At some point, the sheer weight and inertia of Casanova must catch up to it, you would think. It is consistently one of the most gorgeous, ambitious comics in existence, and each issue feels like it’s progressively boring into my brain. Luxuria ended with a giant statement of purpose, an exuberant and relentlessly optimistic explosion of sheer love for the comic book. Gula took a more sombre, muted approach to the story, right down to the blue colour palette that Cris Peter did so well in the reissue. It finished with the single-most shocking twist I’ve ever seen in comics, maybe ever, at least until I read Casanova: Avaritia #2.

[Ed. Note: Guys, there are so many spoilers from here on out. Read the dang comic and come back. It’s even available digitally.]

1. CREATION MYTHS AND GHOST STORIES

The big reveal here, of course, is that while he’s been tasked to hunt down and murder the seemingly innocuous Luther Desmond Diamond in all his multiversal incarnations before he becomes Xeno Newman, bandaged international master of supercrime, Cass instead psychically gives one version of Luther the skills he needs to survive E.M.P.I.R.E.’s attack and as a result creates Newman Xeno. I say “of course” not to deaden the impact of the reveal, which I am still wrapping my head around long after reading it, but because if you got to the end of the issue and honestly thought the big reveal was attack pandas, I don’t even know what to do with you.

The question I’m certain almost everyone is asking is, “Why?” Why does Cass do something as ill-advised as creating Newman Xeno? Isn’t that guy basically the Casanovaverse Multidevil? Well, maybe. In most of his different versions, Luther Desmond Diamond tends to be a creative person, like a musician or a comic book writer. Generally, he seems to be a pretty alright guy; a little egocentric, sure, but not exactly W.A.S.T.E. material. Generally, he just wants to make his art and not feel like he’s retarded. Only one of him becomes Xeno, and that’s directly because of Casanova.

Speak of the devil.

In contrast to the relatively mild-mannered Luther, Casanova is a straight-up motherfucker. When we first met him, he was an amoral super spy thief, the kind of person who gets coyly desribed as “the man who would burn the world.” And then he goes and does it. In Avaritia, Casanova is literally the man who parachutes into universes before obliterating them in a heartbeat. Eventually, he upgrades to being the man who just murders an artist hundreds of times in cold blood. This is the kind of thing the hero does. Or does he? Luther’s a nice guy. Casanova murders and creates monsters. Casanova Quinn, I’ve come to realize, might be a villain.

And it weighs on him. He loathes himself and he curses everything and everyone’s future. He is a curse. Even the artistic flourishes that used to show how good he was are now twisted into terrifying shapes as he terrifyingly describes his job,wreathed in fire. He abhors having to kill entire universes, but even he has to admit that a spatiotemporal holocaust might be more preferable to getting to know a hundred Luthers, to like them, to maybe even fuck them on the moon, and then have to murder them. After he watches a particular Luther die a gruesome death - one that for once he wasn’t even responsible for, courtesy of one Sabine Seychelle - he decides he can’t do it anymore. The dead universes are crushing him. The dead Luthers are haunting him, Luthers who did nothing wrong except that one of them would create Casanova. How do you punish him for creating you? Even Casanova once admitted, “I don’t like who I am here.” Even his girlfriend curb stomped him. Does an innocent man always have to pay?

So he lets him go. He teaches him how to survive, in an event that ripples through time. He creates Xeno Newman. Maybe he doesn’t know what will happen. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he just wants to close his eyes without seeing dead bodies and damn the torpedoes. It’s one of the most compassionate things he does, but it creates a monster, who in turn begets another monster, Casanova. It’s tragic in an Ouroboros kind of way, a never-ending cycle of murder and tragedy. Xeno brings Casanova to a new timeline and accidentally teaches him to be a good person, which as we’ve seen kind of goes south. In an act of kindness, Casanova turns a good man into a monster like him. Each man is the other’s father, alternately the hero and the villain.

02. THAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH PARENTS. YOU ALWAYS THINK WE OWE YOU FOR SOMETHING.

The scary thing is that this is something that was bubbling under the surface from the beginning. Take a look at this, from Chapter 2 of Luxuria:

Does that sound familiar? Because it’s mirrored in Avaritia #2. One of the many presumable deaths of Luther Desmond Diamond at the hands of Cass is in a universe inside a Casanova comic written by yet another Luther in yet another universe. The man writes himself being attacked by a man who then appears and obliterates him. It’s hard not to see a thread moving throughout the series from its beginning until now, a comment on creation and the bizarre animosity between creator and created, the story of a struggle that I’m all too glad to lap up. Finding out that it’s something that’s been working and twisting since 2006 is just the latest mind-blowing realization.

For a long time, I thought Casanova himself was Matt Fraction’s proxy in the pages of Casanova. After all, he’s a suave, funny, smart fellow and that’s generally how I like to think of my favourite writers. It was easy to superimpose one on the other and try to see parallels. In retrospect, it was probably too easy, as much of a trope, that is, that I have no choice but to swallow it as I say it, because Avaritia #2 offers two versions of Luther Desmond Diamond speaking as an artist about the creative process in two different ways. Trying to explain to a fan what some attack pandas in the comic he wrote represented, Luther mutters something simple but untrue, while he strugges with how to tell someone the more revealing truth:

“I was in a bad mood. You get bullied around. You can’t punch down. You sublimate — I was mad at people. So I turned them into pandas with my mind and killed them all with swords why”

And there it is, a naked admission to the kinds of thoughts and motivations that lie behind the most seemingly absurd of comic book actions. It can’t be just said, though. It’s too hard to just tell some people to fuck off, sometimes you just can’t. So it bubbles out in what you do and what you create. In an interview, something like the quote above would be a remarkable insight. In the pages of a comic, it hits like a revelation.

For chrissakes, Luther even looks like Matt Fraction.

Right towards the end, another Luther offers up another piece of information about his process in response to another question from his audience. The result is one of the most stunning single discussions about the creative process I’ve seen yet:

This should sound familiar to anyone who’s tried to write or draw or sing or play anything. Half the time, I sit down to write something and when nothing but shit comes out, I just want to scream because I can’t stand that it’s not right. I’m not on the level of anyone in the comics industry, let alone Matthias Alistair Fraction, Esq. [Ed. Note: Prove me wrong.], but nothing has ever explained that kind of feeling the way this page does. It’s such a relief to know that the way my brain feels when it’s 3am and I can’t sleep isn’t completely broken.

I used to hear Fraction talking about looking back at Luxuria and Gula and realizing they weren’t as good as he thought they were and sputter in disbelief. Of course he thinks that because of course he does, but it was still so hard to understand because it wasn’t my comic, it was a comic I loved. After reading this issue, however, I feel like I’ve seen part of its writer that I never expected to, a part that helps me understand the series and the creative process just a little bit more.

Casanova has always been an intensely personal comic, both by Fraction’s admission and by simple observation. The kinds of things in it are so unique that they could only be their own language. For a long time, they were a secret one, a language that was sublimated into giant robots and time-hopping aliens. It spoke to me in a personal way, too; I loved the series because it communicated something to me in a way nothing had, and I treasured it for doing so. With this issue, however, it’s a step back, a page upon a page, and it’s speaking more directly than ever. In Luther Desmond Diamond, Matt Fraction might have spilled some of his most revealing secrets yet.

03. BILLY PILGRIM’S SILLY LITTLE LIFE

Avaritia #2 is swirling in my head as two things. On one hand, it’s a story about a cycle of creation and death, where awful things create each other in stories interspersed with a profound sadness. On the other, it’s a story where the writer tells the reader explicitly about his own creative process, an entirely different cycle of life to stave off death. Together, it’s about a man who creates his own comic book hero, a charming and urbane murderer, then offers himself up to his own creation as a victim and a villain again and again and again. The creation killing the creator. That’s what we do. Who made who? When and how will it eventually end? I have absolutely no idea, in part because of the way this issue blows everything up, both plot-wise and metatextually, but I can’t wait to find out and I’ll follow whatever path it takes. No comic speaks to me in the same way, about those same insanities and regrets.

Or shit, maybe it’s just about the laffs.