In just five short years Matt Fraction has helped to write and create an impressive list of independent comic books. He recently has been given the writing jobs on several high profile titles for Marvel Comics. This week sees the return of his hit Image Comic CASANOVA.
Gerry Duggan: How's everything going?
Matt Fraction: Its good. Its been a little hectic this morning. Weve had a rash of violent crime in my neighborhood.
GD: Really? Anything you can use for The Punisher?
MF:Just my general rage at shit heads who violate the social contract, [laughs] which is really, Ive got to say, the best part of writing that book.
GD: Oh yeah. Im sure.
MF:Seriously writing-- like, watching the whole thing thats going on right now, the whole south of the border-immigration policy-border fence thing and writing about it in PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL, thats just me wanting to shoot Lou Dobbs in the face.
GD: [laughs]
MF: During the lead-up to the last election, I was planning out how the arc happens and, like, listening to Lou Dobbs every day talking about how the Mexicans are bringing tuberculosis and cross the border to steal our white women.
GD: Yeah, its all just a distraction. I was getting ready for this interview and I had totally forgotten that you and Kieron Dwyer had created Last of the Independents. How did you two meet?
MF:It was all kind of put together by the publisher. He and Kieron were pals. There was this weird thing where I had very little time to write it because I think it had to be on his plate before he signed the Marvel exclusive. But then, like he signed the exclusive, so it was, like, written for two years before he did drew anything. He was kind and professional enough to be a stand up guy about my first book, really. I had written some short stories, but that was it.
GD: Its such a cool book.
MF: Thank you so much. Its just his best stuff. Its my favorite, favorite stuff Kieron has ever done. Obviously Im biased, but right off, he said, Oh, its going to be sepia. We were just like, Great. And the landscape paints all of it just like fell out of Kierans head, like, perfectly formed.
GD: How did you get into comics not as a writer -- but just as a reader. How did you fall in love with the medium?
MF:You know, I was always a pretty precocious reader. From a very young age, they were kind of always around and I wanted to be an artist for a long time in school and all that shit.
GD: Yeah.
MF:I remember my parents having Peanuts and Doonesbury collections kind of around the house and I was always drawing, constantly drawing. So comics were sort of always there on the periphery. I remember trying to understand the format-- these were the reprints of a daily strip but I didnt know it. I kept trying to make the third panel and the fourth panels congruent.
GD: Thats interesting.
MF: Yeah, because I thought, Oh, well you always read them in a row. It should flow one into another. Eventually you can tell that every third panel theres a jump.
GD: Yeah.
MF: And then youre like, Oh. Then you figure it out. But, you know, when youre like four, I didnt get it. Also, when I was four years old, I thought Phred-- spelled P-H-R-E-D-- was the funniest fucking thing in the world. It still kills me every time Phred shows up. I just, I still, Ah, with the P-H! Its brilliant! So, God bless you, Gary Trudeau, resonating through the ages.
GD: Thats the best thing about comics is sort of letting you fill in the gaps between the panels I think. Thats what they do best .
MF: Yeah, between that and my favorite book when I was a kid-- It was this Golden Book; this Sesame Street book starring Grover called THERES A MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS BOOK. The whole book is Grover addressing the reader. Stop reading this book. Put it down. Theres a monster at the end of this book. Its going to be very scary. Im asking you please put the book down. And then you turn the page and hes like, I cant believe you turned the page.
GD: Oh thats great.
MF:And hes chaining the pages shut and hes building this brick wall and then finally you get to the end of the book and you realize that the monster was Grover and Grovers like, It was just me, ha-ha. But, there was a character, aware that they were a character in a story, aware that they were physically present, you know, somewhere between trying to read Doonesbury and Peanuts and being aware that characters could be aware of their format - it just did my head in.
GD: Before comics, you were working in the advertising industry, right?
MF: Yeah, its sort of-- its a bad idea to, you know, fight a war on two fronts. Around the same time that some friends and I from school started an animation studio I was starting to try and seriously get comics work professionally. I was really beginning to, you know, kind of quietly writing at night. I wrote hundreds of pages that nobody saw.
