(Sound Of Spatiotemporal Holocaust)
What if you were abducted from your home? Not just kidnapped and taken somewhere else on Earth, I mean, what if you were kidnapped and taken across dimensions causing a “spatiotemporal mess”? A mess that you had to clean up by destroying the infinite dimensions created by your abduction. What if you had to murder yourself over and over and over...
Wonder no more, for Matt Fraction and Gabriel Bá are here to answer that question for you. Poor Casanova Quinn. Poor infinite mutant dimensions that must be “cauterized” by Casanova Quinn.
Casanova: Avarita I is, from what I can tell, the third volume of Casanova, but I don’t feel all that lost, considering I’ve never heard of or read the series before this week. That. Is. Surprising. I mean, I felt lost reading Static Shock, but I felt like I understood where Casanova was coming from. If you’ve read or seen both you’ll understand why that seems so shocking. Everything is so tight in this book that I’m having trouble conveying all the cool stuff.
To start with, Gabriel Bá’s work is, naturally, amazing. I loved his stuff in Daytripper and the art in Casanova is even stranger and more abstract, but with no sacrifice to quality or detail. Just thinking about the impressive layouts, like the full-page vertical panel spread illustrating 16 different multiverses makes me very happy.
Casanova is not a willing participant at all. Murdering yourself and a ridiculous number of souls that shouldn’t exist is tough work. Lonely work. Cass has the companionship of Sasa Lisi, but everyone else on his team, Cornelius Quinn, his father, and Ruby Berserko, they don’t seem to want him in their dimension. Resentment and murderous genocide are clearly pushing Casanova to his limits, but apparently he must keep going.
There is an interesting duality to Casanova. He is, after all, the man who created these infinite mutant dimensions that should not exist, but he must also be the destroyer of every one of them. He wanted to do neither and he’s done/doing both.
This is a strange book. If you’re not interested in an indie that you have to pay attention to, stay away. Folks who like to see the medium stretched and fully utilized should grab this book, but I can say with almost certainty that every reader would enjoy this book more than a spatiotemporal holocaust.