Casanoval Gula #1-4

Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

In anticipation of the new Casanova series starting this week (Avaritia), I picked up the second Icon series, which reprinted the second half of the original Image series.  I wanted to be brought back up to speed on the comic, as Casanova can be a pretty wild and confusing ride at the best of times.

Working through this series for the second time, and so recently after having read the first volume, I am once again struck by the level of creativity on display.  Casanova, our titular hero, goes missing somewhere in time (hence the question 'When is Casanova Quinn?' which graces the cover and gets repeated frequently throughout the story), and the entire time-space continuum is at risk of falling apart, or perhaps just resetting to the moment when Cass first entered the dimension that the stories take place in.  Arch villain Xeno Newman puts into motion a plan to secure the timeline, but to do so, he has to hire XSM (the X doesn't stand for anything, it stands for everything!) to construct a massive gun, and to kill anyone who knows about the mysterious H element.

To do this, XSM hires the newly returned Zephyr Quinn, and her and Kubark Benday, the scion of XSM (who is named after a CIA torture manual) go on a bit of a killing spree.  There's a lot more blood than the first volume, with just as many unexpected moments.

For this run, Fraction was joined by artist Fábio Moon, brother to original artist Gabriel Bá (who contributes a new back-up story).  Now, anyone who has read my stuff knows that Bá and Moon are some of my favourite comics creators (read Daytrippers!), but it's rare to be able to compare their work side by side, as they so often collaborate.  Moon's work here seems fuller than Bá's work on the first series.  It's interesting that the colour palette for this series is also much richer.  In the first volume, when it was being recoloured for Icon, the book retained much of the original monochromatic look of the Image series.  For this volume, things are much more varied.

Now that I'm up to date, I can't wait for Avaritia to start.