GD: Yeah.
MF: Just rehearsal pages, sketchbook pages. You know what I mean? I had wanted to be an artist so I had that sort of work ethic, you know? The way that you get better is you draw ten thousand drawings before you even touch paint, you know.
GD: Right.
MF: But the two careers started at the same time.
GD: Thats great, but it was probably really difficult.
MF: Yeah, and very exhausting, you know?
GD: Yeah.
MF: I was torn. I co-owned the animation studio and was doing all this great stuff and it was incredibly creatively satisfying. It really helped with the comic stuff, too. When I would get frustrated I wouldnt have to I was never freelancer hungry. I was never the guy hanging out at the bar with submission packets at 10:30 at night looking for editors.
GD: And now -- you obviously have a relationship with those editors because they sought you out.
MF: Yeah.
GD: More proof that doing your own comics is the way to go, I think.
MF: Its a little bit like high school where if youre aloof and a little unobtainable it makes people more interested in you. It gave me tremendous freedom to be able to say, You know what, I dont want to have to pitch you on this WHATEVERMAN one shot because I have to go direct a video with Kanye West. You know what I mean?
GD: Of course.
MF: It makes you more interesting because youre not freelancer hungry. Youre not that guy.
GD: So, have you left behind that studio?
MF: Yeah. Im no longer involved. I really miss shooting, though, so-- I mean this past year has been sort of about my first year in comics, and I think the second year is going to be trying to get that to a point of stability but weve got a baby on the way.
GD: I heard congratulations!
MF: Thanks! Yeah, I really miss shooting. Probably not this year because of the kid, but you know, sometime in my third year Id like to start trying to shoot something again. I dont know if Ill be pitching music videos or just to do a short film or something, I dont know. I miss it. I miss shooting. I miss editing. I miss being on the set with the crew and all that stuff. Its a lot of fun.
GD: Most of the filmmakers I know prefer editing than shooting. I dont know what its like for you.
MF: I love it all, honestly. I was always really inspired by John Ford who had it so in his head that he could shoot kind of in sequence. I love editing and I was really good at it so it really, absolutely informed how I shot it, absolutely informs comics as well. In fact, Im kind of writing my first big team book now and in the writing the thing I keep running into again and again, Ive never had to orchestrate this many pieces on the board at once, and my scripts are much more screenplay-y in terms of how the action is choreographed instead of being a comic script. Im writing for the moving image and not the static one. Amateur.
GD:Thats a Marvel thing, right?
MF:Yeah.
GD:Has it been announced or is it a secret?
MF: No its been announced but we announced it with the name The Champions. Then Marvel realized that --
GD: -- oh, thats right, theres a legal problem.
MF: Yeah, and the trademark had been gobbled up by somebody so now its called The Order. Its my first straightforward superhero thing to so its a hoot.
GD: Oh, cool. Well, speaking of superheroes, Ive really been enjoying IRON FIST.
MF: Thank you.
GD: I just love what you and Brubaker have done with the history of the Iron Fist. Its reminiscent of when Frank Miller got Daredevil and just sort of cracked his knuckles and said, Well, what can we do with this guy?
MF: Thank you.
GD: To me, that character has never seemed as interesting as he has right now and it got me wondering: Do you have any sort of hesitation to create things that you dont necessarily own or are you --
MF:-- With regard to IRON FIST, its the nature of work for hire.
GD: Yeah.
MF:My goal is really always be like, Billy Wilder or Steven Soderbergh, creatively, where you do these kind of crowd pleasing, Hey, heres Oceans 13.
GD: Right.
MF: You know, make $180 million, then go off into the jungles of Cuba and make your six hour Che Guevara movie entirely in Spanish and then you come back and do Oceans 14. Thats the balancing act, you do Erin Brockovich (18:45) and then you go do Traffic.
GD: Yeah.
MF: Thats the dream model, it seems like.
GD: Coming from your independent background, I was wondering if you ever thought to yourself Maybe thats an idea I should hold onto for myself?
