Image via Complex Original
Sex Criminals isn't what you think it is. Unless, that is, you think that it's a comic book about a couple whose orgasms stop time, in which case not only are you dead right, but you probably have super powers of your own.
So, yes: that's the premise. But Sex Criminals is more than that. Written by Matt Fraction—whose phenomenal Hawkeye run is already the stuff of legend, and drawn by Chip Zdarsky, whose vivid art is more pop art than porn—the series has become the unlikely poster child for a new wave of creator-owned comic books. "Chip and I didn’t think it would last more than four issues," says Fraction. "We thought Image Comics would do one, two, and three, and we would have to pay for four out of our own pocket, and we would try to get a couple thousand copies put together."
Of course Fraction was very wrong, and what started as an inside joke has become a massive hit for its creators. Now on its ninth issue, with a hardcover collection coming in January, Fraction and Zdarsky have taken an initial premise and spun it out into a whole world with fully realized characters grappling with very non-comic-book-like problems. (When's the last time a sex comedy had a sub-plot about a crippling episode of depression?) "I feel like I’m pretty good at drawing a dick joke book, but I got the first script and I realized there were actual characters," says Zdarsky. "I was like, "Oh, shit. Now I’ve gotta learn how to draw people emoting."
Read on as I chat with Zdarsky and Fraction about their creative partnership, the series' most autobiographical moments, and the universal human experience of finding porn in the woods.
Nathan Reese is News Editor at Complex. He tweets here.
How did you decide to work on this project together originally?
Fraction: I was a fan of Chip’s. He makes me laugh like very few people on Earth have ever made me laugh. I wanted to find something to do with him, so we could have the opportunity to hang out and giggle a lot.
Zdarsky: I felt the same way about Matt. I had always kind of worked on my own, and if I was going to work with any one person I knew it was going to be Matt. We shared the same kind of comedic sensibilities. It’s tricky in comics because there aren’t a lot of deliberate comedies, you know? It tends to be a kind of comic that doesn’t really get done.
Fraction: It was like, let’s just find the right idea for us. I recognize little points of story DNA from earlier ideas that could never really get going, and I can recognize some influences, but I don’t remember what the exact moment was. We put it on a cover, I sent him an email. We pitched the book and that was kind of how we started. I don’t remember what led me to write that email.
So, you just sent Chip and email and that was that.
Fraction: Yeah, I literally don’t remember where it came from. The second it was in my head was as long as it took. I think the thought occurred to me, I typed it, and I hit send. Three and a half seconds from conception to hitting send.
Zdarsky: I remember the day pretty specifically because I was on the train from Ottawa to Toronto. I worked for a newspaper and I was covering an event. I was delirious, so I think maybe I started the email chain, back and forth like, "We should do something!" Then we started bouncing ideas back and forth. Matt just wrote back that idea. And I was like, “Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Because he’s a writer. He has ideas.”[Laughs.]
Chip, when you first drew the characters, did you draw Jon so that he would resemble Matt quite a bit? Because, you know, he really does.
Zdarsky: No, it was a total accident. Matt, he first said to me it would be like a Jon Hamm-style character. Like, that level of attractive. I have a friend who works at a local comic shop, and is tall and handsome in that Jon Hamm way. He became that main character.
Fraction: You sent me pictures. If you saw the two of us, we actually look pretty different... I remember feeling great relief when I finally met him. [Laughs.]
Zdarsky: All white people look alike. [Laughs.] Yeah, it’s funny because the Suzy character kind of looks like [comic book author] Kelly [Sue DeConnick], Matt’s wife. Initially, I think I had her hair color as a red dye-job, and we both realized they were kind of looking like Matt and Kelly. I just wanted to draw Matt and his wife. Having sex. [Laughs.]
In the beginning, the book started out as more of a straight-up comedy, but at this point there are some darker, way more real issues between the characters. Was that more serious side always something you hoped to explore?
Zdarsky: There’s a thing that creators always say where they’re like, “Oh, we just did it for ourselves and then some people bought it.” This is actually quite true, we thought we were just doing this for ourselves.
Fraction: Yeah, we didn’t have like a 69-issue outline or anything like that. We didn’t have a plan. We were going to do one story—surely it wouldn’t hit. Surely this is a thing that we’re doing to make ourselves laugh. My wife very astutely pointed out that what Jon and Suzy are going through, Chip and I are also going through with the book. Like, when your first love is over and now you have to figure out how to make it a long-lasting relationship. In the writing of the first issue, when it stopped being Jon’s story and started being Suzy’s story, we were able to tap into a whole lot of emotionally truthful material. After the first issue, we realized, ‘Oh, oh, okay. It’s really a love story. It’s really a romance comic, not just a dirty sex comedy.’
