Welcome back, dear reader. After a very long hibernation I return with an enthusiastic review of the graphic novel, Sex Criminals. It is a quick read and the art is wonderfully emotive. The premise of the series is that both characters are able to manipulate time when they climax, and once they find one another, they decide to use that time freeze period to rob banks in order to save what they love most: a space for books. This is pulp for a kind of book people, people.
It is difficult to come up with a short list of things that I love about the way that their story unfolds and the particular quirks of the protagonists. Does an appreciation for Freddie Mercury and Nabakov help in term of enjoying the story? Undoubtedly. What is interesting is that the female character's backstory involves so much pain, whereas the male protagonist's age of discovery is just as heart-tugging, but merely awkward. Adding gas to the fire is a squad of time-warping justice fighters with pedestrian day jobs and little dialogue; the leader of the squad is a mom, one of the goons is a bus driver. The schtick of this world is that under the veneer of normalcy and suburban ennui lies a supernatural world of sexual power. The two characters project different energies - hers is reactive and sardonic, his is frenetic and angry. Of the two, I find him to be more interesting for the moment, because he has more difficulties containing his anger. For him this entire enterprise is about an idea, much like the perfect murder in Crime and Punishment. It's done because it can be done and because he is very, very frustrated with society. She is not really a Sonia type, but her character does resemble an adult actress. When her top eventually blows up because of his lack of foresight, I predict that she will be the more dangerous of the two.
Enough about the sex, let's talk about the criminal aspect of this series. Do we really expect these characters to go to jail? No, and neither do they. The story universe rests on the assumption that white collar crimes conducted by naive babes in the woods are not rightfully prosecuted by the cops; hence the entrance of a vigilante justice squad with their own comic relief. I have to comment that this world is the same one portrayed in Hollywood, one where crimes are victimless (except, of course, for the senseless crimes precipitating protagonist revenge and character growth) and the protagonists are disenfranchised and white.
I suppose the only off note I can detect is that the social universe of the two characters is not racially diverse, not even a little bit. I think there is a dark-haired adult actor portrayed in one shot who might be not white? Maybe? Does this homogeneity matter? Not from a moral or artistic standpoint; you could tell the same story with sock puppets, but the uniformity of the town does inform the protagonists' cluelessness about the realities of the criminal justice system. These characters have never served time themselves and they also did not grow up in an environment of incarceration. The prisons that confined their parents were real (grief, alcoholism, work, narrow-mindedness, etc.) but the characters grew up without the fear of hard time in them. If this becomes an actual criminal procedural, I would be very surprised. The characters are not afraid of other people or the banalities of systemic evil; the story is about overcoming fear of understanding themselves by sharing their most intimate secrets.
So to wrap up, so far this is a delightful boy meets girl story in a world where no one takes the cops that seriously: the perfect environment to talk about disenfranchisement, sexual power, and anguish over books. It's a fun read.
