A few months prior to the release of Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's SEX CRIMINALS, the buzz amongst creators was huge. Ed Brubaker, an occasional collaborator with Fraction from his IMMORTAL IRON FIST days, called it the best new series in years. While I don't know if I'd go QUITE that far, this delicious, hilarious, heart-felt, smart and shameless comic is by far the best new series of 2013.
Suzie is a smart and attractive young woman with a host of problems. She lost her parents at too early of an age. She's working at a library that is soon to be torn down in the way of 21st century progress. And she can make time stop when she has an orgasm.
Wait... what?
Yes, you read that right. Suzie can stop time when she has an orgasm; something she discovered as a teenager. In this space she calls "The Quiet", time stands still around her for a few minutes. She uses this as an escape from the pain and drudgery of her ordinary life. And this also led to her believing that sex with a partner would always produce this. But after too many unsatisfying attempts, she's given up on that belief. Cue Jon, a smart and handsome young man who Suzie has more in common with than she knows. He's in a dead-end job as a lowly office peon. Both of them are similarly disaffected by life, and both of them are extremely charming. When Suzie has sex with Jon, she discovers that she's not the only one with this gift. Jon has it too, but he doesn't call it "The Quiet". He calls it... well, he calls it something that decorum prohibits me from mentioning here. They have no choice now but to fall in love with one another. They're just too damn adorable as a couple. And they use this ability to just have some general fun initially in the local sex shop, but Jon begins to formulate a plan to alleviate Suzie's frustration with the impending closing of the library where she works: Go into "The Quiet" and rob banks. But it only stands to reason that if Suzie and Jon have this ability, others have it too, and have taken it upon themselves to police others who possess this gift.
One of the most extraordinary things about this book is how it manages to be both astoundingly hilarious and surprisingly touching. Much of the humor is derived from the absurd sight gags that Zdarsky's art provides, but a lot of it also comes from the book's honesty. There's a great moment where Jon shows Suzie the picture of the porn actress he fantasized about while discovering his gift and the picture comes alive to Suzie, explaining how her career was her choice and she shouldn't be judged for it, which was a winning moment. SEX CRIMINALS doesn't try to shame anyone. Not its characters (except maybe when Jon uses his time-stoppage to defecate in the office's plants), and especially not its readers. A centerpiece moment of the comic so far is a huge song-and-dance routine where Fraction and Zdarsky were hoping to get the rights to the lyrics for Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls" but didn't, so each word bubble is blanked out with the writer's apologies for not getting the rights. It's mentioned a lot when people discuss this comic, and rightly so. It's a huge stand-out moment so far, and it works better for the lack of the lyrics. If they had gotten them, the anarchic joy of this sequence would be lessened.
Oh, before I forget, this book is IN NO WAY for young kids. While there's no "graphic" (and by "graphic", I mean this isn't a hentai book) sexual goings-on, this is definitely for older readers.
Fraction is one of only a few writers that I've loved, then was impartial about, and then loved even harder. I loved his early work for Marvel, with books like the aforementioned IMMORTAL IRON FIST, as well as the short-lived PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL and THE ORDER. But once he started getting really successful, he wrote the main books for the "event" series FEAR ITSELF, and the really interesting but perhaps too high-concept reboot of THE DEFENDERS. But as soon as he started writing HAWKEYE, he was in the zone he'd started with IRON FIST, but so much more so. And now, with SEX CRIMINALS, he's at the very top of his game. There aren't many books I buy regularly, but now two of them are written by Fraction. Zdarsky is an artist that I was wholly unfamiliar with prior to this book, but his deep defining lines and penchant for gleeful insanity make this book work at the level it does, showing that we seem to be in a new golden age of comic artists, despite the fact that most of them are either doing independent comics or major-label books with an indie feel.
The title of the comic is meant to be provocative, and it will instantly turn off people who think that this is somehow going to be a comic about sex crimes, where it's anything but. There's crime in the book, and there's sex in the book, but it doesn't get to the levels of grotesquerie produced by something like LAW AND ORDER: SVU.
If this sounds like it's not your cup of tea, stay away. But for those of you who are comfortable enough to go down *aheh* the road this book travels, you are going to be blown *ahem* away by SEX CRIMINALS.
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Reviews with images
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2014
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2016
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2015
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2014
Top reviews from other countries
Barcos de Papel
Divertida y macarra. Me ha hecho pasar una buena lectura.
Reviewed in Spain on April 9, 2023
Gerry
Great intro to the world of Sex Criminals!
Reviewed in Canada on February 22, 2016