Personally, I identified with a lot of character's experiences. Not the time-stopping stuff, but the discovering-sex-for-the-first-time stuff. How much of the stuff in the book came from your own experiences?
Zdarsky: The one part of it that really took off especially was the porn in the woods. Matt and I both have our experiences with finding porn in the woods, and we didn’t quite realize exactly how widespread that was.
Fraction: Yeah, it was very gratifying. People writing in with their “porn in the woods” stories was amazing. By the way, David Goyer, the screenwriter, has the best “porn in the woods” story I’ve ever heard. It is so amazing, it is like the Stand by Me of “porn in the woods” stories. It’s great. There’s a lot of us in it. I think there’s a certain universality to early fumblings with sex. There are a lot of specifics from me and Chip, and I shamelessly plundered and cannibalized one of my friend’s stories. Those first two issues are really autobiographical in a lot of ways.
Zdarsky: We both made love early on to bad music.
Fraction: Yeah, we both played terrible CDs. The first time I had an orgasm, I had no idea what had happened to me. I understood, I knew what people, I didn’t realize that sex was like... I didn’t know that it was ejaculating that felt good, so the first time that happened I had no idea what had happened to me.
Zdarsky: My first experience was a drug. When it happened to me, I was like, "This must be what cocaine is like, or heroin. What I see in movies and TV."
I wanted to ask you about a few of my favorite moments in the books so far. The first is the bathroom scene with all of the crudely drawn pictures. I think everyone whose been to middle school can relate to learning about totally absurd sex moves that make no sense in retrospect. Can you talk a little bit about those panels?
Zdarsky: Those are really well drawn.
It’s amazing. I assume you had to do a lot of research to come up with them.
Fraction: Oh yeah, well we fuck hair all the time. We’re just a couple of hair-fuckers, what can you do? There was originally another sequence there, and Chip’s very astute editorial note upon reading the first draft of the first script was, "Hey, maybe you should go back and put some jokes in. Ha ha." He pointed out this particular scene. The scene came out and I came up with the idea for that sequence, and we both did our homework. We both came up with a list of 15 things that sounded like sex moves. I mashed together my top 12. I did a rewrite of the script and the scene, and when it came down to the actual moves I was like, "Alright, these are the moves. Go nuts."
I always worry the forefathers of comics will roll in their graves when I say this, but I cut my teeth reading MAD magazine and I would give my entire career up to edit it one day. I love MAD and Harvey Kurtzman, who started it. There was this thing called “Chicken Fat” where you could go in the background and draw little jokes that had nothing to do with the story but were little throwaway gags. We kind of figured out very early on when we were doing this kind of story about sexual awakening, identity, love, romance and relationships that Chip would do “Chicken Fat” all over the background. That that’s where a lot of our jokes were gonna come from.
Another big moment in the book is when you break the fourth wall for Queen “Fat Bottomed Girls” sequence. Is it true that you were you trying to really get the rights to that?
Fraction: Yeah, we tried very hard.
Zdarsky: We had two sets of lawyers on it.
Fraction: That page was the last one to go to the printer. There are photos for the page. There’s a layer in PhotoShop that has the lyrics, and there’s a layer that has the notes. It was a matter of turning one on or turning the other off before we uploaded. We kept it down to the last minute to let the lawyers do their thing.
Zdarsky: It filled me with joy knowing the lyrics are technically there on the page. In that file, the lyrics are there—they’re just technically covered up.
Fraction: That was not a joke. That was all very legit.
Zdarsky: The last thing we heard was that issue three of the comic ended up on [Queen guitarist] Brian May’s desk.
That’s a significant achievement in itself.
Fraction: Yeah, I never thought I’d be working on a thing in a founding member of Queen having a comic on his desk. Whether he opened it or not, I have no idea.
Looking back how successfully those jokes came through and how that meta-narrative worked, would you rather have had the lyrics just on the page?
Fraction: Initially, yeah. Now it’s become part of the character in the tone of the book, but at the time we totally wanted it. If we’d have gotten the lyrics, absolutely. We would absolutely have her singing the lyrics.
Zdarsky: It was upsetting for me to send the file without the lyrics, but then once I realized that it played a lot funnier when the issue came out.
Fraction: I haven’t been able to predict anything about this book. I was convinced that it was going to kill us. It’s fun because it kind of adds to the underdog status too— the little book that could. Like, "Oh, it sucks that we couldn’t get the Queen lyrics. Oh, gee, Apple banned us. Oh gosh, the printer won’t print our book." There was a printer that won’t print our sex tips book.
For moral reasons?
Fraction: Yeah, they’re not big on hair-fucking.
Zdarsky: I don’t know. Maybe it’s a design reason. [Laughs.]
Fraction: An aesthetic reason. "This design is way too clean, turn on the Wingdings."
Zdarsky: Dress this up!
How has the book changed from what you originally envisioned?
Fraction: The conception, the thing that got us in the car... the map is never why you want to take the trip. We thought we had a map, got on the road, and it turned out we wanted to go someplace more interesting. In the original version, there were going to be lots of dick jokes and we were going to be in it like hosts. There would be cut-aways to us, where we would become the non-fiction part, with Chip and I as really shitty sex researchers.
Zdarsky: It was a joke book. I remember when it kind of changed was when we shifted over to Suzy. I was doing the drawings and Matt was coming up with ideas. Matt said to me on the phone, "I think I’m in love with her." And I went, "Yeah, me too. That’s weird." Also, physically, she’s based on a friend of mine, so we became almost protective of the characters at that point. We didn’t want to use them for titillation.
Fraction: It’s a book about sex and there’s absolutely zero prurient value. Well, I’m sure there is somebody out there masturbating to it, but there’s somebody out there also masturbating to The Hulk, so it’s not by design. It’s the unsexiest book about sex you’ll ever read.
Now that it’s evolved from the original concept, do you have an idea of where it’s going in the future or are you just kind of winging it?
Fraction: We know where it’s going. We have no idea how we’re going to get there, but we know the destination.
Zdarsky: Yeah, after the first three or four issues came out we realized we have the chance to do this until we want to know longer do it, essentially. That gave us freedom to think in terms of the bigger picture.
You don’t live in the same city. How is it working remotely?
Fraction: Part of the reason we might be successful is because we’re not together all the time so we don’t get sick of each other. It’s a rare treat when we get together. I never have enough time with Chip—I always wish we could have more time together.
Zdarsky: Right now, we’re on the first day of five days together in this weird little apartment at this college.
Fraction: At the end of this, we’ll probably be like, "Yeah, that’s enough." We use a lot of Internet and the occasional phone call.
Zdarsky: It’s been great.
Fraction: I text Chip a lot. [Laughs.]
Zdarsky: I come from a newsroom environment. My job for the last 13 or 14 years was at a newspaper. You’re constantly with people, so this was a big change for me. It was good because I generally don’t work well with people.
Fraction: Everybody but Chip sucks.
Zdarsky: Yeah. [Laughs.] It’s been good, we send each other our best material by email. We’re not just, like, sitting by each others’ desks and commenting on each others’ work all the time.
Fraction: You know, there’s a rumor that Penn and Teller aren’t really friends.
Zdarsky: Really?
Fraction: They like each other fine but they’ve been to each other’s homes like twice in 20 years. They don’t hang out with each other after work, it’s purely professional. I think that’s part of the reason why they’re still together. The act is still cool because they’re not sick of each other.
Zdarsky: What are you trying to tell me?
Fraction: I’m just saying.
It's like a bands that just sticks with it because they're still successful.
Fraction: We’re definitely in it for the money. [Laughs.]
Anything else that you want to share before I let you guys go?
Fraction: I like making it. We found another printer and it’ll still be on time. Now that we’ve been banned by Apple and a printer.
The first hardcover collection is coming out in January. Do you have anything special planned for that?
Fraction: Well, it’ll be larger.
Zdarsky: Yeah.
Fraction: It’s oversized, so you’ll have a chance to really look over Chip’s work.
Zdarsky: We’re trying to do a thing in the back, too, where certain jokes are covered over by balloons. We’ll blow them up and give a tour of the thing.
Fraction: Chip put this crazy amount of work in and he knows it’ll be covered with dialog balloons.
Zdarsky: Yeah, because I’m an idiot.
Fraction: Nobody’s contacted me from the Esteban cover band.
Zdarsky: I have a really quiet subplot about the mayor.
Fraction: Yeah, Chip is writing it. If you look in the background there’s a mayoral thing happening. It’ll be only bonus material in the hardcover. The first two stories and a bunch of new, extra content. Beautifully oversized. It’s called Big Hard Sex Criminals. It will remain embarrassing to order for everyone.
