Sex Criminals

A girl discovers that she freezes time briefly whenever she orgasms. 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.

The intro was an amazing depiction of the scary, lonely hell that is adolescence. This girl does not know what the fuck 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.

Matt Fraction's writing is both frank and clever, and Chip Zdarsky's art is simply gorgeous, deliberately "cartoony" at some points and wildly psychedelic at others. I love that the author 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?