Hey Brandon, where would you recommend starting if I want to get into Manara? Dark Horse just solicited a new paperback of his book Indian Summer and I'm wondering if I should check it out.

I wouldn’t start with Indian summer, it’s a great one, with some of his best art but also kind of harsh with all the incest and sexual violence in it.

I’d start with his 

Bergman books. There’s 5 of them and the first 4 are great. 
The Great Adventure, 
An Author in Search of Six Characters , 
Dies Irae , and 
Perchance to Dream (my favorite) 

Bergman is a young man (I always took him to be a young Manara) who is chosen for a great adventure with HP (cartoonist Hugo Pratt of Corto Maltese fame) as his guide. 

In the Bergman books, Manara really plays with storytelling and what is possible in comics. I feel it’s work aiming at being placed among the Italian greats, Like Felini and Pratt. It’s amazing work.

After that I think going into his book he did with Felini! TRIP TO TULUM

It feels like Manara working through his love of Felini (an obvious HUGE influence on his– by working with the man) you can tell how much he wants to impress Felini with his beautiful pages (and Moebius and Jordo even make a cameo) 

he did a great story called The paper man, about a guy meeting a native American woman while traveling to meet a woman whose photo he carries with him.

That and The Ape (his take on the Chinese Monkey king) are both great.(
The Snowman is also from this era but I haven’t read it yet)

OK, I THINK WE’RE READY FOR THE PORN NOW!

I feel like with Manara’s adult work it helps to know the man through his work first, to know how good he is and can be and ideally be charmed by him.

So Butterscotch is my favorite of his adult work, it’s the simple story of a lady named Honey (who aside from Bergman is manara’s best character IMO)  who discovers a man who has created a ointment that can turn him invisible. 

Also in the story Honey wears a Corto hat, another nod to Pratt (Paul Pope brought in the same hat in his One trick rip off) 

There’s a Butterscotch 2, but it’s really not as good. I would suggest that his Hidden camera book is a better BS2 as it follows Honey more (where BS 2 has some rando no one cares about) Also his SHORTS book (of other short stories is really good)

Another of his best adult books is the CLICK series, Click goes off the rails a bit. (it’s about a magic box that turns women on) In one of the later books Manara even brings in a character based off of Angelina Jollllle – who has a brother that she keeps getting into weird sex stuff with (because that was a news thing a million years ago when she kissed her bro at a Hollywood whatever) 

ok ok ok 

AND NOW I think you should read Indian Summer and 
El Gaucho – that he did with Pratt. 

And then you can go into 

Piranese - The Prison Planet– a fun prison planet sci fi thing. 

Manara’s Kama Sutra– & 

The Art of Spanking– Both are just fun porn books

Gullivera– This is where things get dumb, this book is just a sexy retelling of Guliver’s travels but with sex 

WWW– I would call this one a low point if he didn’t do an xmen book with Claremeont. It’s about sexy web cam girls living together and I think they have some thing where they have to have sex every 20 minutes or something. It’s been awhile and it’s dumb. but as always the art is nice.

And then there’s the Jordo books that i haven’t read. (The Incal is really as far as i go with that guy) I’m sure I’ll get to them eventually.

Alright this was longer than I planned– but also shorter than I would like.

My point with Manara is always that regardless of his flaws his is a singular creator who, I think has done work with comics that I’ve yet to see anyone touch. As a long time fan of his work and deep admirer of what he’s capable of I find it to be a HUGE bummer when his body of work is reduced to being a pin up girl artist (granted part of that is on him)