Sex Criminals. Volume 1, One Weird Trick

Locations
Call Number: Adult Graphic Novel / Sex Criminals, Adult Book / Comics & Graphic Novels / Science Fiction / Sex Criminals 1
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Adult Graphic Novel / Sex Criminals	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Comics & Graphic Novels / Science Fiction / Sex Criminals 1	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"Contains material originally published as Sex Criminals #1-5."
"Suzie's just a regular gal with an irregular gift: when she has sex, she stops time. One day she meets Jon and it turns out he has the same ability. And sooner or later they get around to using their gifts to do what we'd ALL do: rob a couple banks. A bawdy and brazen sex comedy for comics begins here!"--Publisher's web site.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Awesome. Insightful and funny. submitted by eknapp on October 7, 2014, 10:00am Ye gods this was excellent. Or at least the first half was. The second half was merely very good.

A girl discovers that she freezes time briefly whenever she orgasms. (Ha, how do you measure brevity when time has stopped? MIND BLOWN) Later as a young woman she meets a man who can do the same thing. They compare notes and histories and eventually join forces, using their odd ability to rob banks so that they can save her library...until the SEX POLICE track them down. [Sinister piano chord]

The intro was an amazing depiction of the scary, lonely hell that is adolescence. This girl does not know what is happening to her and her attempts to understand are stymied. Adults pollute answers with judgment, squeamishness, more judgment, incomplete information, bad information. Her mother calls her a whore just for asking about sex. Other kids give her answers for which she is not ready. There's so much TRUTH in this part of the story. It's rare that I find myself empathizing with, cheering on, feeling for a character to this extent.

The "Criminals" chapters are more straightforward...as straightforward as a time-freezing-orgasmic-bank-robbers plot can be anyway. They have sex in bank bathrooms. They rob said banks. The Sex Police hunt them. They run. It lacks the wonderful insight and commentary of the earlier stuff but it's well-constructed and well-drawn enough to be worthwhile on its own. We're also given the best graphic novel villain name of all time: Kegelface.

And I LOVE that the authors acknowledge some of the logical inconsistencies inherent in freezing time. Why can they smell? Aren't the molecules that they're sensing frozen in place? Why do some machines work and others don't? That stuff drives my inner science pedant nuts.

Complaint: The protagonist's time-stopping boyfriend takes the story a little too deep into Beavis-and-Butthead territory for my taste. While she refers to the sparkly timefreeze period as The Quiet, he calls it Cumworld. Once a day he rubs one out in the bathroom then craps in his boss's potted plant. Which, yeah, kind of funny but....ew. Coulda done without.

Brimpers Of The World, Unite submitted by Fevvers - STAR473 on July 2, 2015, 5:16am It's difficult to say anything about Sex Criminals that hasn't been said many times already. The writing is excellent, contrasting characters and examining gender roles and offering concise critiques of societial norms. The art is a good match, and there are a ton of hilarious (usually very bawdy) details; these bits sometimes match right up with what's happening narratively or in dialogue, or they serve to be some background levity at otherwise potentially uncomfortable moments.

The creators clearly had a lot of fun with these issues (the supplemental material at the back of this Volume 1 collection leaves no doubts on that score), but they also treated undeniably adult topics with honesty, respect, and creativity.