"You're here with me. You - I - !"
"- no no no. That's not how it works. I brought you with me somehow, I-"
"Holy shit. Holy shit, you can do it too."
"Jon ... is your dick glowing?"
Jon and Suzie discover each others secret in "Sex Criminals" Vol 1, Chapter 1
I've been taking another MOOC, Comic Books and Graphic Novels, from Coursera. This was a serious literature course, and I would say, the course that taught me the most about literary analysis. I can't remember everything that was in the course, it was that jam-packed, and I hope that I can access the lecture videos again in the future.
In general, I have read more graphic novels rather than comic books. Before this class, the two comic book series I had read were "Y - The Last Man" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." Mostly I had read biographical graphic novels like "Embroideries" by Marjane Satrapi, "Fun Home" by Allison Bechdel and "Stitches" by David Small, all of which I highly recommend. However, the course started with comic books, as in the floppies like we used to buy on the news rack, and so I thought I should read some of those as well. Frankly, I just didn't know what was available, and we excited to read in the discussion forum the wide variety of genres there were and spent not a little money building my library.
But, anyway, I got a recommendation for this comic book from one of the discussion forums on the course. This time around, I avoided getting involved with the discussions, because they end up taking too much time to keep up with and can be emotionally charged. There wasn't enough time in my schedule for that, but I did follow one discussion string for a while on what comic books and graphic novels everyone was reading. "Sex Criminals" was recommended and it was the 2013 Time Magazine comic of the year. So, I thought I would give it a try. Besides, I read some sexy things, so why not a comic book?
Here's the gist of the story: Suzie and Jon can stop time when they have an orgasm. Suzie's father worked for BankCorp and was shot and killed there by a man that BankCorp had screwed over. Now, BankCorp is foreclosing on Suzie's library. She and Jon decide to use their special talent to rob banks to save the library. Pretty cool, huh?
This was an interesting read. I learned a lot of sexual terminology that I didn't know before, even some sexting symbols that needed no explanation. The art is fun, especially the effects that show us when time as stopped. After the tragic beginning, learning about Suzie's father's death and her mother's descent into an alcoholic stupor, the book gets pretty funny. Suzie and Jon share their coming of age, as it were, and how they learned about sex, her from the bathroom walls, literally, and self study and him from an unending supply of pornography. We learn how they each lost their virginity with the unfortunate twist that others did not share their secret.
The story is written in a series of flashbacks to various times in each of their lives, but when Suzie flashes back she is there as her adult self narrating the story from the sidelines. The art was drawn from photos, and so has a somewhat realistic look to it. Fraction and Zdarsky had fun with the backgrounds and word play.
This was Volume One and ends on a cliff hanger. Am I going to get Volume Two? probably not. I think the most fun of most stories, especially serialized stories, is the character and situation development. Suzie and Jon's adventures are fun, and there is a plot twist at the end that I would be curious to find out more about, but I just don't have time to read every interesting thing I run across. Too many books, too little time, and if I happen to run across Volume Two somewhere in the future I would snatch it up. But until then...
There's an informative, and funny, interview of Chip Zdarsky on Comics Alliance mostly about "Sex Criminals". I looked this up to find out what the Sexual Gary references in the comic book were about. Not quite as exciting as I had hoped it would be, that is, the reference to Sexual Gary, but the interview was fun to read.
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