Avengers vs X-Men

by Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman, Jeph Loeb, John Romita Jr, Olivier Coipel, Adam Kubert, John Dell (i), Mark Morales (i) Chris Eliopoulos (l)
collects Avengers vs X-Men #1-12

AvX is one of the big Marvel events I missed, one of several I’m reading through to fill in some gaps. I’m glad I read it purely as a Marvel fan, and that’s about it.

The story is easy enough to pick up – bonus points if you’ve already read Dark Phoenix Saga, House of M, and Messiah Complex (I haven’t read the last one). In a nutshell, the Phoenix is returning to Earth. Wanda in House of M made mutants an endangered species, and Scott Summers (Cyclops) believes that if Phoenix inhabits Hope, the first mutant born since Wanda’s declaration and a kind of messiah, the Phoenix will restore homo superior. But Cap and the Avengers see the Phoenix as a threat – and the confrontation begins.

AvX features a powerhouse of Marvel’s top writers in 2012, but because they divided writing duties by issue, it was disjointed and the changes in tone didn’t make a cohesive story. And while it might not surprise us that they’re all men, this is absolutely a story about men (Steve and the descent of Scott, especially), masquerading as a story about Hope and Wanda.

Hope might be at the center of the story, but it isn’t her story – not even close. It’s clear just from the fact that she’s often called “the girl” (even though her age fluctuates about 10 years or so), and the story is barely concerned with her growth as a character. Neither Hope, Wanda nor Emma Frost have any meaningful story arc that shows any kind of growth or change at the end. Emma remains an evil seductress, Hope is the rebellious teen with untapped power, and Wanda’s role in mutants’ disappearance gives her the biggest case for a redemption arc. But they drift in and out of the issues – Wanda really only appears halfway through after issue #0 – and are never given the importance in the story they deserve, especially considering both the beginning that centers Wanda’s regret and grief, and her and Hope’s role in the ending. Instead, pages are dedicated to Scott’s slow corruption and those who try to save him. And it’s telling that Steve, Scott and Namor can spend whole issues punching out their problems, but as soon as Wanda and Hope go at it, Steve (and the writers) shut them down.

Let me be clear: having male writers doesn’t automatically mean their stories will only center male characters. Chris Claremont is a perfect counterexample with his stories about Kitty and the first Dark Phoenix, Jean. It’s just far more likely that it will happen, along with the inevitable argument that certain characters are more popular with (and are the same as) certain demographics who will buy comics.

And for twelve issues, the other character work was pretty dismal. Is Scott actually evil or did he just fall victim to the Dark Phoenix? When Steve says he realizes he should have done more for mutants (shocker), showing us when and how he realized that might give us some sense of growth. Why is barely any attention paid to Wolverine and Beast, as they navigate being both Avengers and X-Men? And while it’s great to see Iron Fist featured in this story, his role is quickly diminished and never develops any kind of mentoring relationship with Hope. Most of the superheroes pop up for an issue or two and then completely disappear. There’s a MAJOR character death that I won’t spoil but it felt entirely thrown in.

I understand that these massive events are tied into the rest of Marvel’s ongoing titles, which provide additional stories and background. But a main event should also be a standalone story, especially if you’re recruiting the top-dollar writers for it. A tighter focus on Hope and Wanda, and emotional anchors in characters like Wolverine and Iron Fist, would have made AvX far more compelling and would have encouraged me to read the surrounding material, whereas I couldn’t wait to be done with these twelve issues.

The art was also a mixed bag. I’m not a fan of Romita Jr’s art and so the book really got off on the wrong foot for me. Not to be cruel, but his art was simplistic, lacked drama, had lots of unfinished panels, and Magneto had a squished face and who does that to Magneto? Later issues do become progressively better, first (Coipel and Morales) and then Adam Kubert who was the best. As far as I could tell, the only woman with a consistent presence on the creative team was Laura Miller on colors.

Basically, I would recommend only for fans of Scott Summers (in which case, you have other things to sort out), and maybe Namor (his extremely low rise pants were probably the best part of the whole thing), or, if you’re like me and want to cover the bigger Marvel events as a fan. Otherwise, read the cliffnotes and happily skip it.

Sex Criminals: Five Fingered Discount

by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
collects Sex Criminals #21-25
volume reviews fourgy | five

At this point in the relationship, we know what to expect from Sex Criminals – lots of sex and drawings of penises, but also, some vaguely meaningful commentary on relationships and intimacy.  And even when we don’t get either of those things, we’re getting hilarious visual gags and puns, meta rants between the creators, and the like.

Unfortunately this latest – and penultimate – arc of Sex Criminals didn’t deliver on any of those things. It was a confusing, rambling set of issues where nothing really happens and the humor has almost completely evaporated.

Suzie and Jon broke up, and six months later they’ve both moved on with other partners, neither of whom seem that ecstatic about. Jon is in an open relationship with a woman who seems much more interested in banging women than being with him – oh, and Jon is bisexual too? Did I completely miss that? – and he seems to have sunk even further into his mental health issues. He works full time at Cumworld which surely isn’t helping either.

Suzie, on the other hand, is in a relationship with an older, pretentious gallery owner whose art installations are extremely sexual (and probably the funniest things in the book), but she has a less than satisfying sex life with him. She’s moved back in with her mother, who apparently has become some sort of sex therapist for her female friends, and hand mirrors are involved, and it’s just weird – how Suzie stays living at home is beyond me.

PS – This was a nice scene but I’m not exactly sure how her boyfriend’s art gallery is also where Van Gogh’s Starry Night also exists. Somehow, bug sex installation and most famous painting behind Mona Lisa don’t seem to belong in the same place. Actually, never mind. This is Sex Criminals. That absolutely makes sense.

