Comic review: Sex Criminals #1 – Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky

Cover for the issue, by Chip Zdarsky.

This could’ve been bad. Really, really bad. In the hands of Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky, Sex Criminals ends up as much more than a cheap joke: it’s one of the best debuts of the year.

The thing that’ll strike you very quickly about Sex Criminals #1 is that this sucker is dense. That’s not a surprise if you’ve read Fraction’s other creator owned work. Casanova is layered with cultural reference and spacetime-hopping intrigue; Satellite Sam is a period-piece heavily dependent on its setting in early live television — there’s a lot in those books to chew through. Sex Criminals almost blends those styles of density. We learn very quickly that this isn’t your typical world, but Zdarsky’s visuals acclimate you to this quickly. There’s more character development on display in this issue than you might’ve believed possible in a first issue or a single comic, and it wouldn’t quite be a Fraction book without some brainy literary references and a genuine lack of regard for typical storytelling conventions. We jump around time, space, and location with a flourish. If you read monthly comics and find yourself annoyed by the money you’re spending on them and the time you’re not spending with them, Sex Criminals is the cure for that particular fever.

There’s another layer of density: Chip Zdarsky’s background gags. There are roughly eight billion of them. You’ll be finding new ones on your third read. Enough good can’t be said about Zdarsky, who was an inspired, perfect collaborator — his style is reminscent of Alex Robinson’s flair for interesting character designs, but strips down Robinson’s level of detail to something like what Jeff Smith does. You can draw parallels for days, but it’s all his. Sex Criminals doesn’t look like a single other book on the market. There will be rip-offs. They will be regrettable.

By the end of this, you’ll love Suzie and Jon, and you’ll want to know more about the world they live in — maybe you’ll even feel like you’ve been there forever. You’ll be amazed by the fact that there aren’t more comics like this, and glad that this is the one that’ll be telling everyone to up their games. This story drifts between poignant and irreverent, absurd and genius, ridiculously funny and genuinely heartfelt. The word that comes to mind, all the way through this book, from tone, to characters, to setting, is ‘inimitable.’