After two years of inactivity, Casanova is finally returning to Comic Shops this next week and I could not be happier. Casanova is a comic unlike any other I've read in my 20 years as a comic fan. Created in 2006 by Matt Fraction and the twins Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, it is slick, intelligent, witty, packed with action and stuffed to the gills with swagger, the book radiates pizazz. For two years, Casanova slid into stores, a cult hit with vision before its time. Now, with the clout of multiple Eisners, Fraction/Ba/Moon have prepared to re-launch the book under Marvel's Icon Imprint. While two volumes have been published and the first was the only one to make it to trade, the series will launch with re-prints of the first two stories before starting a third arc. These won't be the standard green/white/black/purple colors that older readers are familiar with, instead we'll be getting total re-colors, brand new covers and some additional material provided by the creative team.
My discovery of Casanova was perhaps the best diamond in the rough story of my life. Back in 2008, when I was first getting back into comics, I purchased the first volume of the Immortal Iron Fist on a whim. As probably the best run the character may ever receive, even a born again rookie like myself was able to see the quality infused on every page of that comic and I used it as a springboard to find more books. While Ed Brubaker was already a known quantity at the time, Matt Fraction was still a fairly up and comer, but he was set to launch the brand new Iron Man series and would be joining the creative team of Uncanny X-Men when issue #500 dropped. A quick journey to his Wiki page and I was given a resume was much shorter than it is now. A few issues of The Order, a Spider-Man annual, and Iron Fist were all books I recognized, but Casanova was something I had never heard of, nor had anyone else I talked comics with. I had no clue who Gabriel Ba or Fabio Moon were, I was a kid who hated Batman, loved the Clone Saga and hadn't touched a non-Marvel book in ages. But armed with a gift card, I took a gamble.
When I popped the book open, with the very first page, I was blown away. From the very first words, Fraction's dialogue and imagination crackle and pop with a creative electricity that I had never experienced before. As a tights-and-flights reader until that moment, I had no clue how to handle a science-espionage-epic-standalone and I was loving it. From a staring match versus a 3-in-1 monk to a city seemingly powered by sex, the adventures of alternate-dimension kidnapee antihero turned hero Casanova Quinn were everything I had been missing from comics and never even known it. Ba's pencils were both strange and amazing to me. I was used to the excessive Liefeld and Lee styling of the 90s and once my eyes adjusted and learned to read the pages, I had no problem understanding why the man is an award winning artist. If Matt is a butcher, Ba is a master chef, turning the script into an experience that is both read, AND seen.
In a sense, Casanova was my Rosetta Stone. It was my first non-Alan Moore/Neil Gaiman comic. It was my first real non-Marvel experience, my first attempt at trying to follow along with a long form story and my first real taste of a genre away from Spider-Man. For fifteen bucks, Matt Fraction handed me a cipher to better understand what had come before and what is yet to come. Since then I've gone on to not only read, but understand and appreciate works like Promethea, Grant Morrison's The Filth and David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp, all amazing works that I might have never gone near while clinging desperately to Iron Man. In fact, now that I think about it, Fraction's Invincible Iron Man #1 was also the first comic I ever reviewed, perhaps I should thank him for this blog as well.
Before I sat down to write this, I dusted the book off the shelf and went through it again, enjoying as much, if not more than I did that first time. Two years of analysis and practice have sharpened my reading abilities immensely and I found myself rewarded. I noticed things I had missed twice over, appreciated ideas that had made their way into other comics, like the ancient Japanese war machine that feels vaguely reminiscent of the Russian Jetpack Bear headed team of the first two issues of The Order, and was in general able to just appreciate the series and the experience again with a more mature and removed view.
I absolutely cannot wait to get to the store this Thursday to pick up the first issue of this re-launch and if you're reading this, I hope you will too. I rarely double dip on material I already own, but I know for certain that this will be worth every single penny. To the Misters Fraction, Ba and Moon, I wish you guys incredible success this time around, and I am salivating for a chance at Volumes 2 and 3. To everyone else, I implore you, please, please, please, give this a chance. I do not think you will regret it.
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