“I’m learning that I just don’t dig Matt Fraction’s work the way other people do. Hawkeye didn’t hit home for me, and Sex Criminals isn’t high on my list either.
I give it points. It’s almost entirely dialogue-based. There’s not a lot of action, so the dialogue has to be pretty snappy to carry the story. The art is good. The things that are supposed to be seedy are definitely seedy.
Finally, it’s fairly sex positive, which is a good thing. I mean, a lot of comics don’t really deal with sex in a direct way, and I have to say that if I read this as a lad, it might have made me feel less weird about shit. Not about “shit” shit, but stuff. I don’t know that a collection of pictures and words will change my opinions on shit, which consist mostly of, “None for me, thanks.”
So why didn’t I love it?
The first volume, for me, was a lot of what we call “infill.” We get the in media res thing, and it takes almost the entire volume to catch us up to where the story started.
It’s the problem I have with a lot of comics and movies based on comics.
When I say to you, “This book is about people who can freeze time when they orgasm. There’s a woman who narrates the story and thought she was the only one who could do it, then she meets a man who does the same thing” is any more explanation required? I mean, yes, you’ll have questions about the specifics, the “ins & outs” if I may be gross about it, but overall, the broad strokes are pretty tidy.
So the frustration I have, as a reader, is knowing this as the premise and then spending a lot of time “learning” about the power along with the characters. And you kind of get that same origin twice as both the male and female protagonists explain how they came to understand their powers.
I guess what I’m saying, I hate origins. I just can’t stand them anymore. And this book had two, and two origins that felt pretty similar to me, and I understood those origins from a very short blurb.
My hope is that the next volume really digs into the story. That stuff happens in real time as opposed to backstory.
But maybe this is all just wrapped up by a communication problem between myself and Matt Fraction. I never totally understood what everyone was saying about his Hawkeye. His Punisher War Journal was pretty not good. Although I really liked his Iron Fist and FF. I know you’re all really wondering about the fate of our relationship, me and Mr. Fraction. We’ll just have to see.”