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Born in the South Tyrolean village of Luson on 12 September 1945,Milo Manara is a master of comics with an instantly recognisable style: iconic central characters, sensual female figures, exquisitely detailed linework. This is Manara – and much more.
Thanks to his artistic talent and anti-establishment streak, through his own work and a series of ground-breaking collaborations with the likes of Hugo Pratt and Federico Fellini, Manara took comics to new heights of sophistication, elevating to an art form a medium with deep popular roots.
Childhood and artistic education
Maurilio Manara, better known under his pen name Milo Manara, grew up in a modest working-class home in the countryside. From the age of 11, he began making decorative panels on commission to supplement the family income. After studying at a private school specialising in art, he moved to Verona, where he worked as an assistant to noted Spanish sculptor Miguel Ortiz Berrocal. At the same time, he also enrolled in the Architecture Faculty at the University of Venice.
In these formative years, Manara found traditional art left him unfulfilled and he began thinking about the social role of the figurative arts. He was inspired by the explosion of avant-garde movements challenging canonical art forms at the time, from pop art and body art to minimal art, conceptual art and kinetic art.
Amidst the youth revolt of 1968, Manara broke with traditional pictorial art, openly criticising the Venice Biennale and artistic elitism in general. His interest shifted towards art forms more accessible to ordinary people. He discovered comics in this period, thanks to Berrocal’s French wife, who brought back from Paris the latest bandes dessinées, like Forest’s Barbarella and Jodelle and Guy Peellaert’s Pravda.
And so Manara fell in love with comics as an adult, his mother having strictly forbidden him from reading them as a child. He was seduced by the possibility of producing a series, which contrasted sharply with pictorial art’s predilection for one-off creations. For Manara, comics were much closer to literature, not least because they could be enjoyed by the masses at affordable prices.
First steps in comics and embrace of eroticism
In the 1960s, Manara dipped his toe into the world of comics publishing, but got nowhere: publishers were reluctant to commission work from an artist with no prior experience in the medium.
Everything changed when he met Mario Gomboli, who already worked in comics together with Alfredo Castelli. Gomboli introduced Manara to publisher Furio Viano, who in 1969 gave him his big break working on Genius, an erotic crime series inspired by the success of Diabolik.
Manara immediately demonstrated a mastery of the medium and an ability to draw female figures with grace and sensuality, without ever lapsing into the vulgar. His work on Genius caught the eye of publisher Renzo Barbieri, who asked him to contribute to an erotic pirate adventure series Jolanda de Almaviva, with Manara making his debut on issue 14 in 1971. It gave readers a first taste of his distinctive depiction of feminine figures, with their curvy physiques, full lips and seductive expressions.
Shortly afterwards, Manara dropped out of university and, with the help of Castelli, began working on Corriere dei Ragazzi, the weekly children’s comics paper published by Corriere della Sera. Between 1975 and 1976, he drew the series La parola alla giuria, which was written by Mino Milani and told the stories of controversial figures from history, such as Nero, Robespierre, Helena of Troy, Robert Oppenheimer and Attila the Hun. Then, together with Alfredo Castelli and Mario Gomboli, he produced Un fascio di bombe, a comic about the wave of far-right terrorism that swept in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s.
Manara made his first foray into auteur comics with Silverio Pisu. The pair founded the satirical magazine Telerompo and published two seminal works: Lo Scimmiotto and Alessio, il borghese rivoluzionario. Lo Scimmiotto was a revisiting of Chinese literary character Sun Wukung, whom the authors transformed into a metaphor for Mao Zedong, enthused with the political and social climate of 1968. Published in alterlinus magazine and featuring Manara’s trademark female figures, it was very much a product of the political activism and biting satire of its time. Alessio, il borghese rivoluzionario, on the other hand, was published in alteralter in 1977 and is a cross between a graphic novel and an illustrated story: text and images are presented separately, allowing each author the freedom to express his own artistic vision.
With this work, Manara left behind mass-market erotic comics for good and established himself as one of the great Italian cartoonists.
International success: Hugo Pratt and Click!