MF: I think thats the mark of the small-minded. Do you know what I mean? Like-- are you NEVER going to have another idea? Youve just got this one, really? No, just swing for the bleachers every single time. Youre never gonna make it otherwise.
GD: Wheres Iron Fist going? Danny Rand is off to the tourney now.
MF: Yeah Enter the Dragon! Theres a great annual that kind of falls in the middle of it that revisits Orson Randalls life a little bit.
GD: Whats the process between you and Ed? Are you guys batting pages back and forth?
MF: We talk through outlines and we figure out what the story is verbally via or in person and then Ill write an outline and Ed will kind of get notes on it. Well get the outline put together and then I kind of crank out a first draft and just send it all off and Ed will put a polished draft on it. From time to time hell put in like a request to do take something on like the John Severin guest pages recently. Hell say I have dibs.
GD: Right.
MF:Were creatively pretty even-steven.
GD: Cool. How great is it working over X-Box Live?
MF:Its pretty sweet, man.
GD: Its sort of guilt-free gaming.
MF: Yeah, exactly. Its doing nine holes on a Sunday afternoon with the guys you work with.
GD: Yeah, thats true.
MF: Its a little gossipy sewing circle.
GD: We have to talk Casanova, how would you describe the book?
MF: Its kind of a super spy story with a very science fiction slant a morally dubious man of leisure is kidnapped across space and time to become his own evil twin. Hes taken to a parallel dimension where he was an upstanding good guy. So he replaces the good him in this dimension as a double agent working against his own father.
AND he has this sort of crazy twin sister and goes off on this madcap psychedelic super spy adventure and theres lots of sex and violence.
GD: I was really impressed with how many influences are in there.
MF: Bond is pretty well mined, but everything after that is just, like, Oh, right, the acronyms like U.N.C.L.E. You cant escape it. Its one of those things. Its applying hip-hop technique to comics -- you just sample everything and make something new.
GD: In that first issue alone, I dont think Ive ever seen a fight sequence where all the balloons were wordless.
MF: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I wanted to build the kind of stage where I could put on any kind of play I wanted. And to be as new wave, and formally aggressive and experimental in the telling as I liked. The eighth issue is about to come out at the end of this month and theres a page where two years passes silently.
GD: Oh thats cool.
MF: I think its a very heavy, very dense book and suddenly theres a page with no words on it and suddenly that silence, because its so rare, because the book is so heavy and dense-- in that silence two years passes. Its one of those things where you dont really know two years has passed, nobody comes out and says Hey, its two years later!. Therere enough visual cues that you can kind of guess at it if you have to guess.
GD: Yeah.
MF: Just by what happens on that page. But its not like the characters are saying at the bottom of the page Oh, its been two years, holy shit.
GD: Yeah, yeah, that stuff, to do that stuff without sort of a caption box is just wonderful, you know.
MF: I very recently, this came to me-- this really HAS been a strange week for me, but I very recently decided Im no longer going to apologize for trying to write an unabashedly intelligent comic.
GD:No.
MF: Im like, Fuck it. Im trying to write a smart, sharp, and sexy comic for smart, sharp and sexy people.
GD: Yeah -
MF: Who are tired of their intelligence being insulted.
GD: Well yeah, and there is a healthy market for it.
MF: Thank you for the kind words.
GD: Oh course! Where did (artist & co-creator) Gabriel B come from?
MF: I went after his brother. A book about twins is drawn by twins.
GD: Oh, wow.
MF: Yeah, and I actually went after his brother Fbio and the two of them looked over the proposal and they were like, You know what, I think Gabriel should draw this. I was like, I dont know Gabriel. Fbio said, Oh no, youll love him. And hes right, I do. Fbio is taking over the second volume and Gabriel will be back for volume three.
GD: Oh, thats wild. Whats the difference between their styles?
MF: Gabriel has that kind of precise pen like Mignola-style and its very kind of-- theres a discipline; its a very cartoony discipline but its very line-based and very fine-tipped pen sort of that. Fbio has a lush-- like Jeff Smith or Paul Pope-- like a brushy sort of. I imagine that when Gabriel is done drawing a page there isnt a drop of ink anywhere on him or on his clothing, but Fbio just attacks pages like a wild animal and comes out looking like a Pollack painting.
