Casanova #1-- then and now
Casanova Quinn loves his job. He tells us that at the very beginning of his book. Even with thoughts like outsourcing to keep his profit margins up and the occasional improvisation that leads to kidnapping, anytime he can stick it to his father is another opportunity for Casanova find joy in his job. During the heist job to find the Seychelle Ruby, he ends up kidnapping Ruby Seychelle, a very curvaceous robot. Things go from bad to worse as E.M.P.I.R.E. bursts onto the scene. Casanova knows that something must be seriously wrong if his father, leader of E.M.P.I.R.E, has sent his drunken, psychopathic right hand man to round up Cass. Learning that his twin sister is dead, killed in the line of duty, Casanova begins a quick plummet which includes a brawl at the funeral, casino games with a former-monk-now-three-face/mind-crime boss and a recruitment drive by his father's arch nemesis, Newman Xeno of W.A.S.T.E.
Writer Matt Fraction and artist Gabriel Ba are fearless. They're not afraid to wear their influences on their sleeves. Fraction goes so far as to point a few of them out in the text piece following the story. Absorbing writers like Grant Morrison, Joe Casey and Warren Ellis and characters like Mr. Nobody, Luther Arkwright, Jerry Cornelius and James Bond, Fraction and Ba have thrown anything and everything together to with a calculated playfulness and then (to borrow an over-used phrase from Spinal Tap) cranked the amps up well past 11; more like 111.
Casanova knows exactly what it is; a comic. Like recent titles Godland and NEXTWAVE, Casanova revels in its comic-centric absurdities. E.M.P.I.R.E. is Marvel's SHIELD, only with more bloodshed, drunks and multi-dimensional jurisdiction. But instead of the giant Helicarrier-like floating fortress being E.M.P.I.R.E.'s top secret base of operations, it's a floating casino controlled by Fabula Beserko, the previously mentioned monks-now crimelord. The top secret organizations are thinly veiled dopplegangers of any Marvel secret society; SHIELD, HYDRA, AIM, HATE. The list is endless but these aren't the watered-down SHIELD currently posing in New Avengers or any other generic book. This is the ultra, super-cool Jim Steranko short-lived SHIELD run. The coolness just oozes from all the characters as they strike poses and posture on the page, almost waiting for just the right half shadow to add the correct atmosphere to the page. You think it's easy being that cool? Well, Casanova makes it look even easier.
Like Casey's Godland, Ellis's Nextwave or even DC's 52, you can't forget that you're reading a comic because these stories can only exist as comics. They freely borrow and take our shared languages, cliches and experiences, rev them up and throw them back at us, reminding us how fantastic and silly they are all at the same time. Godland borrows from Kirby. Nextwave and Casanova borrow from old spy and Marvel comics. But they're not parodying anything. It's a fine line between parodying Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius or Byran Talbot's Luther Arkwright and taking them as your own and doing it your own way. Fraction and Ba aren't belittling or tearing anything before them down. They're adding to the books and stories that already exist; adding their own stamp to a tradition of storytelling that goes back to the earliest pulp spy novels of the past century.
Back to the present, with the Marvel/Icon re-release of Casanova #1:
Wow, how many times can I drop references to Godland and Nextwave in a review? Both of those books must have really made an impression on me back in 2006.
I really, really liked the book back in 2006. Now, in 2010, they’ve rereleased the issue in a new remastered edition. In a move similar to putting out original Beatles albums in stereo, Casanova is now colored and relettered and it’s half successful. Cris Peter’s new coloring on Casanova #1 is fantastic, almost creating a different pacing in this book than it had before. Comparing the remastered edition to monochromatic hardcover, Peter really directs your eye and gives clarity to Ba’s exuberant action. I kind of miss the original green hue to everything but Peter’s coloring is as unique as Ba’s artwork.
The new hand lettering doesn’t work as well but it’s getting there. I’ve heard Fraction on many interviews say that he really prefers hand lettered comics as opposed to computer lettered ones. I’ll admit, at first the hand lettering turned me off. Whether I’ve been conditioned to believe that every “E” needs to look alike or just desensitized to most homogenous lettering, Dustin Harbin’s new lettering seemed terribly crude at first. But now, as I look it over, it’s not that bad. It’s rough but goes along with the rebellious nature of the book. Casanova should be punk; it shouldn’t be made the same way that an establishment book is. Now that Fraction and Ba work for the man (Marvel and DC,) I guess the lettering should be the one thing that maintains a punk DIY aesthetic.
Fraction’s story is a story written by someone who has nothing to lose. In 2006, he was rushing to get everything out on the page. Casanova #1 was an exciting book but back then, it needed to be. Now Fraction is writing Stan Lee and Jack Kirby characters and I don’t know if we’ve seen this fearless writer since. Also, looking at Casanova #1 you can see how far Fraction progressed as a writer in this series. This is a fun #1 and hints where Fraction was going to go but his story took so many mind-bending turns in the second half, as his story starts to mean something more than just cool Steranko-like spy espionage.
This new #1 contains a new story, written by Fraction and drawn by Fabio Moon. It’s a fill-in-the-cracks story, showing more of the effect of Casanova than showing Casanova himself. Focusing on the dentist office’s night nurse from the main story, it shows just how prophetic she is. One of the best lines in the whole series is when the nurse first has dinner with Casanova; “Surely this was the man who would burn the world.” Fractions story shows just how he does that to her. It’s a fun, sexy and dangerous little story made more so by Moon’s artwork.
I’m glad that the original Casanova run is getting reprinted, hopefully to be seen by more people now that Fraction, Ba and Moon are established names. Like Godland and Nextwave (see, I did it again,) Casanova is a book that is about stories as much as it is about plot; it’s about the characters we create in our fictions and in our lives. Fraction was a young punk 4 years ago and Casanova is a punk book. Now he’s writing the X-Men, Thor and Iron Man, not that it should mean anything but it does. Can he still write about the character who should burn down the world when he’s writing about gods and superheroes?