In the 1970s, Manara further developed his own signature style, heavily influenced by two greats: Jean Giraud/Moebius and Hugo Pratt.
He also broke into the thriving French market with publishing giant Larousse, who between 1976 and 1978 released Histoire de France en bande dessineé, La découverte du monde en bande dessinée and Histoire de la Chine.
Manara’s success in France continued when, in 1978, he began contributing to A Suivre magazine, in which he published his first original story drawn and written himself: HP and Giuseppe Bergman (“HP” was a nod to his friend and mentor Hugo Pratt). The main character, Giuseppe Bergman, was the author’s alter ego, and looked like a cross between Manara himself and legendary French actor Alain Delon.
This series marked a turning point for Manara in terms of both style and storytelling. It explores the meaning of art and travel in a graphic style increasingly divorced from traditional comic book conventions.
At the end of the 1970s, Manara contributed illustrations to Enzo Biagi’s popular Storia d’Italia a fumetti (alongside the likes of Hugo Pratt and Dino Battaglia), but it wasn’t until 1983 that he found international success with Click!, commissioned and published by Italian adult magazine Playmen.
This erotic comic was a bestseller across Europe and particularly popular in France. Click! tells the story of Claudia Cristiani, a sexually repressed woman who is fitted with an experimental electronic device that stimulates an insatiable libido in her. Despite its adult subject matter, the comic was admired for its immaculate linework, and confirmed Manara as a master of erotic comics.
It was around this time that Manara began a long collaboration with Hugo Pratt. In 1983 they published Indian Summer, a seminal work in the Italian comic book canon. Set in a 17th-century American colony, it explores the tensions between the puritan settlers and native Americans, interweaving historical facts with eroticism and intrigue. The pair teamed up again to produce another landmark work, El Gaucho (1992-1995), this time set during the Argentine war of independence.
Other notable works include contributions to American comics, like 2009’s X-Women and a controversial cover for Spider-Woman in 2014, which was criticised by some for its sexualised depiction of the superhero.
Style and artistic influences
Manara has developed a distinctive style that blends meticulous anatomical detail with a sculptural rendering of the human body. His female figures are always long-limbed, shapely and sensual, with little noses and feline eyes: idealised representations of feminine beauty.
He has a knack for bringing characters to life through posture and movement, depicting graceful and sinuous figures that leap off the page. It’s a mastery that no doubt owes much to Hugo Pratt, with whom Manara forged a deep artistic bond.
Unafraid to break the rules of traditional comics, Manara takes an innovative approach to the page.
He has a penchant for breaking the grid, with characters spilling out of panels and creating a sense of freedom often freighted with symbolic meaning. Pop art and body art are clear influences, along with classical and modern art, all of which come together in a unique and unmistakable style.
Cinema collaborations and other artistic forays
Success in comics also opened doors to collaborations in cinema and advertising. Manara worked with director Federico Fellini on the comic Trip to Tulum (1986) and later on the film The Journey of G. Mastorna (1992), which remains unreleased to this day. He also produced posters for the films Intervista and The Voice of the Moon.
Fellini saw in Manara the perfect artist to bring to life his poetic and surreal visions. It was a partnership that produced extraordinary works that blend comics art and cinema.
Other film directors Manara has worked with include Pedro Almodóvar, for whom he illustrated the book El fuego y las entrañas, and Alejandro Jodorowsky, with whom he produced the historical comic book series The Borgias (2004-2010), which takes an unvarnished look at the Borgia family saga.
In the advertising world, Manara brought his talent for creating storyboards and illustrations to campaigns for prestigious brands such as Chanel, Sisley, Lavazza and Costa Crociere. He also designed countless posters for films and plays, cementing his reputation as a much sought-after artist outside the comics universe.
The legacy of Milo Manara
One of the greatest living Italian cartoonists, Milo Manara has left an indelible mark on comics art.
He has revolutionised the representation of sensuality through his refined and detailed style in work that elevates the medium to an art form.
And his legacy stretches beyond comics art: by exploring human complexity with a rare sensibility, he has also helped to shape contemporary culture.