Casanova is, without a doubt, one of the most sprawling, ambitious comics being published today. Spanning multiple universes and timelines, it’s a series that is not only lovingly referential, but fiercely individual and often starkly autobiographical. Today, it wraps up its third arc, Avaritia, with an issue that blows up the series’ concept in a big way and leaves it ready for the next story, Acedia. Everything about Issue #4 screams for attention, and you should absolutely lavish yourself with it.
01. THE GAME
The first thing that’s striking about Avaritia #4 and the arc as a whole is how beautiful it is. Make no arguments: this is the most gorgeous book on the stands in pretty much any week. The series has always been home to the incredible art of Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, and this issue and arc are no exception, with Bá producing what is easily the best work of his career. It’s an embarrassment of riches that readers so regularly get such stunning art. However, one of Avaritia’s biggest strengths is how consistently it draws attention to two frequently overlooked aspects of comics: lettering and colouring.
Lettering is often something that is ignored when it’s good and only noticed when something goes wrong or jars the reader out of the experience. In Avaritia, however, the lettering by Dustin Harbin demands attention for two very different reasons: first, it’s hand-lettering, a relative rarity in mainstream comics, and second, it’s just so unbelievably unique and amazing.
In most comics, the bulk of non-sound effect lettering is divided into three main categories: narration, speech and thought. In Avaritia, Harbin and writer Matt Fraction bend and shift the art into new directions. Sometimes, thought is a far more visceral and overlapping reaction:
Other times, the team plays with absence and silence for the powerful effect of a simple, overwhelming bit of emotion:
And other times still, it floats on and off the page in dreamlike 3D:
There are other examples of this experimentation, too. Sound effects crumple into the art. Words are sung and vibrate through the air. The entire palette of a scene shifts for a panel as the comic imitates the freeze frame character synopses found in movies. At every turn, Harbin’s lettering serves the imaginations and purposes of his team, but refuses to fade into the background. Time and time again, Harbin’s work demands attention because it’s simply so artistic and striking, and highlights the importance of craft and skill. Dustin Harbin is the best at what he does.
Of course, then colourist Cris Peter goes and blows everyone else working on the book out of the damn water. With the Icon reissues of Luxuria and Gula, she was faced with the daunting tasks of both introducing a completely different style of colouring to replace the spot work the twins originally did and also having to “speak Casanova” alongside team members that had been doing it longer. In Avaritia, the first arc written for her colours from its inception, she makes it her ballgame, whether she’s experimenting with a third dimension like Harbin:
Or turning a disaster scene into a page in Avaritia #4 that’s simultaneously beautiful and jaw-droppingly terrifying:
Each volume of Casanova has its colour palette. In Luxuria, it was green. In Gula, it was blue. In Avaritia, Peter coaxes a palette of reds and warm colours into a cornucopia of emotions. Look at all of these images. Each carries a completely different mood, but is recognizably part of the same cohesive whole. Avaritia lives and dies by how she ties the wildly varying emotions together, and time and time again, Peter proves that she’s the best around and absolutely deserving of her Eisner Award nomination.
Together, Fraction, Bá, Harbin and Peter all come together under the expert eye of editor Alejandro Arbona to create magic [Ed. Note: this is scrubbed of context as it gets with Avaritia #4)]:
02. HELLO. DON’T BE AFRAID
[Ed. Note: Oh, you best believe there are spoilers here, son.]
Similarly, the actual resolution to Avaritia is no less incredible. In Issue #4, well, yeah, of course Cass and Xeno Newman fight. What’s interesting, however, is that this isn’t the same kind of fight that climaxed Luxuria. This isn’t a nice day for a fight wedding. After the resolution to Gula, there’s a weariness to the cycle of violence here. There’s no pleasure, just two guys who hate each other’s guts whaling on each other, until it ends in a puff of wind and a promise that “it will never be enough.” Violence? Cass’ efforts to stop Xeno from coming into existence? What does atonement even mean?
Seychelle wants revenge for believed indignities. Kaito wants revenge for his loss. Casanova is tired of killing; he just wants to make things right, save a life and disappear. Seychelle gets the chump card. He’s selfish, whatever. Kaito is selfish, but he’s at least hurting, and he gets what he wants. There’s no victory there, though, just a palpable sense of sadness and an old man’s dying tears.
Avaritia #4 is filled with doom and explosions. It feels like the world is ending. Aircraft are raining fire in the sky, people are dying, and every page feels like one step closer to a heartbreak. This whole arc has felt like that, like it’s been building towards it slowly, getting darker and darker. Everyone’s failing, everyone’s doomed. The miracle of this issue is that it doesn’t pull away from the hurt, but it still gives a satisfying resolution. Kaito shoots Cornelius, Seychelle makes his play, and people die - oh, how people fucking die - but at the end… you feel okay. You feel like Casanova, flying through the sky in a tricked out space car, disappearing in a flash, landing who knows where. It feels like there’s hope for the first time in a while; even more than Cass, I feel like Sasa Lisi, staring off into the sky and waving. That’s the magic trick. The most inscrutable character becomes the one I identify with the most.
