Milo Manara - Hugo Pratt : Indian Summer

Creators




Writer : Milo Manara, Hugo Pratt
Artist : Milo Manara

 

Hugo Pratt is a gifted writer, a natural born story-teller. Milo Manara is an equally gifted and talented artist. Together they recreate true and accurate colonial history based on one small episode of conflict between Native Americans and the Puritan settlers.

The Native Americans become individuals, the settlers and townsfolk are vividly portrayed.

The friendships and the ultimate tragedy born of misunderstandings and human foibles (on both sides) unrolls before the readers eyes in an unforgettable manner.

This is gifted storytelling in a graphic novel format that provides insight as well as entertainment.

When the English settlers arrive in America, they bring their mores, their values, their prejudices and their troubles with them.

Only to find that the neighboring natives are already dealing with their prejudices, mores and values of their own.

So back to addressing the European Comic genre, what a better representative could’ve I picked than Milo Manara.

This Italian author has been doing comics for the better part of 40 years, albeit what really gave him an international name and got attention of the comic book industry was his amazing and masterful erotic art.



His renown is such that recently Marvel did something quite daring and brought Milo Manara into their universe, in a one shot book, called X-Women.

Although for the English speaking world  this graphic novel was titled Indian Summer, the original title is Tutto ricominciò con un’estate Indiana and the literal translation would be “Everything began with an Indian Summer”.

This hints at the type of narrative we will be reading here. A recollection, a melancholic recapping of events from long ago.

Manara's art speaks for itself, so no need to go on and on about it. But the stories written by him are usually pointless sex tales. The difference with Indian Summer is that Pratt actually gave him a great story (the struggles of early settlers for survival, and their unpredictable relations with the native indians).

Manara expresses the emotions of his characters beautifully through his pencil.