A critical evaluation of Big Hard Sex Criminals Volume 1 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky.
I don’t know whether Sex Criminals is an imaginative idea or a sign that we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Get this – the whole premise is that these two kids (and I say “kids†to be cute) find each other and discover that they can stop time somehow when they achieve orgasm. And what do they do with this power? They decide to rob a bank to help Suzie (the female part of this duo) keep her library open. Got it? Good. Does that sound genius or pathetic to you? Yeah, I don’t know either.
What I do know is that whatever story Matt Fraction is going for here, he managed to write some of the most boring characters ever to tell it. Protagonists Suzie and her beau Jon have incredibly uninteresting backgrounds and a motivation that is spotty at best. Sure, they are presented as having “fucked up†childhoods, but it’s really just standard boo-hoo fare. And it’s not like we feel like we want to root for them as a couple either because they simply don’t have chemistry, no matter how often they have sex or how often Suzie says, “This fucking guy!†whenever Jon does something “cute.†What kind of people are Suzie and Jon? Well, they seem like the kind of people who won’t stop quoting Monty Python. Ugh…
At least this book gets it right as far as deluxe editions go. It’s a beautiful hardcover, wonderfully designed and over-sized, and filled with stuff that people who enjoy bonus features are actually looking for, like pencil and panel breakdown, a gallery of covers used for various editions of the issues, and a section that goes over all the art and joke references that were hidden in the book. So as far as that’s concerned, the deluxe edition does its part. The rest, however, is debatable.
Artist:
https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/big-hard-sex-criminals-hc
Book:
Big Hard Sex Criminals Volume 1 is out now. Buy it here on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Big-Hard-Criminals-Matt-Fraction/dp/1632152436/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458269453&sr=1-1&keywords=big+hard+sex+criminals