GD: Yeah.
MF: Its cool. They work side by side, so Fbio was there for the entire birth and development of CASANOVA-- theres just nobody more qualified to take it over.
GD: Talk to me about your writing philosophy for CASANOVA. I think it was another interview where you really wanted to write for the floppy to sort of create something that somebody could come into that was episodic but that also served the trade.
MF: I maybe get away from that in this new volume. But yeah, I was kind of tired of paying three dollars or more for a comic that you could flip through in a minute and a half.
GD: Yeah.
MF: I came up on books like Chaykins AMERICAN FLAGG! or you know, WATCHMEN. These comics refused passive consumption. Im showing my art school here: I reject passive consumption. I reject the premise. I will have no passive consumers. Casanova will not stop and explain itself to you. It will not allow you to flip through it while youre dropping a deuce and waiting for Batman to show up.
GD: Yeah, well, in a stack of books thats why it stands out because
MF: It will demand your time. Its only two bucks, but for the time you spend with us, I want to earn every one of those eight quarters.
GD: I pull it to the side, and when that weeks other comics evaporate -- then its time to pick up Casanova.
MF: This might be apocryphal but I always heard that there was an interview or a story about someone talking to Howard Chaykin regarding AMERICAN FLAGG! saying, Oh, gosh, I have to read this about five times to get it. And Chaykin replied, You should try reading it once, slowly.
GD: [laughs]
MF: I would love to put that on the cover, Try reading it once, slowly. Some people honestly dont know what to make of it and react with real hostility toward not being treated like idiots. I mean, genuine hostility, its hilarious.
GD: We were talking a little bit about the second volume. At the end of the first volume it really seems like inertia is setting in finally, you know, hes going to be at rest for a while. You were talking about that two year jump.
MF: The first half of #8-- which is the first issue of Volume 2-- is making fun of the Volume 1. Its me mocking me and my CASANOVA formula. Theres a mission. Theres weirdness. Theres a fight scene. Everybody talks in catch phrases. Theres violence. And then I get him home and its awesome and everybody high fives. Theres the briefing, the jargon, the gadgets and whatever. Then hes just gone.
GD: Oh, thats great.
MF: I realized I had a formula; that I had come to using a formula for CASANOVA and that sort of horrified me. Im making it a very ornate formula and Im coming at it differently, but its there, even if only I can see it. So the first half of the issue fucks with that, it just makes fun of it and makes fun of me, mostly, and its just ridiculous and so it becomes kind of a grotesque parody and then Casanova disappears. Thats the mystery of the second volume. In page eight or page nine the main character disappears. Hes gone, basically, hes just gone-- so Casanova doesnt actually appear in the second volume of Casanova. But his absence is basically causing this catastrophic decay of spacetime. The tagline for the volume is When is Casanova Quinn? Hes missing from time.
GD: Thats really cool.
MF: I realized the other day that Im kind of doing a very similar thing to what Ed (Brubaker) is doing with Captain America where theres a book about Captain America without Captain America in it. Where youre telling stories about the character and what the character means in the space created by his absence.
GD: Speaking of Brubakerhe killed Cap, if you could do away with any single beloved character, who would it be?
MF: Having shot Stilt Man in the taint with a bazooka -- Ive come to realize every character is somebodys favorite character.
GD: Yeah. Somebody, somewhere has a homemade lunch box with Stilt Man on it.
MF: I used to work at a comic shop. I did a signing there and afterwards my old boss took me out to lunch. We sat down and I swear to God the first words out of his mouth were, Did you always hate Stilt Man or something? No, I was just-- I thought it was funny. But I would hope whomever I kill -- I would hope I earned the story.
GD: Thanks for taking the time to chat.
MF: Thank you.
To read the first full issue of Casanova, visit Newsarama here. Photo of Matt Fraction by Doug Hesse.
