Casanova

Quote:

Originally Posted by Casey Moore 

Casanova is back and in color and worth if for the back matter alone which could put a serious dent in your pocket books.

GQ interview with Matt Fraction.

If I had to pitch it to you I would say it is like the great, goofy 60's spy movies and tv shows (Danger Diabolik, Flint, James Bond, The Avengers) mashed up with a bunch of ITV shows (Department S, The Persuaders, Jason King) and then everything goes completely off the rails into insanity. And your hero, is really a thief.

Fraction is American!  What is he doing watching ITV shows?  Even here, we don't watch them, heh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Casey Moore 


Books like Casanova should be what are leading the market, not the same characters for the last 50 plus years. Be awesome to see what Fraction and other writers could churn out if they didn't have to keep doing the books for Marvel and DC which pay the bills.
 

God yes.  There are some very good writers in the industry.  Not enough, but exciting original work does come out.  But the creator owned work, the original stuff, is more of a calling card so these dudes can go work on the superhero books for money.  Its too bad that Fraction, Hickman, Bendis and many others whose oringal work is awesome, are relagated to the mainstream superhero stuff that many of us, like me, have little to no interest in. 

But you can't blame these dudes for doing this.  As Fraction proves, original work does not make any money.  Apparently, Fraction hasn't seen any money from Casanova.  There's just no incentive to work in comics other than for love.  Anyway, this thread has convinced me to get the trade and check it out, it sounds pretty awesome.

I too, really don't understand those people.  I've read the number of these people is somewhere between 300,000-1,000,000.  May not be much, but it's basically the entirety of comic readers in North America, and the UK.  Numbers reflect those two markets, but obviously UK is far less important. 

But seriously!  Its not like we're decrying the poor sales of WIlson, or of the absolutely amazing Asterios Polyp!  Even non superhero genre titles, generally sell very poorly.  Terry Moores Boneyard, which I have not finished but plan to soon, is brilliant.  It's not idiosyncratic or difficult to sell, or it shouldn't be.  But out of 28 issues, it sold 40,000 copies only.  I don't know, the more I read about the industry the less hope I have for it.  I think we should just be glad there are people who love the medium enough to give us great comics.  And that the industry can at least somewhat support these creators.  But I genuinely don't think the industry is going to improve.

Its interesting that comics are considered a somewhat debased and childish medium.  Ironically, comics in our countries are almost exclusively read by adults not children.  To me, this may be the single biggest problem comics have.  It's also not a coincidence, the market crashed in the 90s when the entertainment habits of children switched from comics to videogames.  Videogames are commonly sited as the biggest factor in the death of the English language comic.  But I think it's also due to the self destructive habits of the industry in that decade.

It'll be interesting to see how comics survive the next generation.  I mean the industry is not fostering any new readers.  It's almost shocking how flats sales have been, and 2010 actually saw a decline in the direct market. 

(SPOILERS FOR THE LAST SERIES)

I loved Gula, but I was kind of confused by that last twist. Casanova...was his sister? What? How did that happen?

Wait, what? Casanova was in drag as his sister? What was all that time travel stuff, then? Where was the real Zephyr during all this? I don't get it.

Just jumped on the Casanova Train with the Luxuria trade and it blew my mind, flipping good book. Mother flipping good even. I haven't enjoyed a comic so much in yonks.

Surprised there hasn't been any mention of the connection between Casanova and the Michel Moorecock created character Jerry Cornelius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Cornelius), which Casanova is basically an interpretation off, the key elements being the multiverse hopping and the semi-incestuous twin sister relationship. Casanova's just the latest in a number of interpretations on the character which Moorecock basically offered as a cerative commons character in the 60's.

I imagine most geeks are familiar of the character origins but I thought I'd leave this for those who aren't, because you really should read the Jerry Cornelius books pronto-donto. Very good mind bending literature.

Hell, the cover for The Final Program film adaptation looks like a 70's adaptation of Casanova:

By an astonishing coincidence, I just started reading Moorcock's work, JC books included. They're VERY experimental and weird, basically a completely psychedelic James Bond, and the second book, "A Cure For Cancer", which I just finished, is borderline incoherent. Continuity is completely out the window, surreal shit happens for no reason (in ACFC Jerry's a photo-negative of himself, as glimpsed in the latest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with no explanation given), and it all seems to be a literary experiment rather than a novel. In that regard, Casanova is definitely true to the spirit of Jerry Cornelius, though Fraction is Elmore Leonard compared to the insanity of Moorcock.

I believe Moorcock's treated Jerry as an "open source" character in the past, allowing anyone to use him who wanted to, which explains why he keeps popping up in alternate forms...but then I also heard that Moorcock was angry at Grant Morrison for riffing on Jerry with Sebastian O and Gideon Stargreave. Also I believe Moebius did a comic starring Jerry which he was later required to change the title characters' name.

Casey, you mentioned you were going to explain some of what happened in "Gula", with the weird identity switch, Casanova-becoming-his-sister stuff...are you able to do so now?