The structure of the issues is also different, we don’t get one mission for each issue, instead it is one long mission.

SPOILER WARNING!!

#8: In Media Res

This starts with Cass on a mission to destroy Dokktor Klockhammer, which then continues when EMPIRE discovers XSM has developed the H-element technology. Cass and his team are sent to destroy this technology, but some time passes (expressed simply on the page with a six panels page) and Cass is nowhere to be found. In his place we have a grown up Kaito, and a new character from the future, Sasa Lisi.

First we get a glimpse of Casanova, then he disappears. He will not come back until the last issue of this arc. We are also introduced to the arc long plot involving the h-element. And to new characters, starting with Sasa Lisi, but we’ll learn more about her next issue. What a great start.

In the backmatter Fraction explains that saying “bring it on” to the powers that be in issue 7 put him in the hospital, which is where he took the scene at the beginning. Another weird occurrence of how reality and fiction influence each other.

#9: When the wolf comes home

Here we are introduced to two new characters from X.S.M. Kubark Benday and his father. Zephyr joins them and her first client is none other then Xeno who wants to kill all the people connected to h-element, including Cornelius Quinn. We also see David X back, though he’s killed by Zephyr and we don’t even know what happened to him. Actually two David Xes are both dead.

Back at EMPIRE Sasa Lisi tells Cornelius that Casanova’s disappearance is potentially destructive for the whole multi-quintessence, and she’s here from the future to find Cass.

The backmatter is particularly interesting because it contains a contribution from Fabio Moon, who tells us how he created the Bendays look. Their hair does look very cool, especially to a fan of Dragon Ball like myself. Zephyr’s motivation is very suspect at this point, I thought she was happily out of time with her mother. And where or when is Casanova Quinn?

#10: Seventeen

This issue felt more like a story from the first volume. Here we have Zephyr on a mission to kill Toppogrosso, whose “Secret Cinema” aims to infiltrate a girl’s life by filming it and controlling it, then during the reveal the girl inevitably crumbles. Zephyr then infiltrates this network, has sex with Toppogrosso and finally kills him. Notice the alias he uses, Betty Alpha. I’ll talk about that at the end.

At EMPIRE we learn more about Bendays past with Cornelius. Kaito also realizes that there are temporal anomalies and alerts Sasa.

#11: Naomi, I moan

Zephyr’s next target is Suki Boutique, who owns a casino. Zephyr and Kubark start playing in her casino, but instead of Kubark seducing Suki, it’s Zephyr that goes in her bed. Lots of sex and some flashbacks later, Suki is poisoned by Zephyr. I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of her, she’s a very interesting character. And Fraction mentions her father will appear in future stories.

Sasa Lisi finally learns about Casanova’s secret, in a scene where flashcards are used to expedite her learning and also to remind the readers of the important plot points. At the end things start to heat up, Zephyr is on to her next target, her own father.

There’s lots of sex here, though Fraction mentions that this will be the last we see of it, before it turns into violence. All the sex involving Zephyr will take a whole different meaning once we read issue 14, so I think it works on different levels.

#12: Fuck Shit Up

This issue is the quickest read of the whole series, because it’s all a big action/fight scene. It’s full of iconic images, and shocking moments, so Moon really steps up to the plate here. The title says it all, Zephyr is here to kill her father. But at the same time Kubark is also stealing Sasa’s h-element ship.

Zephyr is really ruthless, kill hundreds of people, injuring Ruby Berserko, killing Ruby Berserko and finally decapitating her father with an axe. What a kick ass issue. I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much if this weren’t such a departure from the usual pace of the series. This really give me a rush and propelling us towards the resolution of this arc.

In the backmatter Fraction gives us another personal note, this time a happy one about the birth of his son.

#13: Some of the things that happened to the murderers and the murdered among us

Xeno finally has all the pieces to complete his plan, that of firing the island gun into space. Taking Cass from another timeline created a massive hemorrhage in the space-time continuum, creating all sorts of paradoxes and mess. So firing this giant gun will help Cass in the past to make the time line jump. If it’s not fired everything will go back to the way before.

