Sex Criminals: A Narrative Analysis

The particular page I would like to focus on for my close reading is page 21 in Volume 8 (Appendix I) and is a stellar example of the way that specific tools of narration can be used for a larger effect within comics in way that it cannot be utilized within the confines of a traditional print novel by showing us the thoughts of several characters at once. It also supports the idea, not talked about above but soon to be talked about, of Suzie as an “unreliable narrator” by demonstrating that there are other characters, with other lives, who have their own stories and thoughts to contribute that we may never be privy to within this particular story. This scene is also a perfect example of how one uses not only visual cues, but textual ones as

Let us focus on that last part: vouch for the authenticity of the narrative. Can we necessarily trust our narrator in such a story like Sex Criminals? Monika Fludernik proposed a “tripartite model of unreliability” based on the ideas that a narrator can be unreliable based on “factual inaccuracy”, “lack of objectivity” and a personal “ideological unreliability” (Olson, 2003). In the page in question, Vol. 8 Pg. 21, we can see evidence or proof for all three of these particularities of the unreliable narrator within Suzie. The pages preceding establish which character is which color which leads into our understanding of who is talking when we finally reach Pg. 21. This proves that there are other characters with other stories, or another side to a particular story that Suzie may have told us before. This proves her as factual inaccurate because she is not omnipotent, she does not know everything and therefore her retelling of stories and memories are not full and complete representations of those moments due to the fact that she does not “have access to accurate information” (Olson, 2003). Within Pg. 21, we see Suzie run towards the library as it is being torn down, her thoughts a jumbled mess of incoherency as her (almost)

It makes light of serious issues, it makes fun where it probably should not, and it talks about issues in frank terms that might shock or surprise people. In doing so, though, it opens the door for real and truthful conversations about relationships, sexual awakenings, sexuality, kink negotiation, and sex work, on and on and on. All those topics that people are uncomfortable with talking about, Sex Criminals has it and is going to make you face it. The fact that they wrap it up in a nice bow of excellent color and spot on narrative techniques makes it all the better. We see ourselves in Suzie, Jon, Robert, or Rachel. We connect to these characters because we are these characters. They live adult lives doing adult things in the only way that adults know how, which is often not very adult like at all because no one truly taught us how to be adults. This story is so much more than just about sex, you can see it in the care put into each color on each page, in the way that the let Suzie tell her story as she wants to, and in their lighthearted but fervent conversations about difficult topics. Sex Criminals is something else and I hope that within this paper I have done it the justice that it