Review by Andy Williams

Italian writer and artist Milo Manara is known for his erotic comics featuring highly sexualised female characters. Subtitled “The African Adventures Of Giuseppe Bergman”, this is one of a number of tales that follow the somewhat naïve character on his often surrealistic travels.

Bergman is involved in making a cinéma vérité film about Lulu, a prostitute who comes into possession of a briefcase containing secret plans. When the lead actress pulls out a non-actress is cast as “Lulu” and only the menacing Miss St Ambrogio and her enforcer Mr. Bo have access to the script, leaving Bergman and Lulu with no clue what’s going on as they take the briefcase to Ethiopia. They become separated on the journey, eventually reunited at a high class resort populated by rich westerners. A mysterious Rastafarian plays an infectious drumbeat that has a strange effect on everyone, performing a song about the evils of white imperialism. The film’s final scene leaves Bergman and Lulu in a state of limbo as a Pythonesque critic rants about the depravity of the story.

The narrative has a nonsensical, dream-like quality and doesn’t follow a conventional structure, as though Manara is making it up as he goes along. The characters are ciphers and are shown nothing deeper than their surface level traits. Apart from Bergman and Lulu it’s difficult to gauge who the titular “Six Characters” are as nobody achieves any real development or progress. The dialogue is often clunky in places, possibly due to poor translation from the original Italian.

Manara’s art is gorgeous throughout, heavily detailed in the lush European style. While not as reliant on explicit sexual situations as much of Manara’s other work, there is explicit gratuitous nudity in several scenes. The use of obvious racial caricatures, although utilised in a satirical context, could be construed as offensive with a more modern sensibility. Not as sexy or coherent as his more notorious titles, Manara is a master of graphic storytelling and his art remains beautiful to look at.

Originally published by Catalan Communications in 1989, in 2013 this story was included in Volume 5 of Dark Horse’s Manara Library collection: Further Adventures Of Guiseppe Bergman.