And here are some panels from CASANOVA issue 8 by Fraction & Moon:
Gerry Duggan: How's everything going?
Matt Fraction: Its good. Its been a little hectic this morning. Weve had a rash of violent crime in my neighborhood.
GD: Really? Anything you can use for The Punisher?
MF:Just my general rage at shit heads who violate the social contract, [laughs] which is really, Ive got to say, the best part of writing that book.
GD: Oh yeah. Im sure.
MF:Seriously writing-- like, watching the whole thing thats going on right now, the whole south of the border-immigration policy-border fence thing and writing about it in PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL, thats just me wanting to shoot Lou Dobbs in the face.
GD: [laughs]
MF: During the lead-up to the last election, I was planning out how the arc happens and, like, listening to Lou Dobbs every day talking about how the Mexicans are bringing tuberculosis and cross the border to steal our white women.
GD: Yeah, its all just a distraction. I was getting ready for this interview and I had totally forgotten that you and Kieron Dwyer had created Last of the Independents. How did you two meet?
MF:It was all kind of put together by the publisher. He and Kieron were pals. There was this weird thing where I had very little time to write it because I think it had to be on his plate before he signed the Marvel exclusive. But then, like he signed the exclusive, so it was, like, written for two years before he did drew anything. He was kind and professional enough to be a stand up guy about my first book, really. I had written some short stories, but that was it.
GD: Its such a cool book.
MF: Thank you so much. Its just his best stuff. Its my favorite, favorite stuff Kieron has ever done. Obviously Im biased, but right off, he said, Oh, its going to be sepia. We were just like, Great. And the landscape paints all of it just like fell out of Kierans head, like, perfectly formed.
GD: How did you get into comics not as a writer -- but just as a reader. How did you fall in love with the medium?
MF:You know, I was always a pretty precocious reader. From a very young age, they were kind of always around and I wanted to be an artist for a long time in school and all that shit.
GD: Yeah.
MF:I remember my parents having Peanuts and Doonesbury collections kind of around the house and I was always drawing, constantly drawing. So comics were sort of always there on the periphery. I remember trying to understand the format-- these were the reprints of a daily strip but I didnt know it. I kept trying to make the third panel and the fourth panels congruent.
GD: Thats interesting.
MF: Yeah, because I thought, Oh, well you always read them in a row. It should flow one into another. Eventually you can tell that every third panel theres a jump.
GD: Yeah.
MF: And then youre like, Oh. Then you figure it out. But, you know, when youre like four, I didnt get it. Also, when I was four years old, I thought Phred-- spelled P-H-R-E-D-- was the funniest fucking thing in the world. It still kills me every time Phred shows up. I just, I still, Ah, with the P-H! Its brilliant! So, God bless you, Gary Trudeau, resonating through the ages.
GD: Thats the best thing about comics is sort of letting you fill in the gaps between the panels I think. Thats what they do best .
MF: Yeah, between that and my favorite book when I was a kid-- It was this Golden Book; this Sesame Street book starring Grover called THERES A MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS BOOK. The whole book is Grover addressing the reader. Stop reading this book. Put it down. Theres a monster at the end of this book. Its going to be very scary. Im asking you please put the book down. And then you turn the page and hes like, I cant believe you turned the page.
GD: Oh thats great.
MF:And hes chaining the pages shut and hes building this brick wall and then finally you get to the end of the book and you realize that the monster was Grover and Grovers like, It was just me, ha-ha. But, there was a character, aware that they were a character in a story, aware that they were physically present, you know, somewhere between trying to read Doonesbury and Peanuts and being aware that characters could be aware of their format - it just did my head in.
GD: Before comics, you were working in the advertising industry, right?
MF: Yeah, its sort of-- its a bad idea to, you know, fight a war on two fronts. Around the same time that some friends and I from school started an animation studio I was starting to try and seriously get comics work professionally. I was really beginning to, you know, kind of quietly writing at night. I wrote hundreds of pages that nobody saw.
GD: Yeah.
