REVIEW: Sex #3

Or – “It’s Always Fun To Pun About Sex…”

Though his days as a superhuman are over, Simon Cooke has returned to his old stomping grounds as a normal citizen.  But nothing is more complicated than starting a new life, especially when the old one isn’t quite done with you…  Your Major Spoilers review awaits!

SEX #3
Writer: Joe Casey
Artist: Piotr Kowalski
Colorist: Brad Simpson
Letterer: Rus Wooton
Publisher: Image Comics
Cover Price: $2.99

Previously, in Sex:  As the superhero known as the Armored Saint, Simon Cooke protected Saturn City from freaks and geeks and super-villainy, but now he’s just a regular dude (who also happens to be a multi-kabillionaire.)  With his dual legacies as hero and philanthropist, Simon’s got a lot on his plate, and more than a few people who aren’t on board with the new status quo…

OH MY GOD, IT’S A BATMAN STORY!!!

The first couple of issues of ‘Sex’ were a little disorienting, with the full frontals and the girl-on-girl, but a few pages into this issue, I had a sudden realization.  After Simon Cooke sits through a board meeting literally sleeping with his eyes open, his assistant calls him out for his callous disregard for the business side of The Cooke Company.  He has a minor flashback to his days as the Armored Saint, impatiently waiting for his older female majordomo to stitch up his wounds…  It’s a Batman story!  His assistant Larry is a distaff Lucius Fox, and we see a relationship with Quinn the majordomo that feels very much like the Bruce/Alfred dynamic.  This doesn’t necessarily change the enjoyment level of the issue for me, but it does change my entire point of view.  This blown mind moment puts a different spin on the perfidy of the Alpha Brothers (who execute a man on panel for his failures) and the truly disturbing moment where the villain called The Old Man prepares to pull out all the teeth of a minor mook because sometimes the cops hide radio transmitters in their mouths…  (That’s a cringe/shudder moment for me that really colors the whole issue.)

AND CATWOMAN IS GETTING FRISKY…

Speaking of colors, the odd colored text box formatting continues in this issue, with random words colored orange, pink and blue for emphasis, and it’s still kind of maddening to figure out what each color means in terms of inflection.  After a sex scene in the first half of the book featuring a young man named Keenan who has some dangerous information, Joe Casey pulls out another sequence where the Armored Saint’s femme fatale archenemy enjoys a little alone time, masturbating as she remembers her nemesis chasing her across a rooftop and tackling her to the ground.  The book is called ‘Sex,’ after all, but this ends up being a revealing scene for her character (as well as the rest of her, he said, nudge-nudge wink-wink) and setting up clearly the fact that she still has feelings for our not-Batman protagonist.

THE BOTTOM LINE: TROUBLING, BUT CHALLENGING…

The biggest hurdle in the issue comes in the question of the lettering/text issues, though, and Casey puts a new spin on the kind of territory seen before in ‘Watchmen’ and ‘Wanted,’ a world where the heroes have given up their tights, but still have the same issues and flaws that they did when they were fighting in the streets.  Still, it’s 3 issues in and the central conflict is still pretty remote, and while Simon Cooke is an interesting protagonist, he’s not a particularly likeable one, which can be a problem.  Sex #3 continues in an interesting vein, but much like Saturday-night Cinemax, it’s hard to get the balance of story-to-softcore exactly right, making things feel a bit off, leaving the book with 3 out of 5 stars overall.  Once we’ve wrung all the shock value out of the title and the sexy-sexy, though, I’m hoping that the core premise will still hold water…

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