NBM is a publisher specializing in quality reprints of adult erotic comix from Europe. In English, it has published the violent and satirical Ranxerox, Guido Crepax's reworkings of Emmanuelle, the writings of the Marquis de Sade, and the surreal and lovely fantasy The Magician's Wife. Recently, NBM started publishing original works by US artists. One of the best is Michael Manning's The Spider Garden.
It's the tale of the androgyne Shaalis, who receives the slave Okami as payment for a gambling debt. Shaalis exists in a futuristic royal society of wealth, sensation, and fascination that would make de Sade proud. The story line combines sci-fi, Japanese folk tales, and palace intrigue with pansexual groupings of women, men, mixed-genders, and machines.
Employing spare, elegant prose and a visual style that mixes fine art, manga, and some of the Euro-comic styles, the art work and storytelling are both complex, complementing each other. It's seldom that you find artists who can write and writers who can draw, but Manning accomplishes both in The Spider Garden. He effortlessly moves from scenes of court scheming to action sequences, mixing it together with omnisexual groupings of women, men, mixed genders, intelligent/modified animals, modified humans, and intelligent machines. Manning is revealing a very personal mythology here, letting his deepest fantasies seethe to the surface. He filters this vision through his intelligence and art, creating something that transcends libidinal dreams themselves. His speculations focus on power relationships, and our relationships to each other's bodies and the machines that lurk in our modern-day settings. What sets him apart from his contemporaries is the insight he brings to his work. When so much erotic heat combines with these smarts, the results are indeed incendiary.
The Spider Garden, by Michael Manning: US$11.95. NBM: +1 (212) 545 1223, fax +1 (212) 545 1227.
STREET CRED
My Creation! It's ... Alive!Post-Pop Life
Spiderotica
