pencil: Magnus

Introduction by Giuseppe Guarnieri

A series of beautifully crafted short stories by Magnus based on a Chinese text.
“Liao-chai Chih-i”, Extraordinary Tales of Studio Liao, a collection of over 400 short stories set in the eighteenth century.
In the long introduction, original tables, sketches and notes by the artist are proposed.
The stories were published in several countries between 1988 and 1991.

pencil and story: Magnus

Two homosexuals are invited by a monk to visit him in his monastery for a drink.
They toast under a mysterious painted wall, which represents beautiful naked girls.
One of them is attracted to one of the figures, who materializes and seduces him.
Their love is considered a profanation and a demon is released to punish the man.
His partner will pay the price with his life, but he will end up in prison on murder charges.

pencil and story: Magnus

A man withdraws from the world after the death of his wife.
His only interest is the variegated garden of his house.
One day host two women, mother and daughter.
The daughter seduces him and has a baby girl.
The women seem very knowledgeable in botany and take the opportunity to enrich themselves with various perfume shops.
Their life goes on, until it is revealed that the women were verbena plants magically transformed into human beings.

pencil and story: Magnus

A young man is seduced by a beautiful ghost.
He slowly begins to waste away and his mother asks the village priest for help.
The spirit is driven out and the young man saved.

pencil and story: Magnus

During a journey, a man finds shelter in a mysterious building inhabited by 6 nuns.
That night the women unleash their perversions, forcing him to flee with one of them, the most chaste.
The woman refuses to marry him and he falls back on his previous girlfriend.
Years later, he meets the woman in a brothel, where he can finally possess her.
The following morning the woman has disappeared and the building where he met her has been abandoned for years.
Ten years later the woman reappears, introducing her son to him.

pencil and story: Magnus

Two young noblemen love fox hunting.
One day one of them is seduced by a wild woman, whom he takes to his castle.
Over time, the woman takes control of his kingdom, enslaving the man.
The friend, worried, attacks the castle and discovers that the woman and her relatives are actually transformed foxes.
His intervention comes too late to save his friend and the castle is razed to the ground.

pencil and story: Magnus

The long life of a woman who survived an accident as a child and was considered retarded by the village doctor.
At the age of 14 she was entrusted to the village midwife as an apprentice.
She becomes very good at her job.
At 25 she becomes pregnant by the man she is in love with, a slacker son of the Guardian of the Bridge.
A few years later her little girl dies in an accident and her grandfather dies of a broken heart.
The woman becomes the new Guardian of the Bridge, but also continues the work of midwife, after driving away her alcoholic husband.
During the war she helps a large group of orphan girls to survive, hiding them in the bridge.
The woman will die at the age of 105 and her funeral will be attended by all the orphans, their descendants and the other children she has delivered over the years.