This issue has a little bit more of everything: story, character development, nudity, crude humor, crime…Pretty much anything you could possibly want from a comic called “Sex Criminals.”
Jon, the male character in our dynamic duo, gets the spotlight this time around. We learn about his past through flashbacks which are themselves part of further flashbacks of when Jon first told Suzie about his childhood. It’s not as confusing as it sounds when you’re reading, but this comic has a funny way of playing with time, and I’m not convinced that it has a handle on how to do it very well yet. Their methods are occasionally jarring. For example, in the first issue, our main character Suzie told her life story by guiding us through her past. Present day Suzie was always there somewhere to let us know that we were in her memory, so we could jump around in time pretty easily. But this time…well, present day Suzie still pops up in flashbacks once or twice. Which is very strange, because it serves no practical purpose. It’s as if the comic is reminding us that it has a gimmick it still wants to play with. The thing is though, having present day Suzie pop into a flashback that her past self is a part of while Jon is telling her about his childhood through another flashback, all of which is told through an all-encompassing flashback as they try to escape the site of their latest crime together just adds to the complexity in a bad way. It seems like the creators of the comic didn’t want us to forget we were actually reading Suzie’s story, because she’s the main character. I can’t help but think it might have served the comic better if they’d done a repeat of the way they did their first issue, and switched out Suzie for Jon. And speaking of the character’s present situation, I don’t think switching back to it throughout the series is a great tactic. It slows everything down, and I don’t know enough about what’s going on to care yet. What I do care about now are the characters, and I would have been perfectly fine waiting for them to reach their apparent crime spree through the natural course of the story.
So, because of the way the story’s told in this issue, it seems a little bogged down. The good news is, it’s a great story. I was actually worried that this series would alienate its male audience – nudity and a sex can only hold my attention for so long without substance – but handing the keys over to Jon, or at least letting him move the steering wheel a bit, was a great call. In a weird way, I really relate to him. He’s cool, but in a decidedly geeky kind of way. Seeing how he dealt with the special ability both he and Suzie possess was maybe a little too stereotypical, but it made me laugh a lot more than I did in the first issue.
The art is just as good, if not slightly better, than last time. I’m getting used to the style, and I think it serves the story well. The layout has even been improved, so really all of my complaints from last time have been addressed. The only thing that concerns me for the future of “Sex Criminals” is a matter of mythology. Where did this power come from? What is its real purpose? How many people have it? These are all questions that, based on the ending of this issue, the comic plans to address. All of the possibilities I can think of give too much gravitas to a story that so far, has been set in a fairly realistic world that’s just silly enough to be unique. That’s a great quality to have, and it would be a shame to see it go full on nuts with the addition of a secret genetic underground facility or something. But then again, it’s a comic book, and stranger things have happened.
“Sex Criminals” is published by Image Comics with a story by Matt Fraction and art by Chip Zdarsky. You can pick up Issue 2 for $3.50 on October 23rd.