Back on EMPIRE, we learn that Zephyr was working for Cornelius to infiltrate XSM and that all the people he killed were Seychelle robots! On one hand this negates the emotional power of Cornelius decapitation, on the other hand it adds more emotions when thinking of what she did to the Rubies and Kaito, who doesn’t want to restore Ruby from a backup, because he wants his feelings towards Ruby to be real. This is a great emotional issue that’s rarely brought up in superhero comics stories.

This issue also gives us some flashbacks that are almost like deleted scenes from previous issues, each about how kind Casanova was to each of his friends. These flashbacks are done with the green color, which is so perfect. As soon as you see the color you know it’s a flashback.

Lots of things happening here, before the big finale.

#14: Hello Spaceboy

Here’s where everything is wrapped up. EMPIRE goes to XSM’s island and manage to arrest all of them. In the process, Kaito shoots Zephyr and she is revealed as Casanova!! That’s the big secret of this arc, one that changes the meaning of many scenes in past issues. Cass decided to not fire the gun, and let it all go back to before he jumped timeline. However, Cornelius decides that he needs to take responsibility of what he did and fires the gun.

Cass is now recovering and his confrontation with Kubark is heartbreaking and weird at the same time. Not to mention the damage he did to Kaito (who stole the giant robot). At least Ruby Berserko seems to have forgiven him. But this wouldn’t be a spy story if we didn’t get another cliffhanger with David X (wasn’t he dead?) freeing Kubark and Xeno.

I must admit, for a second there I thought that Xeno was gonna be revealed as Casanova. I always suspected they were somehow related, but I thought it would be a Casanova from another timeline, or even from the future. But I was completely floored when Zephyr was revealed as Cass. It makes sense though, Zephyr is still on Coldheart with her mom, while Cass was trying to redeem himself and Zephyr. There were many clues to Zephyr’s identity, including the alias chosen by Zephyr (Betty Alpha) and Cass (Benny Alpha) and many of Zephyr’s lines.

Cass is now back working for Cornelius, but this time all the cards are on the table.

Final Thoughts

I think the final revelation about Zephyr really elevated this volume to me. Not only that but the emotions were definitely higher at the end of the arc. Unfortunately Fraction and the twins won’t be working on the next volume for quite some time, but hopefully we’ll see more Casanova stories in the near future.

The second volume of a projected  seven volumes concluded early this year, and now I am finally taking the plunge. Lucky for me I had absolutely no problem understanding this book, and I have no idea what others are talking about. This is far from a cryptic Morrison story. Sure the plot is complex and engaging, but I had no problem getting it.

Before I get into the story, let me talk about the format. This album (as Fraction calls it) collects the first 7 issues of the series, each of them contains 16 pages of story and backmatter material. The backmatter is usually Fraction talking about how he wrote the issue at hand, plus sketches by the artists. Cover price is $1.99. The issues in Luxuria are somewhat self-contained, each one contains one single mission. There’s obviously an overall plot, but each issue feels satisfying by itself. Which is why I am going to review each issue separately. If you haven’t tried this series, please do so.

SPOILERS WARNING!!

#1: Execution Days

This first issue introduces us to the star of the book, Casanova Quinn. He’s a thief, the bad apple of a family of superspies. His father Cornelius is head of E.M.P.I.R.E., an international task-force maintaining peace, his sister is Zephyr their best agent. In this issue, his sister dies and he is then transported to another timeline by Newman Xeno, where Casanova was the good sibling (now dead) and Zephyr is the bad apple. Xeno wants Casanova to infiltrate EMPIRE and destroy them.

There’s a lot more happening here, including a flying casino owned by a flying giant head, or 3 monk heads joined together. This really felt like a spy story, since we are shown events in quick succession, but later on we discover how things really went, the Zephyr 919 kills Zephyr 909, which causes Casanova 919 to die.

This is really a packed issue, Fraction manages to introduce all these characters, this complex situation and give us a self contained story. All this in 26 pages. It doesn’t get better than that.

#2: Pretty Little Policeman

Casanova has infiltrated EMPIRE, and now he goes on missions as a double agents for WASTE (Newman Xeno’s organization). This mission: recall deep cover agent Winston Heath. The counter-mission: kill Winston Heath. The high concept here is orgone, a sex energy that Heath gathers and farcasts to the world.

There’s a great scene where Casanova and Heath fight naked, a commentary about all superhero and spy fight scenes with sexual undertones. Here we also see two Rubies: Ruby Berserko, who took the body of Fabula Berserko, and Ruby Seychelle as a free girl/robot, who’ll be back later in the series. Cass also wants to go against Xeno and shoots Zephyr.

