Before Matt Fraction was killing it on Invincible Iron Man and Uncanny X-Men, he had a smaller creator owned book with Casanova. It’s a trippy sci-fi spy book put out by Image, which deserves to be read over and over again, just to peel back all the layers of the Fraction’s multilayered yarn.
When I said that you have to read it multiple times to “get it,” I wasn’t fibbing. I picked this up last year, and when I first read it, I couldn’t make heads of tails of the plot line. It’s told with such a non-linear narrative, that you’d be hard pressed to absorb all of it all at once. That’s not a bad thing though, it gives the book more life that more direct telling might not have.
Told from the perspective of our hero Casanova Quinn, it’s an espionage laden arc about the eternal battle between two groups, one called E.M.P.I.R.E., and another called W.A.S.T.E. If you’re having trouble discerning the bad guys from the good, that’s the idea. Sure, one is a government agency and the other is “freelance,” but you know that that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
Cass (as he’s called by his family) is an agent for E.M.P.I.R.E., but is soon kidnapped into another timeline (where he is dead, mind you), and is coerced into becoming a double agent for W.A.S.T.E. what follows is something similar to Alias (JJ, not Bendis) with a bit of a twist. His entire family is involved with the “business”, but they’re really not his family at all.
Like I said, the plot is so densely put together, that my explanation might read longer than the book itself. But let me tell you, it’s a tightly wound story, with a lot to absorb, and a lot of twists and turns at every corner. There are a lot of darkly humorous moments that leave you laughing, but feeling dirty afterwards. Fraction also has a lot of influences from music, as there is a pop music sprinkled throughout, and there is even a playlist for the second volume (which I admit I haven’t read yet, but I will soon).
The art, provided by Gabriel Bá, is one of the most uniquely indie submissions you’ll ever see. It’s colored in a way similar to the Kinetic recommendation from a couple months ago, only with greens instead of a weird puce color. But it definitely works for the story being told. I don’t think the book would have quite the same impact if it would told more realistically or with more earth toned color scheme, it just wouldn’t have been as engaging.
So should you read this? Of course you should, but only if you want to be challenged by the medium. But if you’re a fan of comics at my age, that’s exactly what you want. So check it out. It won’t hurt your brain…much.
