Cooler than Thou
Casanova is a comic book series that debuted in June 2006 written by Matt Fraction with art by (so far) Gabriel Ba and his brother Fabio Moon. Inspired by Jerry Cornelius, Danger: Diabolik, Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD and, of course, James Bond, it tells a trippy tale of spies, flying cars, crazy gadgets, bizarre psychic powers and mind-upgrading drugs. Each story arc is named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins. As of June 2021, Luxuria, Gula and Avarita are complete with the current arc titled Acedia.
The eponymous lead is a skilled yet thoroughly sybaritic cat-burglar-for-hire whose dad, Cornelius Quinn, happens to run E.M.P.I.R.E., the world's premier international security organization.
Allow us to rephrase.
Casanova Quinn is, among other things, The Most Interesting Man in the World.
- He steals — and has sex with — at least one smoking hot robot woman.
- He wins a psychic duel with what appear to be three Buddhist monks fused into a single wad.
- He dives out of a flying heli-casino ...
- ... while shooting at it ...
- ... and into a parallel reality where he is his own Evil Twin ...
- ... where he does it all again, only better.
- He is cooler than you'd ever even want to be.
And that's just the first issue!
These tropes feature in his life:
- Animal Motifs: Everyone with psychic powers has a "psychomanifest" represented by one animal or another. Casanova had spiders for a while, then upgraded to crows via some really great drugs. Zephyr has snakes.
- Artificial Human: Ruby Seychelle, Ruby Berserko. Sabine Seychelle does good work.
- Bandage Mummy: Newman Xeno
- Cooper Caine, Fashion Photographer to the Stars, in an in-universe homage to Newman Xeno.
- Big Bad: Newman Xeno
- Brain Uploading: Tragically and painfully subverted.
- Break the Cutie: Kaito in Casanova: Gula.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall
- Brother–Sister Incest: Heavily implied in "Luxuria", between Casanova and Zephyr.
- The Casanova: It's right there in the title.
- Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Casanova is modelled on a much younger Mick Jagger.
- Dark Action Girl: Zephyr Quinn, period.
- Double Agent
- The Dragon: Zephyr Quinn to Newman Xeno - or is she?
- Easy Sex Change: Casanova has one of these in the "Gula" arc, to pretend to be his sister to infiltrate the Xeno's latest plan and at the end get changed back.
- Escape Artist: David X before he leveled up.
- Enlightenment Superpowers: David X meditated his way into superhumanity.
- Evil Minions: Ever meet anyone that went to those technical schools that advertise on late night TV. You know — the "colleges" that exist in mini-malls? Of course not. Anybody who went to those gets recruited into agencies like W.A.S.T.E. and E.M.P.I.R.E. I mean — ever wondered where those jumpsuit guys come from? The killer robot fuelers, the giant drill runners, the spooky laser operators? Colleges from the TV.
- Evil Only Has to Win Once: The reasoning for the dimension hopping missions in "Avarita" is that as long as a Newman Xeno (aka Luther Desmond Diamond) existed in any universe he could/would damage the multiverse beyond repair.
- Evil Twin: Casanova is the evil twin replacing his dead good twin. Interestingly, of the alternate universes visited, there is always one good Quinn sibling and one evil one. In the original universe, Cass was the evil one whereas Zeph was the good one, while in the universe Cass currently inhabits, Zeph was the evil one, Cass was the good one before he was killed, making one universe with two evil twins.
- Expy: Sabine Seychelle is totally a grown-up
Chaotic Neutral Jonny Quest according to Word of God.- Suki Boutique is transparently a Modesty Blaise expy that retired to run a casino.
- Cass himself is a much less morally gray Jerry Cornelius.
- First-Person Smartass
- From Nobody to Nightmare: "Avarita #1" suggests this as Newman Xeno's origin story.
- Fun with Acronyms: We have E.M.P.I.R.E. (Extra-Military Police Intelligence Rescue and Espionage), and T.A.M.I. (Teen Age Music International).
- The bad guys have more fun with this. W.A.S.T.E. has had various meanings across the story, while X.S.M. changes the S to various other letters for the inclusiveness of their ventures.
- Gentleman Thief: Casanova until the events of the first issue. Thereafter, he trades that in for the life of a dimension-hopping superspy.
