Michael Manning is a relative newcomer to comics, starting out after Dementia’s titles had begun being published. The L.A.-based artist’s work is an intriguing blend of space opera, court intrigue, and manners-and-hardcore BDSM.
Born in Queens, NYC and raised in Massachusetts, Manning discovered erotica at an early age. “Twelve years old. The exquisite shock of seeing my first Japanese erotic print,” he wrote in the notes to his graphic novel The Spider Garden. “All whirling lines and exaggerated ecstasy, brutal and sensuous.” This experience stayed with him, with his first exposure to the classical ukiyo-e prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Unagawa Kuniyoshi, and modern manga artists such as Yukito Kishiro and Hiroyuki Utatane, leading him to call one of his early works Shunga (1989). Other influences on his work can be seen in Japanese animation, fairytale book illustration, the work of Guido Crepax and Eric Gill, and the Symbolist and Pre-Raphaelite art movements.
Manning studied film and animation at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A true renaissance man, he began self-publishing his black-and-white erotic comix in 1987, while working as an animator and director of short films, commercials, and music videos.
In 1991 he moved to the West Coast and focused on comix and erotic illustration full-time. Manning continued to self-publish and produced work for San Francisco’s S&M/sexzine community while creating artwork and costume designs for multimedia performances at local music venues and fetish events.
His series The Spider Garden consists of four graphic novels to date: The Spider Garden (1995), Hydrophidian (1996), In A Metal Web (2003), and In A Metal Web II (2003). Set in a futuristic, matriarchal world of warring clans ruled by The Scarlet Empress, the action centers on the Spider Garden, a palace-fortress ruled by the Sacred Androgyne, Shaalis, who is a hermaphrodite. The story follows the political and sexual intrigues in a gender-bending, polysexual, and hedonistic future society. Manning liberally borrows from all things Japanese, from social mores to their mythical spirits, the Tengu. His themes notably depict varied “taboo” subjects such as zoophilia and the extreme techno-bondage that is reminiscent of Japanese hentai manga.
Manning has a global following, and has exhibited his work in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Milan. In 2002, mural-sized reproductions of panels from his In A Metal Web graphic novel were featured as part of a special installation at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center For the Arts exhibition, Fantastic! Comics and the Art of Illusion.
Manning has also collaborated with erotic comix artist and tattooist Patrick Conlon on the graphic novel Tranceptor (1998)—the story of a dominatrix’s adventures in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and the sequel to Iron Gauge.
Manning’s complex universe, The Spider Garden, is enriched by his sophisticated style, clearly influenced by artwork from the Far East.
This flashback page was drawn with minimal spot blacks, giving the reader a visual clue that the story is set in the past. While extremely graphic, there is also a highly charged eroticism in the art.