Okay, now I'm ready.
Doctor NoSpoilers says that Casanova #14 is the best thing Matt Fraction has ever published - period.
However, unlike say, All-Star Superman #10, it cannot be judged on its own merits because those merits are absolutely predicated on its complete recontextualization of the previous six issues. The balls on this guy! Rereading the preceding issues, it becomes clear he gave at least one clue per issue, in some issues as many as three but I dare you to claim you saw it coming, you fucking liar.
Casanova has always been about style over substance, where the style is the substance. That has been unexpectedly and brutally changed. There is real pain here, emotional knives that cut like nothing I've read in recent memory.
It has also become clear that Fraction completely and deliberately mis-represented the term "Gula". Gluttony is about going all out and devouring everything you want. The final points made in Casanova: Gula are about choice and consequent sacrifice; about carving meaning into the skin of your life when the rules of your universe permit all actions and reversibility for all actions. Memory and choosing to keep your scars are the only way to put your boot on the neck of mist. Fraction made some serious metacommentary on comicbook reality.
I fully expect to see Kaito Best as the Big Bad in "Casanova: Ira".
PS
There is only one artist in all the world who can succeed Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon and that artist is Stuart Immonen.
PPS
"Psychomanifests". Heh, that's a term I'd never have used. Too clunky in that Frank Herbert style, but it works here. What are they? They are the psychic totems unique to each character - Casanova's were spiders, until he got a literal bongload of evolution from the people of Coldheart Island and upgraded to crows; Zephyr's are snakes unless of course she's been upgraded too. Did I say too much? No.
However, unlike say, All-Star Superman #10, it cannot be judged on its own merits because those merits are absolutely predicated on its complete recontextualization of the previous six issues. The balls on this guy! Rereading the preceding issues, it becomes clear he gave at least one clue per issue, in some issues as many as three but I dare you to claim you saw it coming, you fucking liar.
Casanova has always been about style over substance, where the style is the substance. That has been unexpectedly and brutally changed. There is real pain here, emotional knives that cut like nothing I've read in recent memory.
It has also become clear that Fraction completely and deliberately mis-represented the term "Gula". Gluttony is about going all out and devouring everything you want. The final points made in Casanova: Gula are about choice and consequent sacrifice; about carving meaning into the skin of your life when the rules of your universe permit all actions and reversibility for all actions. Memory and choosing to keep your scars are the only way to put your boot on the neck of mist. Fraction made some serious metacommentary on comicbook reality.
I fully expect to see Kaito Best as the Big Bad in "Casanova: Ira".
PS
There is only one artist in all the world who can succeed Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon and that artist is Stuart Immonen.
PPS
"Psychomanifests". Heh, that's a term I'd never have used. Too clunky in that Frank Herbert style, but it works here. What are they? They are the psychic totems unique to each character - Casanova's were spiders, until he got a literal bongload of evolution from the people of Coldheart Island and upgraded to crows; Zephyr's are snakes unless of course she's been upgraded too. Did I say too much? No.