Of course it’s a metaphor. It’s all fucking metaphor. It’s all fucking metaphor.

It hits me in the usual way, in the wake of reading and in the face of a blank computer screen. I want to communicate something, to tap a secret message out to the world, and ask if they understand me. I want to form connection through words, through enjoyment and metaphor. I want to rain down righteous text and for the masses to come, one and all, looking at their computer screens, nodding as their eyes traverse the page, whispering furtively, secretly, “Yes… yes…”

The metaphor there is: all writers want to be loved. Did you like it when I talked about Sex Criminals that one time? Did you find something in my article that you liked? Will you come back? I’m so alone. Why am I alone?

I am quite possibly revealing too much about myself right now. True story: I’m a really happy guy. I have a job that I love, have a girlfriend who is wonderful and supportive and smart and sexy, have this site, have one of the best friends a guy could hope for, money, a car, and on and on and on. But there is that voice. There’s always that voice.

Why do you bother? There’s clearly a lack of talent on display in your prose. Look: you called it prose. You’re fucking pretentious, you know that? Your mother will never be impressed by any of this. Never ever. You know that, right?

That fucking voice.

Sometimes I listen to that voice. Far too often, I listen to that voice. I know it’s destructive, but it can also be constructive, you know? If you use it properly, if you hear it and dismiss it, intending as ever to prove it wrong, so wrong, with your talent and your words and your whatever. As lacking as that might be.

A writer is always looking for connection, no matter how relatively well their life might be going. It’s that needed confirmation, that hug from a stranger that says “I heard you and I agree. I’m nodding, several miles away, across the world. Can you hear me?”

At this point, I can’t help but feel as though reading Sex Criminals is some kind of therapy for me. A new issue arrives and I peruse the pages. I sit at the computer, and stare blankly at a screen. I mine it for its’ secrets, its’ metaphors and end up pulling out large chunks of my soul, and I look at it and I go, “Huh. Whelp, I didn’t know that was there.” Then I sit and write an article. This one is about metaphor.

It’s this scene that caused it all to cascade, the epiphany occurring somewhere within the gutter between the two panels, punctuated by the mocking tone of those final words. Thanks, comic. Fuck you too.

So. The metaphor. The fucking metaphor and the fucking metaphor.

Sex Criminals is one thing pretending to be another. It’s a book about a woman and a man who use their time stopping orgasms to commit crimes. It’s madcap! A romp! And it is, but it’s also another thing completely.

Sex Criminals is a book about two people - a woman and a man and their various sexual discoveries over the years. It’s a book about two people who are alone, floating through life and through sex without connection, removed from others in the afterglow in the quiet. It’s about them finding each other and discovering sex once again with someone they connect with, lingering in the quiet and the glow together. It’s about their secrets alone, together.

As the sheen of the high concept offers chuckles and fuckles (are you writing this? No, no you are not), you are secretly reading a romance comic. It’s all a trick, you see, all sex and mirrors, misdirecting your attention while slipping you the D of pure fucking humanity. That guy just whipped Jon in the face with a dildo! Hilarious! Watching Suzie and Jon confront a trio of adversaries dressed in flowing fetish costumes has you smiling while Fraction and Zdarsky offer you the aftermath: Jon on the ground, nose bleeding from the force of a rubber dick slap, angry, seething… and then suddenly not. A joke. Ha ha, isn’t this funny? This funny, funny situation?

But it isn’t. You see it. There’s an anger within Jon, as though he and other misfits like him are owed. He hates his job, hates this bank. In “The Quiet” or “Cumworld”, or whatever you want to call it, he knocks shit over and fucks things up, and you can see how he relishes in these destructive actions. He would like nothing more than to watch all of his enemies comma the whole fucking world burn by his hand, but he would never admit it. Oh no, he’s not that guy, ha ha. Because get it? Jokes. It’s all just jokes, you know, just like this book.

Sometimes Fraction and Zdarsky strike me as dudes who just want to watch their enemies burn. Sometimes they seem like guys who are just writing a book, searching desperately for connection. Sometimes they seem like guys who want to make jokes about singing “Blue Christmas” into dicks. They are probably all three because: people. I’m not the sad guy who sits by his computer, seeking validation through site hit counts, but then again, I am absolutely that guy - and I’m also the guy who claims to be learning about himself by reading a comic that featured a dude frantically jamming as many dildos as he could into his mouth after his local porn store was re-arranged. So what does that say about me? Probably nothing. Probably everything. Whatever. Enjoy your comics kids. Get whatever freaks out when and while you can, and never, ever apologize for what you read or how you read it. Seek connection, seek seclusion, seek something, everything or nothing. Pretend like you know what you’re talking about while your words dissolve into buzzy nonsense. We are all alone together.