PrettyFakes

I’d like to say that after this issue I’ll never fall for it again, but I hope I do, because falling for it and then realizing you’ve fallen for it is one of the unique pleasures of reading Matt Fraction and Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba’s Casanova: The “it” in this case is believing that you’re reading a narrative of smooth surfaces, cool to the touch but thin as the paper it’s printed on. It’s easy to do. The characters are sexy. They say cool things and perform astounding feats with casual grace. OK, issue 13 was sad, I grant you, but it wasn’t sad in a way that made me think I needed to go back and re-read every issue looking closely at what I believed were throwaway lines of dialogue but that were in fact crucial not only to the unfolding plot but to the heart-breaking character moments in this issue. I should know this by now: There is nothing “throwaway” in Casanova. There are things that have been thrown away, sure, but Fraction/Moon/Ba didn’t throw them away: They found them, cleaned them off, and polished up the chrome until it was bright enough that a reflected sunbeam could punch a hole in a bank vault. Then they punched a hole in a bank vault and took your stuff. Don’t worry, it’s insured by the fed’l government. Oh wait, no, worry.

Any longer consideration of the series thus far I might have planned is rendered superfluous by this interesting piece by Timothy Callahan at Comics Book Resources. (You can read about 17 paragraphs there before the spoilers for this ish kick in.) Plus, I don’t want to spoil any of the big twists this issue. A couple things of note, though: There’s something interesting about the way the apologetic tone and the film language of the Fraction-penned “Previously” recap on the inside front page bleeds over into the (ostensible) interior-monologue caption boxes for Zephyr Quinn on the first few pages of the ish—Fraction’s intro ends with “Fade in,” as does Zeph’s first chunk of narration—so that Zeph’s ambivalence over what she has to do, how ill she’s served these people for whom she’s come to feel such affection, could be read as Fraction’s own ruminations on his treatment of his characters, his fondness even for the most monstrous of them. I am a sucker for such metafictional or semi-metafictional gambits, as I think we all know by now, and I particularly like them when, as is the case here, they paradoxically work to make the characters and story seem more real rather than less.

Of course, one of the intriguing things about Casanova is that there even the most allegedly monstrous figures are also endearingly human. There’s a great visual gag in issue 10 that sums this up beautifully: Cornelius Quinn is telling his team about how dangerous and unhinged his former-ally-turned-homicidal-weapons-designer Izzy Benday is; the last image on the page is of Benday, waving a butcher knife, looking crazed. Turn the page and it’s the exact same image—but Benday is carving, with enthusiasm, a lamb. It’s this paternal, caring side that comes through with the character, and I suspect Fraction’s point isn’t that his fatherliness masks his homicidal tendencies, as though one is truer, more deeply rooted than the other—a characterization typical of most genre villains—but that in fact they’re both equally part of who he is.

From Casanova #10 by Matt Fraction and Fabio Moon. In its original context this second image is followed by a clip-n-save recipe for the lamb dish Benday Sr. is preparing.

All this—plus the secret identity of bandage-swathed criminal mastermind Newman Xeno revealed (maybe), plus the most heartwrenching scene you’ve ever read featuring a character who looks like, by his creators’ own admission, Dragonball Wolverine, plus chapter headings that double as the tracklist for a pretty great mix-tape—in a double-sized issue for $1.99, which I assume is a deliberate strategy to make every other comic you bought this week seem overpriced and redundant. At least that was the effect it had on me.

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In unrelated news, there’s a new Old 97’s record out, and I can’t make myself take even a token interest in it. I don’t know what this marks the end of, but something.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Comixx, Professor Fury, The Rock and The Roll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.