The greatest love story ever told is jumping from page to screen – yes, I am talking about Sex Criminals! No, this is not a story about sex crimes1, but it is a story about committing crimes in a paranormal post-coital bliss. A boisterously ribald comedy that tells the story of two outsiders, so alone in the world that they don’t even get to spend sex with the person they’re copulating with, finally cumming… er… well, yes, actually, cumming together. Suzie and Jon discover that when they bang together, they get to stay together – unlike any other partner either has ever had. See, when they fuck, time stops. Literally.
This book is fucking filthy. It revels in sex puns, penis art, and wild sexual experiences. But it has such a big heart that it quickly became my favorite comic. See, I was going to throw together a piece on the new Sex Criminals TV show, being headed up by my favorite hot nerds, Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon, but to do that, I thought, “I should flip through the comic real quick to get the feel of it.” Five hours and a missed deadline later, I had read the entire series again and was quietly crying in bed (yes, I was crying over the comic that introduced the world to “brimping”2). The best way to experience it is issue by issue, impatiently waiting for the next to drop while laughing so hard you shake the furniture as you read the Q&As and extras at the back of each issue.
The second-best way to read it is the single-volume Complete Edition.
The comic is hilarious and filthy, yes, but it takes serious issues head-on and does a phenomenal job. Through the story, we see the characters deal with mental health, childhood trauma, the ebbs and flows of relationships, different sexual identities, and the difficulties in growing up. You’re rooting for Jon Johnson and Suzie Dickson from the moment they meet, but the high intensity of fucking and robbing banks isn’t the stuff that long-lasting relationships are made of. And when they discover that they aren’t actually the only two people in the world who can literally stop time with their orgasms, it starts to feel like maybe they aren’t soul mates who are going to make it through anything and everything. And the sex cops (where there are sex criminals, there must also be sex cops) are going to put them through absolutely fucking everything.
I won’t spoil any of it for you, because you owe it to yourself to discover what it feels like to have your heart warmed on a page featuring more dildos than you can count. You deserve to see as much kink and sexual orientation representation as can be packed into a single comic series,3 packed in and handled well. You deserve the issue where Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarksy write themselves into the comic in a meta-commentary about the confrontation between Suzie and the famed sex worker she’s feeling insecure around.
And you deserve to read the greatest love story ever told. I fell in love with Jon and Suzie immediately. Neither one of them is a perfect person; in fact, the comic seems to suggest that the people blessed (or cursed, depending on your view) with this sexual ability only cum upon it when they’re running from something else as teens. Unresolved trauma might give you cool fuck-powers, but it doesn’t really create the most well-adjusted adults. Especially if those adults have never gotten to experience sexual intimacy with another person without being jolted into complete isolation. The comic deals with heroism and villainy in a sophisticated way. Even our protagonists have to wrestle with whether what they’re doing is right or wrong while simultaneously trying to figure out if it even matters if you’re doing something for the “right” reasons.
In the end, it touches you (in an emotional way, not a sexy way … although….), and it makes you really think about what it means to love – platonically, romantically, and familially. The last page4 is a masterpiece of emotion and realistic but incredibly moving closure. And that’s the story of how the boisterously filthy humor comic pushed me into full tears in the middle of the night.
The TV show is shaping up nicely. Kumail and Emily know a thing or two about weird love stories,5 the casting of John Reynolds as Jon Johnson is absolutely inspired, and it’s on Amazon Prime, so just maybe they’ll get to film it in a way that celebrates the joyous debauchery of the comic instead of sanitizing a story that was always meant to juxtapose absolute filth with the purest heart you’ve ever experienced in a work of fiction.
- Get your head out of the gutter and put it over here, in this gutter that’s more fun. ↩︎
- I wanted to link to the diagram from the comic, crudely drawn on a bathroom stall wall, but apparently it’s difficult to find uncensored. You’ll have to read the comic if you want to know what it is. ↩︎
- This is a story about people who activate special powers with their orgasms – featuring an ace character who figured out how to do the same without all the sex and cum. ↩︎
- I mean the issue 31 ending. The bonus issue no. 69 is fine. Unnecessary, but fine. It has some stellar jokes and is a lot of fun, and ultimately, it brings everyone back where they belong. ↩︎
- They lived one! Check out The Big Sick for a fictionalized retelling of how they met. ↩︎
