Personal Experimentation: Sex Criminals #1 Review

Sex Criminals, the new limited series by writer Matt Fraction and artist Chip Zdarsky, is a book that asks a question about a circumstance that has never even occurred to me: what would happen if something happened to you after sex other than apologies, excuses and shame? You know: that terrible, terrible shame?

Okay, let me try this again. Sex Criminals is a comic book about two people with special superpowers that only manifest when they give each other orgasms. Hey, maybe I’m a superhero! I’m sure I’ll find out just as soon as I manage to give someone an orgasm! That must be why the ladies call me The Flash! I’m kidding, I’m kidding; they don’t think I’m a superhero. They think I’m a cop. That’s probably why they scream, “Help, police!” No? Okay.

Look, this is gonna be a weird book to review for me, because it’s a weird fucking book, okay? It’s a story about a little girl who learns that she comes unstuck in time when she comes, who tries to figure out if that’s normal through the minefield of junior high school, while dealing with her father’s murder and her mother’s alcoholism, combined with dirty jokes, dicks that glow in the dark, a list of sexual positions that look like a gymnastic routine if the Olympics Commissioner was Larry Flynt, and an armed bank robbery.

This book is all over the map. There is no “elevator pitch” for this comic, or at least not one that you could say on an elevator without being taken into custody within ten seconds of the doors opening. It’s a book with a lot of boning and jacking off, but one that isn’t about boning and jacking off. Instead, it’s about someone who grew up thinking everything they felt about sex was weird, dirty and odd, and who as an adult thinks that no one will ever really be compatible with her.

Which means that, for a comic book that includes glowing dicks and a sexual position known as “The Dutch Microwave,” it’s surprisingly relatable. Because my dick glows in the dark. Hey-yo!

Yeah, okay, I’ll stop. For now.

Suzanne was in junior high school when her dad was murdered in a bank, her mom became a wet brain alcoholic, and she discovered that, whenever she has an orgasm, time and space stop for a while, and not in that sappy Everything-I-Know-About-Sex-I-Learned-From-Twilight-and-shrieking-at-One-Direction kinda way. Suzanne, being in junior high school, knows exactly fuck-all about whether what she is experiencing is normal, and being that this was 1997 and the Internet was not yet everywhere, goes to the normal places pre-Millennials went to learn about sex: her friends, teachers, doctors, and mom, and learned the same things the rest of us pre-Millennials learned via those sources: exactly fuck-all. As she grows older, she uses the time-stopping thing as a personal escape, until she meets Jon, who has the same talent she does, and, being consenting adults, they do what all compatible adults do: crimes. Serious, serious crimes.

Okay, let’s start with the best, simplest entry point to the book for anyone who’s nervous about buying a comic that at least sounds like it spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on a young woman’s sexual awakening: there are some pretty decent dirty jokes in this book. There’s an entire two pages in the middle of the book of a junior high kid’s idea of “normal” sexual positions – positions like “The Three-Second Rule Taco,” “The Fleshy Lightswitch,” and “E. T. The Sex Move,” with accompanying stick figure diagrams – that is pretty damn entertaining. And every time Suzanne tries to talk to anyone about what’s happening to her is pretty funny in a cringe humor kinda way. And make sure to pay attention to just about every sign and poster on every wall for a few additional laughs; you haven’t seen Kermit The Frog until you have seen him exhorting children about the orgiastic thrills of reading.

And Suzanne’s attempts to find answers about sex will be relatable to anyone who grew up in the days before you could pretty much slap your hand on a keyboard three times and get free full-color video clips of things like The Fleshy Lightswitch. Fraction just nails what it was like to be a kid then; no one told you a damn thing about sex in Health class (except for the symptoms of a variety of cock-rotting diseases tailor-made to make you want to keep it in your pants), your friends didn’t know any more than you did (but that didn’t stop them from telling you anyway), and if you went by the movies, having sex meant leverage-defying hand holding with a Tangerine Dream soundtrack and ended with the girl giving birth to the hope of humanity after Skynet takes over. And Fraction delivers that feeling with a good amount of humor, which turns this story about a girl who stops time with orgasms – a character I, as a 42-year-old guy should have no particular empathy for – surprisingly relatable… although Fraction must have forgotten to show the panel where one learns to never tell her your real name. Pow!

And all of this stuff happens before we get the tease that this weird coming-of-age story is about to morph into a crime story. After all: any comic book story that features superpowers of any kind will, by nature, lead to either the prevention or the commission of crimes. And frankly, I am interested in reading a story about the commission of crimes that occur immediately after masturbation. You know, as opposed to the crimes I have committed during the commission of masturbation. Hello? Is this thing on?

I’ve not previously seen Zdarsky’s art, but it’s a style I like for this book. His stuff has a simple, medium, almost cartoony line, which adds a certain sweetness to visuals that, for a large percentage of them, are comprised of a teenager cranking off. Wait, that sounded weird – what I meant to say was that the cartoony look keeps things looking light, and therefore stops it from being, well, creepy. And further, when he goes into full-on cartoons (see again the two-page spread of “Auto-Erotic Twerging,” and all the wall posters), it elevates the humor to keep things from getting maudlin. Now, with that said: Zdarsky uses Suzanne’s time-topping powers as an excuse to give us multiple panels of a young man making a derpy gack face that will make you want to put a bag over your head the next time you have sex just in case you unknowingly make the same one.

I was prepared for quite a bit when I picked up Sex Criminals – I am, after all, the guy who reviewed Black Kiss 2. But I wasn’t expecting a pretty human and relatable story about someone who thinks their feeling about sex is beyond the pale and unlike everyone else’s. Hell, doesn’t everyone? And despite the explicit nature of the subject matter and the adult nature of the story, there is a real human element here.

I know this because that two-page spread does not contain the Tuskaloosa Armpit Gank. Which is an acquired taste that no human would admit to enjoying, and when drawn with stick figures, resumbles Cthuhlu.