Casanova is coming back after a long hiatus, and that is more than swell. The intense and psycadelic adventures of Casanova Quinn, a dimension-hopping superthief trapped in double and triple identities was the stuff of intense joy and wonderment are outright delightful. This is the sort of series that burned through ideas rather than saving them for a rainy day in an age when every possible notion is squeezed for all its worth and merchandising. Originally designed as a 16-page comic with back matter essays for €1.99 at a time when other comics were €2.99 for 22 pages, it was consciously designed to be a book you would pick up on the spur of the moment (both in the matters of content and fiscal).
It also sold about three copies.
But times, they were and are a changing: writer Matt Fraction was then an up-and-comer. Now he writes the X-men, Ironman and Thor. Where once brothers and artists Moon and Bá were unknowns, they now run as darlings of the indie circuit, drawing The BPRD and Gerard Way’s Umbrella Academy (as well as writing and drawing the fantastic Daytripper). With their newfound fame, they are bringing Cass back to introduce his first stories to a new audience and then continue the tale through Marvel Comics and in colour. The history is well recounted here, so let’s move on to why I will be buying it all over again like a weird vinyl fan buying a CD.
I love comics, but they’ve been cheating on me a lot lately. Cycles repeat in stories, but in better cases they are revised and refreshed with some new twist. Mainstream comics have become increasingly gratuitous and inward-looking in terms of what they try to achieve – characters die, come back, die again… All very typical, except that a lot of characters are now not likely to come back because the rate of death prevents them from building a fanbase that wants them to come back. Instead we are now seeing a trend where the characters the writers and middle-aged readers are being restored at the cost of new and more recent creations. The most chronic case of this was the pointless killing-off of new Asian character Ryan Choi, the most recent Atom, to restore the WASP character of the sixties in the role (that this occurred in Asian-American Appreciation month is even more spectacularly short-sighted). This is in fact the case for all legacy characters in the DC comics line: all recent iterations are being cast off in favour of the older version from a better selling age, as if this reversion will bring back the money train. It’s all just so dull.
Casanova isn’t dull. Casanova has me rereading the full story once complete to see all the things I missed first time round.
Frankly, double-dipping Casanova will mean it’s more likely that I will get to see the whole story. It’s not the first time I have done this (although it’s not a common thing for me to do): Brandon Graham’s King City was initially released in 2007 as the first of however many volumes by Tokyopop. Much like Casanova, it did not appear to sell well (although this was at least in part due to the glut of mostly-unwanted Original English Language manga that sprang up like fungus during the big manga craze a few years back). Even though it has been relaunched from the start with a view to see it through to the end, the singles were always unlikely to sell well as it wasn’t released by Marvel or DC, had no major name attached, and was written by and about people in a sci-fi city of spies who have not had to pay to see ladies or gentlemen naked. It also contains the most useful cat in the world, but that wouldn’t quite segue in with my comparison without drawing some odd ideas about my life… To see the end, it would have to sell as many copies as possible, so the wallet shall willingly be a comic’s IV feed. It helps that I think exceptionally highly of Graham’s art and abilities (it’s a rare talent that bothers with negative space in comics). It’s for the very same reasons that I buy the collections of webcomics that I read. I would like to see the creators continue to put out their unsung joys. In the case of both King City and Casanova, they are also adding in new extras (KC has about six or seven extra pages of comic loveliness each issue to entice anyone who has read the previously published material, and has continued providing this even though it has moved into the new, previously unseen material).
It’s not as if there isn’t prime examples of comics being stopped for lack of sales. The magnificent series Phonogram had similar sales issues and unfortunately had to cease. Writers and artists have to eat, after all. The idea was at once simple and complex: music is magic (lets see how people will use it). The execution improved by leaps and bounds with each issue. It had an interesting cast and a unique style. No one noticed it on the shelves, if it even made it that far. Worse, when some more traditional comic fans saw it, they complained that the characters were too well dressed (a horror story confirmed when I met writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie a few years back…) How do you win against that sort of mentality? Hell, how do you just survive? The Singles Club was one of the best things I have read in years and so many people ignored it in favour of SuperXBatLanternForce number eleventybillion.
If Phonogram came back and had to start at the beginning, I would buy it again just the same as I will be buying Casanova once more (although in fairness to Phonogram, they wouldn’t need to start from the beginning again as each series can be read in isolation). Some things deserve to be supported. If that means I will be buying one less X-book or the like, so be it. They will just be retreading the same ground in a few years so I can read it then. But books like Casanova and King City and Phonogram and RASL and Orc Stain and so many others won’t be, and they are all far more worthy of my / your / anyone’s time.
Turn my brain off 