Milo Manara (born Maurilio Manara, in 1945, Luson , Italy) is an Italian comic book creator (writer and drawer), best known for his erotic approach to the medium.

His cartoons generally revolve around elegant, beautiful women caught up in unlikely and fantastical erotic scenarios. Some of his more famous books include "Il Giotto" (1983, translated as Click) (in four parts), about a device which rendered women helplessly aroused, and "Il Profumo Dell'invisibile" (1986, translated as Butterscotch ), about the invention of a body-paint which made the wearer invisible. Some of his most acclaimed books were collaborations with fellow Italian artist and cartoonist Hugo Pratt.

Manara's style favors clean lines for women reserving more complex drawings for monsters or other supernatural elements. Like his compatriot Tinto Brass, he evidently has a fixation with the female buttocks. Many of his comics have themes of bondage, domination and humiliation, voyeurism, the supernatural, and the sexual tension beneath various aspects of Italian society. The works vary in their explicitness, but the general mood is playful rather than misogynistic. Manara's skill in creating atmosphere, his obvious talent, and his occasional excursions into more "mainstream" stories, have helped to give him an air of artistic respectability.

His work reached an American audience largely through its appearance in Heavy Metal magazine.

External links

• Official Milo Manara website (uses Macromedia Flash; contains explicit content)