Dark Horse Books
Hugo Pratt, writer
Milo Manara, artist
***mature content warning***
This volume contains two stories: Indian Summer and The Paper Man. Of the two, the much shorter Paper Man is the better. Indian Summer is not bad because of its length. In fact, it's not a bad story at all. I just prefer the secondary tale.
Indian Summer opens with two young braves spotting a lone white girl along the beach in Colonial times. The youths assault the girl, and afterward begin to frolic together in the ocean. A third young man comes upon the scene, and deducing what has happened, shoots and kills both of the young Indians. Feeling himself a hero, this young man gives the girl back her torn clothing, kisses her despite her protests, and decides to take her back home where his mother will know what to do next. Almost this entire opening scene takes place without dialogue.
What follows is a tale of Puritan America, hypocrisy, incest, sexual and physical violence, friends attacking friends only to go along with peers -- it is NOT a happy story by any stretch of the imagination. A story doesn't have to be happy for me to enjoy it, and certainly the subject matter would seem to preclude happiness, but I just didn't care for this tale. None of the huge cast of characters is really very likable. This reader, at least, was left feeling pity and contempt for most of them rather than empathy.
The Paper Man is also set in Frontier America. It also is not a very happy story. But this tale, unlike the first one, has moments of whimsy that override the sadness. The title character is a young man traveling through Arizona on his way to Canada. Along the way, he happens across first a lone British soldier seemingly still wrapped up in the Revolutionary War, and a young Sioux woman charged with some unspecified crime. Circumstances throw these three travelers together again and again despite attempts to go their separate ways, and the reader feels their growing affection for each other along the journey in spite of their various protestations. These characters, I developed an affection and appreciation for.
I hope to get the other volumes in the Manara series because his art is very good, but this first volume was a bit uneven for my tastes.
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