Publishers: Image Comics
Writers: Matt Fraction, Michael Chabon
Artists: Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon
Colourist: Chris Peter, Gabriel Bá
Release date: Out now
Price: $3.99/Digital $0.99

At the moment three million refugees flee Syria, Casanova: Acedia #4 could not be timelier. During a brutal occupation young Akim Athabadze is trying to learn important life lessons. His father tells him, “The man who hates what he has become…is…no kind of man at all.”

Casanova: Acedia #4 is thick with allegory and meaning. A radio operator who forwards bombing coordinates is reading Jorge Luis Borges’s 1941 book El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths), about a Chinese spy for Germany in England. He detests the Nazis but wants to prove an Asian can do the job. The forking of the title takes place in time, not space: future timelines are infinite but may yet lead to the same conclusion.

So it is with Akim who becomes a child anarchist. After being captured he helps lead a revolt and eventually he and his comrades take control. But Akim soon laments the country he has helped create and its fascist policies. “Here we violently assert ourselves as right because we have all been so wronged…trying to remake the world in our image. We look nothing like it but we act the same,” he tells his now-grown compatriots.

The grim story in Casanova: Acedia #4is not without some subtle humor. A bomber is named Enola Bi; referencing the Enola Gay the name of the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

Michael Chabon’s short backup story, “The Metanauts,” involves a singing group replaced by robots. “They’re installed with all the latest hit-song algorithms,” their manager tells them. It presents the 1966 song “96 Tears” as a metaphor for revenge.

If you want to read a stylishly drawn comic that gives you a lot to consider, you could do much worse than Casanova: Acedia.

Reviewer: Joe Lovece
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker