some of the best “groovy” and “far out” images, but here they appear in the wrong places. Also, the slapstick humor that appears out of nowhere in a handful of scenes are total failures at comedy.

The other story, “Perchance to Dream: The Indian Adventures of Giuseppe Bergman,” only features Giuseppe as a side character. It instead focuses on film producer Fosca who is looking for her film crew and film who have gone missing in Kathmandu. Meanwhile, some sketchy characters are planning on destroying the area where Fosca is investigating.

This is a boring story that goes back and forth between Fosca and whatever lost film Fosca found. There in nothing remotely interesting about Fosca, the contents of the film or any of the characters in the story. Even Giuseppe’s brief moments don’t save the story one bit. That goes without saying that he doesn’t really do anything except get into a bunch of arguments. Then there’s the ending that pretty much sums up the entire story perfectly.

“The Manara Library Volume Four” is only worth getting just to see a comic version of “An Idiot Abroad,” even when Manara goes into 60s groovy mode. The other story isn’t worth straining your eyes over.