A native of Salamanca, Manuel started his career drawing Robin #92 and The Spectre #7 for DC Comics, before doing his first work for Marvel, The Avengers #44-47. He Also worked briefly on Vampirella for Harris Comics and a couple Star Wars related titles for Dark Horse.  

He returned to Marvel to pencil books like Thunderbolts, the Daredevil Movie Adaptation, the Mystique ongoing, and Spider-Man: Breakout. He did the post-Civil War issues of Black Panther (World Tour), and the MAX: Wisdom miniseries, he returned to DC Comics, where he did books like Countdown, All-Flash, Checkmate, or Crime Bible. more books he did for Marvel? House of M: Masters of Evil and Dark Avengers: Ares miniseries, and the Indomitable Iron Man B & W one-shot. Also for Marvel, he pencilled Iron Man: Noir, Black Widow, and the Supreme Power miniseries. At Dark Horse, Manuel has worked on books like Captain Midnight or Skyman. Big multimedia companies have sought Manuel's services in the past few years: from Sideshow, for their Court of the Dead books, to Blizzard Entertainment, on books like Hearthstone or Starcraft.

Amongst Manuel’s most recent work we can count What If? Venom, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Daredevil, Lords of Empyre, or Phases of Moon Knight.