MF: Just rehearsal pages, sketchbook pages. You know what I mean? I had wanted to be an artist so I had that sort of work ethic, you know? The way that you get better is you draw ten thousand drawings before you even touch paint, you know.
GD: Right.
MF: But the two careers started at the same time.
GD: Thats great, but it was probably really difficult.
MF: Yeah, and very exhausting, you know?
GD: Yeah.
MF: I was torn. I co-owned the animation studio and was doing all this great stuff and it was incredibly creatively satisfying. It really helped with the comic stuff, too. When I would get frustrated I wouldnt have to I was never freelancer hungry. I was never the guy hanging out at the bar with submission packets at 10:30 at night looking for editors.
GD: And now -- you obviously have a relationship with those editors because they sought you out.
MF: Yeah.
GD: More proof that doing your own comics is the way to go, I think.
MF: Its a little bit like high school where if youre aloof and a little unobtainable it makes people more interested in you. It gave me tremendous freedom to be able to say, You know what, I dont want to have to pitch you on this WHATEVERMAN one shot because I have to go direct a video with Kanye West. You know what I mean?
GD: Of course.
MF: It makes you more interesting because youre not freelancer hungry. Youre not that guy.
GD: So, have you left behind that studio?
MF: Yeah. Im no longer involved. I really miss shooting, though, so-- I mean this past year has been sort of about my first year in comics, and I think the second year is going to be trying to get that to a point of stability but weve got a baby on the way.
GD: I heard congratulations!
MF: Thanks! Yeah, I really miss shooting. Probably not this year because of the kid, but you know, sometime in my third year Id like to start trying to shoot something again. I dont know if Ill be pitching music videos or just to do a short film or something, I dont know. I miss it. I miss shooting. I miss editing. I miss being on the set with the crew and all that stuff. Its a lot of fun.
GD: Most of the filmmakers I know prefer editing than shooting. I dont know what its like for you.
MF: I love it all, honestly. I was always really inspired by John Ford who had it so in his head that he could shoot kind of in sequence. I love editing and I was really good at it so it really, absolutely informed how I shot it, absolutely informs comics as well. In fact, Im kind of writing my first big team book now and in the writing the thing I keep running into again and again, Ive never had to orchestrate this many pieces on the board at once, and my scripts are much more screenplay-y in terms of how the action is choreographed instead of being a comic script. Im writing for the moving image and not the static one. Amateur.
GD:Thats a Marvel thing, right?
MF:Yeah.
GD:Has it been announced or is it a secret?
MF: No its been announced but we announced it with the name The Champions. Then Marvel realized that --
GD: -- oh, thats right, theres a legal problem.
MF: Yeah, and the trademark had been gobbled up by somebody so now its called The Order. Its my first straightforward superhero thing to so its a hoot.
GD: Oh, cool. Well, speaking of superheroes, Ive really been enjoying IRON FIST.
MF: Thank you.
GD: I just love what you and Brubaker have done with the history of the Iron Fist. Its reminiscent of when Frank Miller got Daredevil and just sort of cracked his knuckles and said, Well, what can we do with this guy?
MF: Thank you.
GD: To me, that character has never seemed as interesting as he has right now and it got me wondering: Do you have any sort of hesitation to create things that you dont necessarily own or are you --
MF:-- With regard to IRON FIST, its the nature of work for hire.
GD: Yeah.
MF:My goal is really always be like, Billy Wilder or Steven Soderbergh, creatively, where you do these kind of crowd pleasing, Hey, heres Oceans 13.
GD: Right.
MF: You know, make $180 million, then go off into the jungles of Cuba and make your six hour Che Guevara movie entirely in Spanish and then you come back and do Oceans 14. Thats the balancing act, you do Erin Brockovich (18:45) and then you go do Traffic.
GD: Yeah.
MF: Thats the dream model, it seems like.
GD: Coming from your independent background, I was wondering if you ever thought to yourself Maybe thats an idea I should hold onto for myself?
MF: I think thats the mark of the small-minded. Do you know what I mean? Like-- are you NEVER going to have another idea? Youve just got this one, really? No, just swing for the bleachers every single time. Youre never gonna make it otherwise.
