Sex Criminals Creators Fraction & Zdarsky Talk Fourgy Arc

Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's Sex Criminals launched from Image Comics four years ago this week, taking a provocative title and using it to tell a weird and wonderful story that is considerably more thoughtful and sweet than it is crude. (Not to worry, there are plenty of dirty jokes, too.)

Earlier this year, the series returned from an extended hiatus for its latest, five-issue arc, which is collected in Sex Criminals Vol. 4: Fourgy, available now (some spoilers in this article!). In these issues -- originally published as Sex Criminals #16-#20 -- things reach a low point between Jon and Suzie, the titular sex criminals at the heart of the book (as you surely know by now, time freezes when they have sex, and they use that unique opportunity in "The Quiet" to rob banks). The collection also includes interlude issue Sex Criminals #17, cheekily patterned after Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal, and joined by that series' colorist, Elizabeth Breitweiser.

CBR talked in-depth with Fraction and Zdarsky about the "Fourgy" arc, putting their characters in unpleasant positions (not those kinds of positions, oddly enough), the special bond the book has with its "Brimper" fanbase, and how a better (albeit less eye-catching) title a this point may be Relationship Criminals. The duo also provide an update on the Sex Criminals TV show -- no news to share at this point, but Fraction sounds hopeful -- the upcoming "Five-Fingered Discount" arc and the latest on Zdarsky's Harvey Award, which he won for the series in 2015 but declined because it only recognized him, and not Fraction. Also, "a spoonful of cum jokes helps the realness go down." (It'll make sense later.)

CBR: Matt, Chip, when this arc started, it was the first new Sex Criminals we had seen in 10 months, which by my math nearly a year. What was it like to have that period where the book was away from stands for that long?

Matt Fraction: Shitty and stupid.

Chip Zdarsky: Yeah. That's probably the worst decision we've ever made. [Laughs]

Fraction: We shouldn't have done it.

Zdarsky: I understand the rationale behind it, and I think I would have worked if it took us say, a month and a week to make an issue, but because we're two months an issue, that makes the break a lot longer. When you have that much time, you tend to deliberate over things a bit more than maybe you should. I think we did like 12 edits on issue #16, which was definitely a record. We usually had like two or three passes, and we'd send it to the printer.

Fraction: It just sat there forever. #17 would be done, we'd go back and make more changes to #16. #18 would be done, we'd go back and make more changes to #16.

Zdarsky: I don't recommend it to anyone publishing comics.

Fraction: Look, it's great if it's a title that's been around for 80 years, right? We were using the logic of selling apples to sell our oranges -- our sexy, sexual oranges. That was a little flawed in some fundamental and important ways. We never want to be that dark for that long -- that off the stands again. It's just simply not worth it.

It's weird for comics in specific -- sometimes a TV show can take a prolonged absence and come back hotter. Rick and Morty was gone for almost two years and now is bigger than ever, because people have found out about it and caught up. It seems difficult for comics to do that.

Fraction: Difficult because the direct market is predicated on seven-day sales cycles. And we want to find a sweet spot between servicing our direct market partners, and keeping them healthy and fed and satisfied, and at the same time creating a product that can compete with titles that have been around for 80 years, because, I would think, of quality. But whatever it is about the book, it's not going to get better if we do it faster. [Laughs] Unlike the Ramones, "do it faster" was not our solution.

Zdarsky: Theoretically, a book like Sex Criminals, once it's in trade, it'll be on the shelves for, maybe not forever, but --

Fraction: Forever!

Zdarksy: Alright, forever. So you want to think of the final, quality product that's going to last a lot longer on a bookshelf that the monthly, general output of comics, because the ultimate format for the book, while we enjoy the issues, and the issues have the added bonus of the letters column -- the collection is going to be the end result no matter what.

Fraction: Yeah. And it's how many, many people discover the book.

Zdarsky: Far more. Issue #1, I forget how many we sold, but we sold far more of volume 1 than we ever did of issue #1.

Fraction: Right. And continue to regularly. It behooves us, and it behooves our retail partners -- both in the direct market and around the world -- to create a product that will do that for them.

That said, we have six fill-in issues coming up with an exciting variety of artists. [Laughs] Sorry.

Zdarsky: You son of a bitch!

