Roy Mann

This heady mix of Little Nemo and Flash Gordon for adults finds our confused hero, a hapless 1930s comics creator, "In a Strange World"! There, he must battle a mysterious antagonist—with the help of the beautiful, nude Lara—while discovering his new powers. Now, if he could only discover what the hell is going on…

The titular 1930s New York comics writer, Roy Mann sets off in his flying convertible on a series of science fiction/action adventures. In the first story, "In a Strange World," his office is invaded by strange marauders, the minions of the mysterious Ling, before the gorgeous, (and naked) Lara whisks him away in an airship… Then, in "Horizons of Glory," Roy Mann finds himself in a crackling Hollywood war movie fantasia: Lara is a WWII-era nurse, Ling is a mad doctor, and… wait, are those Western-style Cowboys and Indians? And what wartime yarn is complete without a biplane dogfight? Things take a turn in "You'll Be Back Plenty," when Ling and Lara throw who's telling whose story into confusion.

Inspired by Fredric Brown's SF parodic novel What Mad Universe and Alex Raymond's sumptuous newspaper strip Flash Gordon, these stories were originally published as three serialized stories in Comic Art magazine in Italy from 1987–1991. Written by Dylan Dog creator Tiziano Scalvi, the incomparable Attilio Micheluzzi drew Roy Mann; the latter's whiz-bang, loving depictions of aircraft, cartoony sound effects, realistically detailed settings, and playful reshuffling of early 20th-century pulp tropes meshed perfectly with Scalvi's metatextual reinterpretation of them.

Roy Mann is the third volume in Fantagraphics' series The Attilio Micheluzzi Library translating the Italian master's greatest works and bringing them to an English-speaking readership.