Secret agents, alternate dimensions and robotic sex slaves, oh my.
Casanova Quinn is a man only a mother could love and a father could despise. At least, that’s how it is in his reality. Casanova is the black sheep of the family, a thief for hire and all around scoundrel. For our introduction to Casanova, he’s on the job, trying to steal the Seychelle Ruby. He’s thinking about expenses, off-shore contracting and his overhead even as he breaks into the Seychelle mansion. Hey, he loves his job. That job doesn’t sit well with his father, the commander of E.M.P.I.R.E. (Extra-Military Police Intelligence, Rescue and Espionage!). If E.M.P.I.R.E. was S.H.E.I.L.D., his father Cornelius Quinn would be Nick Fury. Cornelius is more like Fury of The Howling Commandos though than of secret spy espionage stuff and all that. Casanova revels in the fact that his lifestyle is about everything that his father loathes and fights against. Rounding out the family circle is Zephyr, Casanova’s twin. She’s the good one, the apple of daddy’s eye and Cornelius’ best secret agent. At least, that’s how the family dynamics work in this reality.
Kidnapped by Newman Xeno, the head of W.A.S.T.E. and mortal enemy to Cornelius Quinn, Casanova is whisked away to another alternate timeline to replace the Casanova there. In this timeline, Casanova is a chip off the old block and Zephyr is the seed who went bad. Thanks to the quite mad and quite bandaged Xeno, Casanova is sent to destroy this version of E.M.P.I.R.E. from the inside, a job that Casanova thought would be easy until he begins to discover family and friends, including a long dead mother. Toss in orgone-loaded orgies, female pop trios who are really highly trained assassins, highly advanced primitive societies and even a bit of torture between colleagues and you’ve got an oddly entertaining comic book.
Casanova Luxuria starts with a simple riff, petulant child wanting to get back at his father, before the story kicks into gear and becomes about that child looking for some sort of salvation. Casanova isn’t a nice guy but he doesn’t know it at first. In the opening pages, he is a self-centered ass. There’s really no other way to describe it. It takes getting pulled into another world where he is a different person to make him see himself as he really is. There’s no other mirror as good as being able to take a deep and hard look into your own soul. Newman Xeno is that dark mirror of Casanova, possibly hating Casanova’s father more than Cass does and having a much deeper nihilistic streak than Casanova ever could dream of having. Maybe more powerful than Casanova, Xeno is more contemplative and manipulative, maneuvering Casanova against his father. To enforce the idea of the two mirroring each other, there’s one E.M.P.I.R.E. mission where Casanova is forced to wear bandages and ends up looking exactly like Xeno. Casanova at least momentarily ends up becoming an avatar for Xeno.
Nothing really means anything to Casanova until he discovers his mother in this alternate timeline is still alive. She’s never mentioned in Casanova’s own timeline; Cornelius and Zephyr are the only family talked about in the first chapter. But once Cass’s mother is revealed to be alive and in hiding, Casanova suddenly has something to live for, to fight for. It’s an interesting twist in Matt Fraction’s story as it morphs from a wild adventure book into a personal story about someone discovering things to live for. Fraction manages to keep the wildness and weirdness in the book even after the change. Gabriel Ba’s artwork is consistently strong throughout the whole book. The storytelling is solid and clear but his individual style and figures are twisted, lanky, twisted, bloated and just plain odd. Ba’s artwork straddles the line between grotesque and beautiful.
With Casanova, Fraction and Ba have created their own dysfunctional, multi-universal James Bond, complete with his own version of Bond women and high-tech gadgets. Only Casanova is much more human and real than Bond or any other famous secret agent.
Casanova Luxuria TPB
Written by: Matt Fraction
Drawn by: Gabriel Ba
Lettered by: Sean Konot