The Magnificent African Adventure

The Fantagraphics Milo Manara Signature Edition

Creator/Writer/Artist Milo Manara expertly skewers adventure comics — and narrative convention itself — in this absurdist, sophisticated satire. In The Magnificent African Adventure, Manara’s famously inept adventurer Giuseppe Bergman (Manara’s comics alter ego), is led by circumstance and calamity through two engagingly absurd stories — An Author in Search of Six Characters and Days of Wrath — that both absolutely attest to the existence of free will... or do they? Is life a stage, and do we just follow a script? Can we rewrite our roles, or must we play along according to the instructions of others?

The two stories in this volume take place in Africa, which author/artist Milo Manara views as the bearer of insight and hope for the rest of the world. Turning Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” on its head, Manara sets our favorite inept, globe-trotting hero-naif, Giuseppe Bergman off on another quest for adventure. An off-panel director hands out scripts and then disappears. (Are we watching a play or are we in it?) Dedicated to playing his role, Giuseppe is confused when others assert themselves and send the entire scenario spinning out of control. His sexy co-star, Lulu, cast as a bimbo, rewrites herself as the hero, leading us to ponder deeper matters, such as whether we possess true free will or we just think we do. Giuseppe Bergman’s second African adventure begins with Chloe, a winsome nymphet who asks many questions — about the facts of life (and the fictions, too).

Is she really that innocent? Or is she just drawn that way? Manara allows his characters to break the “fourth wall” as Chloe beckons us into an erotic, exotic Fellini-esque romp revolving around young Giuseppe’s determination to return a kidnapped child to her tribe. His real motive? To break free and become the hero of his own story, rather than remain the hapless plaything of an omniscient narrator.