GD: Wheres Iron Fist going? Danny Rand is off to the tourney now.
MF: Yeah Enter the Dragon! Theres a great annual that kind of falls in the middle of it that revisits Orson Randalls life a little bit.
GD: Whats the process between you and Ed? Are you guys batting pages back and forth?
MF: We talk through outlines and we figure out what the story is verbally via or in person and then Ill write an outline and Ed will kind of get notes on it. Well get the outline put together and then I kind of crank out a first draft and just send it all off and Ed will put a polished draft on it. From time to time hell put in like a request to do take something on like the John Severin guest pages recently. Hell say I have dibs.
GD: Right.
MF:Were creatively pretty even-steven.
GD: Cool. How great is it working over X-Box Live?
MF:Its pretty sweet, man.
GD: Its sort of guilt-free gaming.
MF: Yeah, exactly. Its doing nine holes on a Sunday afternoon with the guys you work with.
GD: Yeah, thats true.
MF: Its a little gossipy sewing circle.
GD: We have to talk Casanova, how would you describe the book?
MF: Its kind of a super spy story with a very science fiction slant a morally dubious man of leisure is kidnapped across space and time to become his own evil twin. Hes taken to a parallel dimension where he was an upstanding good guy. So he replaces the good him in this dimension as a double agent working against his own father.
AND he has this sort of crazy twin sister and goes off on this madcap psychedelic super spy adventure and theres lots of sex and violence.
GD: I was really impressed with how many influences are in there.
MF: Bond is pretty well mined, but everything after that is just, like, Oh, right, the acronyms like U.N.C.L.E. You cant escape it. Its one of those things. Its applying hip-hop technique to comics -- you just sample everything and make something new.
GD: In that first issue alone, I dont think Ive ever seen a fight sequence where all the balloons were wordless.
MF: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I wanted to build the kind of stage where I could put on any kind of play I wanted. And to be as new wave, and formally aggressive and experimental in the telling as I liked. The eighth issue is about to come out at the end of this month and theres a page where two years passes silently.
GD: Oh thats cool.
MF: I think its a very heavy, very dense book and suddenly theres a page with no words on it and suddenly that silence, because its so rare, because the book is so heavy and dense-- in that silence two years passes. Its one of those things where you dont really know two years has passed, nobody comes out and says Hey, its two years later!. Therere enough visual cues that you can kind of guess at it if you have to guess.
GD: Yeah.
MF: Just by what happens on that page. But its not like the characters are saying at the bottom of the page Oh, its been two years, holy shit.
GD: Yeah, yeah, that stuff, to do that stuff without sort of a caption box is just wonderful, you know.
MF: I very recently, this came to me-- this really HAS been a strange week for me, but I very recently decided Im no longer going to apologize for trying to write an unabashedly intelligent comic.
GD:No.
MF: Im like, Fuck it. Im trying to write a smart, sharp, and sexy comic for smart, sharp and sexy people.
GD: Yeah -
MF: Who are tired of their intelligence being insulted.
GD: Well yeah, and there is a healthy market for it.
MF: Thank you for the kind words.
GD: Oh course! Where did (artist & co-creator) Gabriel B come from?
MF: I went after his brother. A book about twins is drawn by twins.
GD: Oh, wow.
MF: Yeah, and I actually went after his brother Fbio and the two of them looked over the proposal and they were like, You know what, I think Gabriel should draw this. I was like, I dont know Gabriel. Fbio said, Oh no, youll love him. And hes right, I do. Fbio is taking over the second volume and Gabriel will be back for volume three.
GD: Oh, thats wild. Whats the difference between their styles?
MF: Gabriel has that kind of precise pen like Mignola-style and its very kind of-- theres a discipline; its a very cartoony discipline but its very line-based and very fine-tipped pen sort of that. Fbio has a lush-- like Jeff Smith or Paul Pope-- like a brushy sort of. I imagine that when Gabriel is done drawing a page there isnt a drop of ink anywhere on him or on his clothing, but Fbio just attacks pages like a wild animal and comes out looking like a Pollack painting.
