Sex Criminals #1

"Suzie Down in the Quiet"
written by Matt Fraction
art by Chip Zdarsky

It's a sensational premise, in more ways than one.  Suzie literally stops time when she orgasms.  One night at a "Save the Library" party she meets Jonathan, a Nabokov buff with a sense of humor about Pynchon and the same time-stopping condition.  Together they conspire to exploit their unusual talent to (according to the pre-release descriptions) rob banks.  Thus, "sex criminals."

It's risky.  Two men creating a story about sex with a female protagonist in a medium that isn't always equitable and honest about female sexuality.  But, damn if Fraction hasn't written one of the most authentic tales of sexual awakening that I've yet read in this or any medium.  In the wake of her father's murder—a random bank employee shot down by a drug-fueled and desperate investor after a stock market crash—Suzie struggles to relate to her mother, who's trying her best to keep herself together but is slowly descending into alcoholism, but discovers by accident, as it happens, masturbation.  She is both delighted by the pleasure and terrified by "that thing that happens after you touch yourself, where everything bleeds colors and all you can hear is that low rumbling sound and everybody's frozen" (Sex Criminals #1: 16).  And she seeks explanations from the usual suspects:  books; the "dirty girls" at school, one of whom gives her a hilariously graphic repertoire of whimsical sex moves (and obviously becomes her best friend...eventually); her gynecologist, a middle-aged man who reinforces an unimaginative and exclusively marital perspective on sex; and finally her mother, who harshly quips about "raising a whore" (21).  Information sources fail, so Suzie begins her own "research".

If young Suzie is bold, sad and a little frustrated—she's both angry and sympathetic with her mother, and, foreshadowing her future criminal career, she exploits her recently deceased father to rake in the Hallowe'en candy that year—adult Suzie is infectiously likeable.  She's borderline neurotic about saving books, turning her apartment into a temporary emergency book depository.  She's articulate and funny, self-deprecating and self-assured.  Like her adolescent alter ego, she still likes to get off in the bath.  So when her easy flirtation with Jonathan at her party turns into a spontaneous sleep-over, she's earned the intimacy.  Even better, when she unexpectedly finds herself, for the first time, not alone after sex, that intimacy feels even more earned.  Suzie and Jon's criminal career may only be hinted at here, but their affair—not love, exactly, but a mutual companionship neither has yet been able to enjoy—is already winning.