Page 45 Review by Stephen
A heart-warming tale that will make you feel fuzzy in which two new lovers talk dirty to each other for days. It's so frank that if I started quoting it out of context this would begin to read like a lads' mag, so no. Where does the crime come in?
Well, it's like Bonnie & Clyde with orgasms. Orgasms during which time stops more than figuratively and the world goes completely silent. Do you see stars when you come? Sorry, that was a bit personal. Suzanne sees swirling colours and flashes of light which linger longer than you'd expect. Or maybe you wouldn't. You lucky thing.
All of this Suzanne discovers during her first, unplanned episode with her head underwater and the taps still running in just the right place. Now imagine what sex with a partner would be like if you were Suzanne: you orgasm, the earth may move for you and the colours may come but the world itself stops and goes silent. You have to extricate yourself from your partner who's "paralyzed". That's not completely satisfying. Then imagine that, after years and years of this, you met someone else just like you and you could finally enjoy post-coital bliss in your shared world of silence.
"Jon… is your dick glowing?"
Suzanne calls it The Silence. Jon calls it Cumworld. He's a bloke - please forgive!
It was the name of his favourite porn shop he used to ransack while in the zone and its legitimate customers were suspended in time, oblivious to his presence. And those early escapades have given him an idea. Suzanne loves libraries - they helped her out while attempting to research her condition - but hers is suffering and its bank is about to foreclose. So if Jon could successful pilfer from a porn shop… why can't they just spank a bank?
This is absolutely magnificent: an up-front celebration of one of life's better pleasures - as long as you're over eighteen. If you're under eighteen, it's rubbish. You really won't want it. Please don't buy it, we could get into trouble.
I never did understand reverse psychology.
Chip Zdarsky is the perfect choice of artist for he draws a bit like Michael Avon Oeming, so whilst explicit, this isn't titillating. It's sexy art, don't get me wrong, but sexy in a stylish, engaging and thoroughly attractive way. And the amount of time he's spent on those lights during climax… there are a lot of climaxes here.
There's also a lot of laughs as you'd expect from the author of HAWKEYE, and they don't dry up at the end for there are process pieces from Zdarsky who is a mischief merchant in his own right, and a short radio drama created by Matt and Chip to promote the first issue in which Chip phones a sex line expecting lovely Linda and finds Matt on the other end instead. Hey, equal opportunities!
It's a play which will say that we're all a bit gay whether locked in the closet or loo. Actually, it will prove it. Seriously prove it. You'll like it, it's liberating.
As to the main event, anything can happen. When Suzie starts singing Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls I guarantee you never seen or read anything quite like it, and I'll have to go back and check the individual issue it was first printed in to see if they changed it for the collected edition.
It's also incredibly cute: early inter-date texting, hesitancy in half-sentences and sharing your sexual secrets is such a turn on! Jon and Suzanne have plenty - it's nice of them to share. Matt Fraction too.
Now, back to the bank and what could possibly go wrong?
