Marvel Italia is finally releasing a hardcover collaboration, apparently long-in-the-making, between writer Chris Claremont and famed erotic artist Milo Manara. As a young man, I may have enjoyed some of Manara’s work as much as Claremont’s X-Men. His work is beautiful & clean, if frequently, unabashedly sexual as you can see — but, important to note, mostly playful.

Honestly, I can’t help but think that this book would have been a million times better without Claremont involved, or anyone on writing duties besides Manara for that matter. I mean, is Claremont going to come up with something better than Manara’s Click!, which followed the heated trials and tribulations of a young woman whose passions are remotely controlled by a device which falls into a series several manipulators hands? Or is he just going to clutter it up with wordy dialogue and plot convolution?

As it turns out, the end product still delivers plenty of opportunities for women to gape open-mouthed with no real provocation, and of course to become captured by a gang of slavers.
[Gallery not found]

As reported at Psylocke – Like A Butterfly:

In Madripoor, Psylocke, Storm, Rouge and Shadowcat face a group of “modern pirates”, which has kidnapped Rachel. The rescue operation is more complicated than the girls have thought as Rachel seems to betray her teammates even if Kitty says that Rachel told her telepathically to trust her. When they try to escape, they are hit by a beam which deprives them from their powers. They fall, but miraculously save themselves.

It’s hard to tell just looking at these preview scans or reading the above text, but again, Manara’s style is mostly fun, so none of this is going to lead to any Identity Crisis super-heroine rape scenes. To quote from Wikipedia:

Manara’s style favors clean lines for women reserving more complex drawings for monsters or other supernatural elements. Many of his comics feature 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.