by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky
collects Sex Criminals #16-20
volume reviews four | five
THIS. THIS FREAKING SERIES.
(Please note, if for some reason you didn’t know, Sex Criminals is an adult comic book and has some Sex in it (along with some Criminals), so be warned there are some related words.)
I know that I am basically a volume behind on Sex Criminals, but I’m actually kind of happy about it, because it means that I can put off the feeling of not having any more Sex Criminals to read.
It took me a while to get here, honestly, because Volume 3 was a little overwhelming, with the addition of lots of new characters (to the point that it felt like there were maybe too many, though I love the addition of an asexual character – do any other aces even exist in comics? Anyway,) plus what felt like hundreds of penis/dildo drawings (I didn’t count but I’m probably in the right arena) and an extremely brilliant but also manically meta issue. (There isn’t a review sadly, that was during a hiatus from the blog, but that’s how I felt! Honest!) And I later found out that Fraction was going through a very hard time during this volume, but at the moment it felt like Sex Criminals might be losing its sex drive.
But oh, no it hadn’t. It was just a bit of a dry spell.
(I’m done, I promise.)
The plot takes a bit of a backseat here to focus on Jon and Suzie’s relationship, which may have been frustrating for an issue to issue read, but as a full arc, it completely makes sense. Six months in and the honeymoon is over, not to mention the bank-robbing that united them in the first place. At this point, Suzie and Jon are trying – well at least Suzie is – to take that ultra hard and weird and awkward step to figure out their relationship goals. She even brought markers! Markers, Jon. But Jon’s got some “mind stuff” – a place he won’t let her into, an obsession with Kegelface that he can’t quite give up, and Suzie doesn’t quite ask him to let her in, either. It’s a combination of denial and rationalization – there’s intimacy issues on both ends, and it’s not working out.
Jon’s silent reaction to Suzie’s question, and her two facial expressions afterwards, are so rich with tension, awkwardness and humanity. Their relationship feels real.
Were you really expecting this theme from a comic book about getting superpowers through orgasms? It’s gone on throughout the book, but here it’s really kicked into high gear. We really feel for both of them, the pain and awkwardness – that is paired both through Fraction’s extraordinary writing, and Zdarsky just brilliantly emphasizes through his equally extraordinary, spot-on facial expressions. So many panels are just of Suzie or Jon, expressing or reacting, and though sometimes we see into their thoughts, it’s just as clearly shown on the page. It’s “show don’t tell” at its finest.
Even though there’s quite a bit of sex, it still serves the story – because in the same way that Jon and Suzie can’t be completely honest with each other about what they want outside the bedroom, they also can’t share what they want inside it either. Fraction doesn’t lose sight of the fact that sex is a big part of relationships; Suzie and Jon, at six months, are reaching the stage of a new level of intimacy, and neither is quite willing to go there, and it shows. (And any adult reading this, who has had a serious relationship or two, has probably been in this situation. Personally, I had some of my own feelings about past partners with intimacy issues, and I really connected with Suzie here. )
It didn’t take away from the hilarious humor and sex jokes (more on that in a second) – it just felt human.
The driving force behind the story arc, is Jon’s obsession with Kegelface, and we follow her as she and her “Sex Cops” take down another offender, Todd. Just as most characters have different relationships with their sexualities, we see in Todd a new kind of sex power..erupting?…from a fetish that got started in his childhood. And this is where a lot of the humor came in – let’s just say there were wieners (hot dogs, but also, yeah), they were wide, and it was hilarious. And let’s just say there is a truck, and a song coming from the truck, that seemed like the entire justification for the wide weiners, and I’m okay with it. And there was so much giggling at the end with its “oral history” I felt like Ron Swanson seeing Lil Sebastian unexpectedly:
But otherwise, Kegelface doesn’t do much against Jon and Suzie, doesn’t do much aside from tanking Ana’s teaching job. While I’m sure we’ll see Todd again, the plot was really a driving force to expose Jon’s lies to Suzie. And there were a couple of other side stories too with our other couples: Ana/Dave was interesting, but just involved a lot of talking; and Robert and Rach was really quite meh. I’m surprised that we don’t have a main same-sex couple in the story, to be honest; we have one on the villain side, but otherwise it still feels kinda heteronormative.
We need to talk more about how unbelievable Zdarsky’s art is. The silent panels are fantastic, but they even stretch to full pages: an incredibly detailed series of panels showing how Ana gets ready for the adult film convention as Jazmine; someone waiting for a pregnancy test (no spoilers), with lots of lovely details as she silently wrings herself in anxiety; drama between Suzie and Jon; and lots of other small moments. In relationships, and just in life, there’s a lot of silence and in between moments; it’s incredibly humanizing (and against a lot of comic book norms) to not need to rush things and have spoken word on every page. I loved how Zdarsky also used face silhouettes to show what characters were thinking of, usually in contrast to each other. It’s something I’ve never seen before and in a comic that’s already doing so much trying something new and novel still feels utterly natural.
The visual humor is also off the charts. Issue 17 brings us a hilarious “Criminal” satire, hilariously ripping off (literally) Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ cover, as well as their writing and art style for the issue. And the other gags (I’m sure a combination of both Fraction and Zdarsky humor) had me almost falling off my chair, and the best part was many of them weren’t sexual – for example, the Christian wing in the hospital (“open to all faiths, just Christians jk”) the type on the wiener truck (okay, those were sexual), the ferris wheel at the carnival, hidden penis drawings (there’s one in a previous image in this post, okay most of these are sexual) and how the huge word bubbles of Dave’s exposition literally knocks people over at the restaurant (and a great contrast to the silent panels). The humor is just spot on and Fraction and Zdarsky have perfected their particular brand of humor – which you can get a taste of just by looking at the back cover.
Sex Crimz cannot be dismissed for its high sexual content – if anything, it’s one of those series that I would recommend any adult should read. (Unless they’re so uptight they can’t handle it, in which case, they probably definitely need to read this.)
Fraction and Zdarsky have cracked the code on a unique but extremely necessary kind of story. One that is equal parts raunchy and sexy, but also deeply human in its raw, awkward and sometimes heartbreaking portrayal of Suzie and Jon’s relationship, but also devastatingly funny in and around both of those aspects. (I mean, who can’t say “wide wieners” without a bit of a giggle?) It’s a good thing I have a whole shelf full of comics to go through, because I just can’t wait for more.
PS: After staring at the cover, uploading a picture of it onto the blog, and reviewing it some more, I literally just realized what the cover is referencing in the story. (You won’t get it until you read it.) WELL DONE CHIP, WELL DONE.
Reading Art 