- Genre Throwback: The series is an unabashed throwback to the psychedelic Spy Fiction of The '60s and The '70s, such as Nick Fury and The Cornelius Chronicles.
- A God Am I: David X, right until he got tased in the brains by Casanova.
- Guns Akimbo: All the time! Even Newman Xeno does it.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Pretty much the whole cast at one point switches sides except for Cornelius Quinn.
- Hidden Elf Village: Modified with shades of Advanced Ancient Acropolis. The people of Coldheart Island present themselves to the world as an exaggerated stereotype of spear-chucking bone-through-the-nose savages. In reality, they are an ultra-advanced tribe of psychic superbeings who can read DVDs with the naked eye, see through cloaking devices like they aren't even there and trap our protagonist between comicbook panels.
- Human Notepad: Teen Age Music International, a girl band of pop star assassins, are invisibly tattooed with the map to Sabine Seychelle's money.
- Humongous Mecha: Kaito Best's Mad Scientist parents left him one. After "Luxuria", he, Casanova and their whole crew live inside its head.
- I Have No Son!: Cornelius Quinn disowns Casanova and treats him as an E.M.P.I.R.E. agent at the finale of "Gula", since that Casanova is not his own version of his birthson.
- Invisibility Cloak: "Lightbender" suits are used a few times in the series.
- Jumped at the Call: Kaito's, like, just so happy to be there, man.
- Ki Manipulation: Kaito Best is an insanely skilled martial artist.
- Lovable Rogue: Casanova, of course.
- Man of Wealth and Taste: Xeno is a rare combination of this trope and Sophisticated as Hell.
- Messiah Creep: Cass's major Character Development.
- Metafiction: Because the Genre Demands It!
- The Mole: McShane, in a shocking twist!
- Money Fetish: Xeno apparently likes to have sex on bloodstained piles of money.
- Mooks
- The Multiverse: The Multi-Quintessence in this case. Same thing.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot
- Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: David X and his Empire of Zen Crime in Gula are described thusly: It’s like crime, only there’re no victims, and really, no crimes. It really just spreads a general sense of unrest.
- Psychic Powers:
- Casanova dismantles a foe's gun with his spiders and shreds a couple of Xeno's Mooks with his crow upgrade.
- Zephyr is able to recon an entire building with her psycho-manifested snakes — without leaving her chair.
- The Purge: E.M.P.I.R.E. decides to kill of all versions of Newman Xeno throughout the multiverse.
- Ridiculously Human Robot: Sabine Seychelle's specialty. Ruby Seychelle herself.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Kaito teams up with Xeno to get his revenge for Ruby on the Quinns.
- Robosexual: McShane and Ruby Berserko, Kaito and Ruby Seychelle.
- Rule of Cool: Every page, every issue, every story arc, all of it.
- Sexbot: Sabine Seychelle's other specialty.
- Seven Deadly Sins: Wordof God plans for seven storylines in the comic named after one of the Seven Sins. To date there has been "Luxuria"(Lust), "Gula" (Gluttony), "Avaritia" (Greed) and "Acedia" (Sloth).
- Sharp-Dressed Man
- Shout-Out: Ice-T, The New Pornographers, Thomas Pynchon, Films of the 1960s and much much more.
- Skilled, but Naive: Kaito in his first appearance. By the Gula story arc, he had gained a lot more experience.
- Sophisticated as Hell
- Spy Fiction: Martini-and-Absinthe-flavoured
- Spy Versus Spy: All over the place.
- Stable Time Loop: Even though Casanova is ordered to assassinate Xeno/Dodgson across the multiverse in "Avaritia", since Xeno was the one who brought him to that universe he'd be undoing his own history too. He eventually decides to spare one version of Dodgson... who becomes his archnemesis Xeno. Similarly, Xeno has to wait until Casanova has spared his life to kill him.
- Time Travel: Sasa Lisi and that leads to...
- Time-Travel Romance: Between Casanova and Sasa Lisi.
- Trippy Finale Syndrome: "Avarita"'s ending.
- Unwitting Pawn: Casanova uses a young secretary in the first issue.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Everything falls into place across the story, despite Casanova and Xeno's attempts to change time and space.
- Your Universe or Mine?
Psychic combat at dawn ... because The Genre Demands It!