03. I TRIED
If Issue #4 is a great resolution to Avaritia, it’s important to look at what it resolves. The last time I wrote about the series at length, I talked about the series’ themes of self reference and creative cycles, but this issue brings different character cycles into attention. Luxuria started with the death of a Quinn, and Avaritia ends with one. Sabine Seychelle started as a villain, made a somewhat earnest attempt to be the good guy and threw that the hell away as soon as he found himself in a position of power again. Kaito started as a sad, violent boy, and ended up right back there again. Xeno just went on bein’ Xeno. In many ways like this, Avaritia is about that cycle, the tendency of things to come back around, how things so often stay the same. However, at the same time, Avaritia challenges these tendencies with the character of Casanova himself, even as it returns him back to his original place in the light.
At the beginning of the series, Cass was the hero. Sure, he was a bit of an amoral thief, but he smiled about it. He loved his job and he loved his sister. When pan-dimensional circumstance gave him a bit of a chance to be better, he took it, and in the process ruined everything. He killed his best friend’s girl, he torched his relationship with his (kinda-)dad, he fucked up. At the beginning of Avaritia, he doesn’t love his job anymore. He hates it. He destroys universes for a living, and when that stops being completely horrifying, he ends up having to make things personal by murdering the same guy across time and space over and over again, often after becoming friends with him.
A guy who murders indiscriminately over and over again isn’t the hero. That’s not what the hero does. By Avaritia #2, he’s the villain, and the guy who will become the “real” villain’s worst crime is that someday he’ll create Cass and give him reason to destroy universes. It’s a cycle of death and you can’t really cheer for the guy you’re supposed to. By the end of Issue #2, I was praying for a change. Casanova needed to… be better. Somehow.
Avaritia, then, is all about making Cass someone you don’t kinda want to see get shivved. It’s about making him the hero again or, rather, about him making himself the hero of at least his own story, if not ours. How does he do this? He breaks the cycle, or at least he tries to. He makes a choice and he sides with Luther Desmond Diamond, the guy he’s supposed to kill, the one who’s actually a really nice guy and is pretty good in bed. He flies off into the sky and tries to move beyond the pain.
At the end of Luxuria, Cass decided to stop being played and be his own man, but ended up never really moving past the initial consequences when things stopped being rosy. At the end of Avaritia, he starts to fight back. He takes himself back. He stops being the guy who quips, “Fuck your future. Nothing is sacred,” and becomes the guy who, no matter what happens when his space car crashes, can at least say, “I tried.” He places his whispered trust in the arms of the man who’s supposed to become his worst enemy. Fuck what you say the future is. Everything is sacred.
04. AND IF IT’S THE ONE I THINK YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE
This is the Cass I fell in love with. This is the guy who I’ll follow anywhere, even to Hollywood. This guy is an adult, written by an adult, in a series that has reflected that same maturing viewpoint.
Casanova is, perhaps above all else, about growing up. If Avaritia ends the overall series’ first act, then it’s a perfect third act to what’s happened so far, because it charts the rise, fall and rise of Cass in three clear themes.
The theme of Luxuria was Awakening. Casanova Quinn, ne’er-do-well, gets a chance to be better. More importantly, he realizes he can be better, and the series ends with him brightly looking towards his future.
Its follow-up, Gula, was about Consequence and its Inevitability. Casanova, romantic genre hero, has his new-found ideals squelched pretty quickly when reality kicks in. Going undercover means you do bad things. Not everyone will forgive you. Not everyone will understand. Things are gonna get worse. All the shit pushes back.
Which brings us to Avaritia, when Casanova Quinn becomes an adult. The theme of Avaritia is Responsibility. When Cass was just hopping around, fucking, having fun, he was being a kid. When we find him wallowing in his situation, he’s a teenager. In the last half of this arc, he becomes aware that he’s got a choice and the responsibility to assert it. It’s callow not to. It’s juvenile.
For Cass to be someone we can root for, he’s got to be an adult. He’s got to accept his responsibilities. He makes up with his father, late as it is. He stops treating his girlfriend like shit and he stops surrendering his own agency. Nobody makes him whisper in Luther’s ear. Nobody makes him reach out that hand to Xeno and nobody makes him get in the space car. That’s all Casanova Quinn. For the first time in a long time, we’re seeing him act like an adult and break the ouroboros of his self-defeat. He’s back on top, but he’s not the same. He’s a goddamn astronaut.
“You’re almost done, Casanova. You’re about to make a choice — and if it’s the one I think you’re going to make, everything is going to change.”
That’s what Sasa Lisi tells Cass, way back in Avaritia #2. Back then, she loves him for what can become. I used to see that in him. I forgot. He forgot. Avaritia is about him remembering. He’s Casanova fucking Quinn, star of the best comic around, and he’s finally acting like it again.
Pa-Zow, folks, and here’s to what’s next.