GD: Yeah.
MF: Its cool. They work side by side, so Fbio was there for the entire birth and development of CASANOVA-- theres just nobody more qualified to take it over.
GD: Talk to me about your writing philosophy for CASANOVA. I think it was another interview where you really wanted to write for the floppy to sort of create something that somebody could come into that was episodic but that also served the trade.
MF: I maybe get away from that in this new volume. But yeah, I was kind of tired of paying three dollars or more for a comic that you could flip through in a minute and a half.
GD: Yeah.
MF: I came up on books like Chaykins AMERICAN FLAGG! or you know, WATCHMEN. These comics refused passive consumption. Im showing my art school here: I reject passive consumption. I reject the premise. I will have no passive consumers. Casanova will not stop and explain itself to you. It will not allow you to flip through it while youre dropping a deuce and waiting for Batman to show up.
GD: Yeah, well, in a stack of books thats why it stands out because
MF: It will demand your time. Its only two bucks, but for the time you spend with us, I want to earn every one of those eight quarters.
GD: I pull it to the side, and when that weeks other comics evaporate -- then its time to pick up Casanova.
MF: This might be apocryphal but I always heard that there was an interview or a story about someone talking to Howard Chaykin regarding AMERICAN FLAGG! saying, Oh, gosh, I have to read this about five times to get it. And Chaykin replied, You should try reading it once, slowly.
GD: [laughs]
MF: I would love to put that on the cover, Try reading it once, slowly. Some people honestly dont know what to make of it and react with real hostility toward not being treated like idiots. I mean, genuine hostility, its hilarious.
GD: We were talking a little bit about the second volume. At the end of the first volume it really seems like inertia is setting in finally, you know, hes going to be at rest for a while. You were talking about that two year jump.
MF: The first half of #8-- which is the first issue of Volume 2-- is making fun of the Volume 1. Its me mocking me and my CASANOVA formula. Theres a mission. Theres weirdness. Theres a fight scene. Everybody talks in catch phrases. Theres violence. And then I get him home and its awesome and everybody high fives. Theres the briefing, the jargon, the gadgets and whatever. Then hes just gone.
GD: Oh, thats great.
MF: I realized I had a formula; that I had come to using a formula for CASANOVA and that sort of horrified me. Im making it a very ornate formula and Im coming at it differently, but its there, even if only I can see it. So the first half of the issue fucks with that, it just makes fun of it and makes fun of me, mostly, and its just ridiculous and so it becomes kind of a grotesque parody and then Casanova disappears. Thats the mystery of the second volume. In page eight or page nine the main character disappears. Hes gone, basically, hes just gone-- so Casanova doesnt actually appear in the second volume of Casanova. But his absence is basically causing this catastrophic decay of spacetime. The tagline for the volume is When is Casanova Quinn? Hes missing from time.
GD: Thats really cool.
MF: I realized the other day that Im kind of doing a very similar thing to what Ed (Brubaker) is doing with Captain America where theres a book about Captain America without Captain America in it. Where youre telling stories about the character and what the character means in the space created by his absence.
GD: Speaking of Brubakerhe killed Cap, if you could do away with any single beloved character, who would it be?
MF: Having shot Stilt Man in the taint with a bazooka -- Ive come to realize every character is somebodys favorite character.
GD: Yeah. Somebody, somewhere has a homemade lunch box with Stilt Man on it.
MF: I used to work at a comic shop. I did a signing there and afterwards my old boss took me out to lunch. We sat down and I swear to God the first words out of his mouth were, Did you always hate Stilt Man or something? No, I was just-- I thought it was funny. But I would hope whomever I kill -- I would hope I earned the story.
GD: Thanks for taking the time to chat.
MF: Thank you.
To read the first full issue of Casanova, visit Newsarama here. Photo of Matt Fraction by Doug Hesse.
And here are some panels from CASANOVA issue 8 by Fraction & Moon:
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
Everyone!
McK said:
Everyone should read Casanova.
Everyone!
I agree! and your first taste is free online!