While these two are bumbling through their post-breakup sadness there are a bunch of other meandering storylines that don’t seem to go anywhere. Here are a few:

• Jon’s therapist is cheating on Ana with Myrtle, who decides to switch sides when Badal threatens to expose her affair to her husband
• Jon goes into a sex club, and the red/black color scheme look a lot like his dream-obsession with Myrtle but it doesn’t explain or resolve anything
• Badal’s weird way to use his own powers
• Alix jumps in front of a bus presumably to test the limit of her own powers
• Everyone goes rollerblading?
• Dewey begins a relationship with a bus driver, who looks exactly like him (…why? Also I’ve forgotten who Dewey is about four times)
• Suzie somehow reunites with her dead father over his computer, and then somehow also gets ahold of financial records to figure out Badal’s insider trading, with a Microsoft Word Clippy-esque helper that looks like…let’s say take the first three letters of Clippy and you figure it out.

Some of these things might seem irreverent enough to be funny, but none of them really were, nor did they contribute to a cohesive story. (We also saw a WHOLE THING about Rach and her boyfriend in the last arc and we saw her in one panel. Not that I cared much about her, but still, what gives?) Zdarsky’s art is still great, and there are some wordless pages where Zdarsky handles the narration wonderfully. But the visual humor was really missing here – aside from the art installations and Suzie’s mom’s hand gestures at the dinner table.

And of course, we knew that Jon and Suzie would eventually get back together, but how they did really sucks. C’mon, Suzie! Jon didn’t have any goals for the relationship and he didn’t let you in! You tried, and you brought markers, dammit! I know you missed him – everyone misses their partner after a breakup if they weren’t completely nuts or abusive – and your next boyfriend was an asshole, but what, you just forgive him and get back together?

On one hand, Fraction could make it clear later that Suzie is just bouncing back into a comfortable relationship with Jon, along with a healthy scoop of self-denial about why they broke up in the first place (as the back cover says, “because reasons”). It definitely happens. But I’m not sure what that will look like seeing as we’re heading into the final arc of Sex Criminals. 

Hopefully in the series finale we’ll see what’s behind Jon’s issues, and maybe he and Suzie can get back together – if he’s willing to get over himself a little bit. I suppose they’ll take down Badal too, but the series has always been about Jon and Suzie. I hope it ends more like it started and less like this volume.

Sex Criminals: Fourgy

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.

Sex Criminals 4

creators: Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky
release date: January 2014
publisher: Image Comics

The fourth issue of Sex Criminals gives us a peak into our villains, who seem like, forgive me, some sort of “Sex Police,” and we find new tidbits of interesting backstory for our heroes, Jon and Suzie–and yet while this issue feels full, we still seem to be inching forward towards the story at the slowest pace possible.

Fraction’s witty humor and Zdarsky’s often hilarious yet poignant way of bringing those words to life are still in full force here, even though this clearly feels like a bridge issue. We are further introduced to the “villains” who catch Jon and Suzie at the bank and attempt to apprehend them. But while we are treated to some sort of space-floating headquarters with an arsenal of sex police personnel–like some Justice League Unlimited episode gone way awry–we’re not sure how hilariously accurate it all is, since we remain in Suzie’s hypothesizing during this crucial moments. While we see the head leader (whom Suzie imagines as a soccer mom with an alter ego) somewhat dubiously alerted to Suzie and Jon’s shenanigans at Cum World, and then their plans to rob the bank, her and her team’s motives still remain a mystery. I assume a fuller explanation will be revealed in the next issue, which allows for both sillier moments in this installment, but also that frustrating feeling of plodding along as slowly as possible.

And in this issue Jon asks Suzie an interesting question: “have you ever used your ‘power’ to get what you want?”, or, in other words, has she ever taken advantage of the fact that she can stop time. While we see lots of moments where she’s done exactly that, the one Fraction & Zdarsky choose to highlight expands on Suzie’s relationship with her best friend Rachel – at once amusing and also sheds light on the dark side of sex. It also smartly ties into how Rachel doesn’t really repay Suzie at the end, either.

Zdarsky has a charming but totally authentic way of inserting “present Suzie” into the story as a kind of omniscient first-person narrator. She often wears amusing clothing–such as a professor outfit during the flashback to Rachel and Suzie in college–and, in the same way that Suzie and Jon’s childhoods speak of a nostalgic, earlier time, also feels similarly anachronistic.

A good issue but it still felt like a filler; it its a clear hint to one who prefers to buy in trade paperback, rather than in single issues.

Sex Criminals #3

creators: Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky
release date: November 2013
publisher: Image Comics

So, I’m embarrassed it took me this long. Thank goodness it’s in its third printing and I’m not the only one loving this series.

After Jon and Suzie’s “origin stories,” for lack of better term, they are fully sharing this third issue, but in all honesty, it doesn’t really get us anywhere. We see how Jon lost his virginity–funny, but not necessarily important;  Suzie does a musical number–even funnier, since the creators apparently tried and failed to acquire song lyrics, but also, not crucial to the story line; and we see how the scheme to steal money from the bank in order to save the library is born. More important, but we all probably figured it out by now. In short, this issue brings us fully into the present, tying up all those story-within-a-story elements, but not until the final pages.

While the “Sex Police” finally meet up with Suzie and Jon–and this issue probably holds the record number of sex toys/antagonist being hit in the head with said sex toys–I am officially ready for this story to get started. Fraction’s humor and Zdarsky’s art work phenomenally together, and I appreciate a series that is happy to take its time and tell a story–but three issues later, I’m ready to add this to my pull list and start moving forward with it.

Here’s hoping it’s not another two months before I read the next issue.