This issue really felt like an episode of Alias, with mission and counter-mission. Also like Alias, there is an overall plot that will be revealed slowly.

#3: Mission to Yerba Muerta!

The structure of this issue is very clever and it’s divided in three different time lines. Each time line crosses into each other and feeds information that we need to understand each of them. In the backmatter Fraction tells us this was inspired by an episode of Firefly, which is one of my favorite episodes of that show.

Story-wise we get a fairly easy mission, complete with the usual double crossing (this time not done by Cass), we also get a cliffhanger reveal that Xeno has another inside man. But we also have very emotional scenes with his family: with his father, with his sister (creepy scene between the sexual and the violent), and finally with his mother.

#4: Detournement

The mission: steal God. David X is an artist who’s been meditating for almost 12 years. Once he wakes up, Buddhists will come to a critical point, but EMPIRE wants to keep those countries destabilized. So Cass kidnaps David X (who knows that Cass is from another time line), but Xeno wants him too. So Cass and Zephyr go to Sabine Seychelle and get a duplicate of David X. All while the siblings make a bet about who’s the best thief.

The main concept of David X is actually real, which makes it all the more intriguing. Is the guy for real or are they feeding him at night? It must be a scam. This is exactly the kind of backmatter commentary that I love, revealing where the writer got the idea from and how he decides to integrate it into his story.

The issue ends with an attack on Mama Quinn, which fits perfectly into next issue’s story.

#5: Coldheart

The mission: go to Coldheart and retrieve Starking Cole, Seychelle’s money man. Counter-mission: switch Seychelle’s books, let him think he’s broke. Once Cass gets to Coldheart he discovers the truth. What everybody thought was the last pre-neolithic tribe on the planet, is actually the most advanced tribe in the world.

This gives Cass the perfect place to hide his mom, somewhere out of time. Cass also gets a neural upgrade here, and at the end he destroys his mother’s place and blames Zephyr.

Again, Fraction tells us where this idea of Coldheart came from, and again I am amazed at how strange the real world is. This is also a homage to King Kong, the original.

#6: Women and Men (part one)

Here we’re close to the final stretch of this first arc. Seychelle has a secret silo full of money, and he hid a map to it on tattoos in T.A.M.I. (group of assassin girls). Cass then disguises himself as a photographer to capture their tattoo. His disguise is very similar to Xeno, which makes me wonder what their relationship is.

EMPIRE finally captures Seychelle, and the issue ends with a Japanese giant robot (Kleptomik) with a powerful bomb, summoned by the two Rubies and Zephyr. A weird story gets weirder.

The silo full of money is another true story that Fraction pulled from the news. I don’t feel it’s been fully explored here though, the mystery of it is lost once we know who put it there.

#7: Women and Men (part two)

This is where all (or most) loose ends are tied up. All the mysteries are revealed: Ruby Seychelle saved Zephyr in #2. McShane is Xeno’s other inside man. Cass has a new group of friends: Zephyr, the two Rubies, Kaito from the giant robot and Sabine Seychelle. He tells them about his secret, and he frees himself and Zephyr from Xeno. Sends Zephyr to Coldheart, and kills McShane.

This is really a happy ending for him, at least for this volume. But it’s also a new beginning, with a different status for Cass, he’s no longer a double agent and he has a large group of friends.

In the backmatter Fraction really gets personal and shares his wife’s miscarriage. This is not only very brave of him, but he also explains how that event changed his approach to this story.

Final Thoughts

This was an excellent story that took inspiration from everyday news, but managed to create some fresh and original concepts. But they all fit perfectly into the big picture, which culminated into the happy ending in issue 7. I obviously want to read more about Cass, but this would be a good place to end the story.

One big part of the book’s success is Gabriel Ba’s art. His style is reminiscent of Mike Mignola, but it feels more dynamic. This book has only two colors: black and green. This gives it a very distinct look, totally different from anything else.

This is a very enjoyable and fresh comic to me. While there are many references to many different things, they’re not necessary to understand the story. Music is referenced a lot, but I don’t know much about music, so all those references were lost on me. I still enjoyed this comic immensely. Next up is album 2.