by Gail Simone and Cat Staggs
collects Crosswind #1-6
Gail Simone and Cat Staggs create an exciting, fresh, and groundbreaking new twist on the body-switching genre with Crosswind.
Our protagonists are Cason Bennett, a Cuban-American hitman in Chicago who shoots his best friend in the opening pages, and Juniper Blue, a miserable wife and stepmom in Seattle who is verbally abused by all the men in her life (she has only abusive men in her life), including a cheating, ungrateful husband. Cason and Junie find new freedoms and new challenges once they wake up in each others’ bodies, but as they try to figure out who they are and how to switch back, things become even more complicated with Cason’s dangerous associates on their tails.
Juni and Case, before….
Cat Staggs brings an interesting realist style to the Crosswind title (she is an unbelievably talented artist). Her heavy outlines and a bold, almost watercolor like look but without much gradience in the colors feels almost like painted photos. There are some nice visual details – Carson, in Juni’s body, rips open Juni’s purse, reminds us visually they’re strangers in their own bodies. Sometimes panels felt awkward, and occasionally a few characters looked expressionless; but otherwise I really enjoyed the different look. The realism, as opposed to a more cartoonish look, might have been intentionally chosen due to the book’s other metaphors.
….and after.
A writer who has worked on all sorts of gender-forward books, Simone also plays with gender in Crosswind. Cason and Juni start off as 60’s stereotypes: the coldblooded hitman and the abused, lonely housewife. However, when they switch into each others’ bodies, the stereotypical body humor doesn’t come up (Cason in Juni’s body especially), aside from one moment, but with Juni in Cason’s body. When we see them sleeping in bed, in each others’ bodies, there is no cheap sexual joke here.
It was refreshing, and very intentional.
Case fully nosedives into Juni’s life without any grumbling about becoming a woman – in fact, he rather enjoys cooking his mom’s Cuban recipes every night. Unfortunately, Case still uses what he knows as an assassin and a toxically masculine man – using violence and profanity as strength – to get his way, and worst of all, uses it as a teaching moment for Juni’s stepson. But also, thankfully, he raises hell against the men who are so abusive to Juni, including her husband. Unlike Juni, he takes zero shit from them.
But most importantly, Cason never once says that he feels weak for being switched into a woman’s body. He never questions his masculinity, his strength or essential self worth, and the reasons why Case enjoys being Juni are not sexual at all. If anything, he is the one who expresses relief about the switch rather than Juni. In a world full of toxic masculinity, this is really something.
After Juni finds herself in Case’s body, she panics, and then gets her act together and cleans up a dirty crime scene. But when she has to interact with his associates, Juni consistently freezes. It makes sense – she has the harder transition here- but saving it for the end felt unearned.
Regardless, the fact that Case and Juni are immediately comfortable in each others’ bodies, reminds us how socially constructed and ridiculous the concept of gender really is. And even as we move forward in our society, we still deeply and subconsciously hold on to many of those conceptions.
But an interview between Simone and Charles Battersby, hidden in the bonus materials, actually totally changed my understanding of Crosswind as a whole. I REALLY wish it was easier to find.
Charles Battersby is a trans writer/actor who moderated a panel at NYCC about trans inclusion in comics. In the interview he explains that body-switching invites the characters – and invites readers – to experience the feeling of being transgender. In the genre, often a cisgender man and woman switch, and the man/woman learn about being the other. (This of course excludes nonbinary folks which is its own issue.)
But actually, their involuntary switch, their physical and emotional discomfort – they’re learning about being <i>trans.</i>
And yet, Battersby says, characters eventually find a magical way to instantly return to their own bodies, subverting the methods that trans people are forced to use (which are not so quick and magical, and often come at the risk of discrimination, violence, financial hardship, and lack of legal protections) in order to feel at home in their own bodies.
Suddenly, it’s even clearer how Simone’s story subverts the body switching genre not only to make it a fresher, more interesting story, and more sensitive to a trans audience – and subverting said stereotypes creates a positive metaphor for the trans experience. In fact, a major supporting character, one of Juni’s neighbors, Maizy, plays an important role in the story – and, I didn’t realize until after reading the interview, essentially represents the conversation between Simone and Battersby.
First of all, Maizy is a kickass, very positive trans character and excellent dog trainer. (She and Petrichor from Saga would definitely be friends.) Positive trans characters are becoming more mainstream, but it’s still unfortunately rare in comics and so Maizy’s inclusion deserves serious props on its own. And perhaps I’m dense (as woke as I *think* I am), but I soon realized that a key moment in the book is when Case (in Juni’s body) visits Maizy and her partner Lilly. The first time, Case asks for makeup help – okay, he wants to fit in as a woman. But then he returns, and it’s not about physically fitting in – it’s a different, deeper, and truer question:
Remember how I said earlier that the story is actually about Case? I think this is why. Juni seems to eventually like being Carson because of the respect and being listened to. But Case – he actually asks the question. And he, a man who switched into a woman’s body and feels right about it, asks a trans woman.
It’s FREAKING BEAUTIFUL. How did I not notice this before?!
And Maizy’s response, that he is always Case no matter what body he is in, is just a beautiful allegory for the trans experience. Your body doesn’t define your soul. And it’s fitting that Case and Juni are clearly more comfortable as each other, and not for sexual reasons at all. (Does that make them bigender, or gender queer? Or just human?) While it might not have been the story Simone wanted to tell, I wish Maizy and her partner Lilly could have had a larger role in the story and had made that metaphor more clear – again, maybe I’m the dense one, but I would not be asking myself these questions without having read that interview. (Gail, if you’re reading this, first of all hi you’re the best, and second of all, please put that interview right after the variants!)
spoilers this paragraph. The biggest stretch of the story is Vox, the coordinator of Juni and Case’s body switching. What is unfortunate is that not only does the existence of Viziers (people who can switch bodies) seem far fetched, but so too does his reason for targeting Juni and Case specifically. Seriously dude? You only asked two passengers for their flight? How is this a viable reason to ruin their lives and kill lots of other people in the process? Case and Juni could have switched for no reason at all and the book would have been better, without this convoluted distraction – less Vox, and more Maizy, please and thank you. But the idea of viziers hidden throughout the world, who might be able to switch Case and Juni, and others, into other bodies – could be a sign of more stories to come.
But then the question is, if Case and Juni aren’t interested in switching back, will we see them return in volume two? Might they switch into other bodies like that great Futurama episode? Or will we follow another pair of body-switch targets who might run into Case and/or Juni, Cloud Atlas style?
Crosswind is on hiatus, as is usually the case with Image-published comics in between arcs, but I can’t wait to pick up volume 2. I hope we see Cason-as-Juni again, and I hope we see her kick more butt with Maizy, Lilly and Tucker. Bravo, Gail Simone and Cat Staggs. And thank you.
Reading Art 