Casanova: Gula 1

This reprinted series, trailing new work, strikes me as a bit of a mixed bag. It’s insanely full of ideas, but I don’t think very many of them are Fraction’s. Casanova is something like an interdimensional agent, whose dad is named Cornelius, a clear nod to Moorcock. His sidekick is a young Asian kung fu expert named Kaito, referencing the Green Hornet. A major enemy named Xeno looks just like the Grant Morrison Negative Man from the Doom Patrol. There’s a huge Japanese robot, kind of like most such things. There’s a strange floating creature that made me think of the Pete Milligan/Michael Allred X-Statix. There’s teleportation and time travel and a SHIELDish organisation (I guess he’s a fan of Steranko’s psychedelic moments on that) and so on and on.

I’m all for throwing lots of ideas in the air, but I’m less keen on the post-hippy sensibility – I never liked Moorcock much, but I guess those that will will find the atmosphere here more appealing. It’s absolutely not my thing at all. I’m also not sure this comic pulls the ideas together in any useful way – I felt confused by the main part of the story: it’s subtitled ‘When is Casanova Quinn?’ and there is searching for him, but he was there in the early pages and we get no clue as to the circumstances where he vanished, and although we are told he is desperately important, it’s not terribly clear as to why. I don’t suppose this is a mistake, exactly – this is intended as a mind-blowing, druggy experience, a melange of extraordinary characters and absurd events that we aren’t expected to make complete sense of. Thing is, it didn’t really blow my mind, and while I kind of enjoyed having all these disparate genres and ideas flung my way, none of them really stuck.

The art is likeable and individual: a bit like a ragged, almost undergroundish Darwyn Cooke, I guess. He handles all the strange demands placed on him with confidence and some brio, all of the characters are very strongly distinct, and the storytelling is completely clear – this is a relief, even a necessity, given how bewildering the story is. Oddly for such a psychedelic mood, the colouring is extremely restrained – not at all naturalistic, with a lot of weak greens and blues on nearly every page, as if colourist Cris Peter imagined most of the story was set underwater. Frankly I think I’d have liked it better with dazzling colours, which seems the more obvious approach, but I’m not sure that makes it a wrong one. Perhaps they thought it would be too much.

I should mention that it’s decent value: 32 story pages (was it two short issues originally? There is a break halfway) plus a six-page conversation between Fraction and Scott Pilgrim‘s Bryan Lee O’Malley, all for $4, Marvel’s usual new 22-page comic price these days. Ultimately I can’t quite make up my mind whether to persist with this title – if Fraction can pull all the chaos and characters together into something coherent as the story continues, it could be extremely stimulating and exciting, but I have no idea if he can do it. It does have enough energy and brightness and imagination and wit that I am keen to try his more mainstream work, maybe Iron Man – if he has been able to carry across a good proportion of those strengths, with more conventional storytelling discipline and less hippy flavouring, I can imagine becoming a real fan.