This month marks four years since Sex Criminals #1, which is a good chunk of time. How have your perspectives on the series changed over that time? Do you look at it differently? And have plans changed along the way?

Fraction: The plan changed pretty profoundly during the production of the third issue, because we got numbers back for #1 and we realized we were going to be able to do this for a while. In terms of just scale, it changed -- we figured like, five issues at first. So just from a practical standpoint, very early, it became a thing: "We get to do this for a while." We found a thing that has resonated; we can change how we do this. That's sort of the most literal way.

Everything else I would say sounds super-cheesy. Chip, save me.

Zdarsky: Well, the book grew beyond sex jokes. If we could change the name to "Relationship Criminals," we probably would.

Fraction: "Sexual Relationship Criminals."

Zdarsky: It's grown beyond the initial premise, and Matt and my relationship to each other has grown, as well. And the fact that when we started it, we had no feedback. Over the past few years, the amount of reader feedback has affected us on a bunch of different levels. I think it's reflected in the narrative now.

Fraction: I'd experienced this a little bit at Marvel, but it was a kind of surrogate experience, of being a part of something bigger than yourself -- being a part of a story that's bigger than yourself. That has everything to do with all the people who had written or drawn the stuff before you, and you're in this honored position of carrying a baton that matters a lot to people for a little while, and then you hand it to somebody else.

But I never had the experience of it being a thing that happened because of something we had created. It's not that it doesn't feel like it's ours, but it doesn't feel like it's just ours anymore. It's not the biggest-selling book on the stands, but by the time it's done, we will have met all of our readers. Something about this book fosters community and communication, and people come out to find us, in amazing ways. There's something incredibly gratifying and humbling in that. This is all of ours now -- this belongs to all of us.

Zdarsky: But the copyright is ours.

Fraction: The copyright remains firmly with me and Chip.

Legally, that's all squared away.

Fraction: Legally, yes. But quasi-spiritually, we're all owners. Literally, legally, it's me and Chip. Our lawyers literally started to text during my answer to that. That's amazing.

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Given what you just said about how the book has changed -- you see that a lot in this arc, which is a very emotionally heavy one. What were some things that both of you liked about this block of issues in terms of what it did, and how it propelled the series further?

Fraction: The joy of creating something that you own, that you control, that has a beginning, a middle and an end is that you get through acts, right? A Marvel or DC book -- they're locked in perpetual seconds acts. It's why we love them -- it's a continuing narrative, it's a serial. But this has a beginning, middle and end. There's a structure. There's a satisfaction in getting there.

When it became clear, "Oh, we're going to be able to tell the whole story of this relationship," I knew there was going to be a beginning, a middle and an end, and there were going to be complications, and there's going to be drama, and there's going to be conflict. And it's going to be different than the way it is in a work-for-hire situation.

And that's cool! That's great! That lets you get to real place, and complicate your characters. Disagree with them, and they can do and say shitty and things, and hey, that's great, now you have a thing you have to fix.

Zdarsky: For me, volume 2 and 3, there's a lot of introduction of new characters, so volume 4 -- as an artist, I'm much more comfortable drawing this cast now. I feel like I'm able to act through them now, instead of just trying to figure out who they are.

I'm the first reader, so for me it's a joy getting Matt's scripts, and discovering where the characters are going along with the reader. The scripts for this volume were the ones that really had me the most excited over the whole series, because you get to see where the characters are starting to end up. Even with the introduction of the Little Man -- while I hate drawing the Little Men themselves, he was a fun addition in volume 4.

Fraction: There gets to be a challenge for both of us, where we'll create these characters, and then the challenge is, "Alright, now we've got to make ourselves like them." We're shaped and formed in such a way that we can do that. We can do an issue where the bad guys take over for an issue and narrate everything, and then we get to see what life is like from her POV. You can't do that elsewhere, necessarily.

That'll be the thing that I tend to tease Chip with -- things that are happening to side characters. There's this thing that happens in the upcoming arc, starting with issue #21, where there's a character that goes undercover, and I just kept blowing jokes from that bit, and scenes from that, with Chip, because it was just my favorite thing to write. We get to see what happens when this one particular character is pretending to be someone else, and is having this Serpico-like experience they are not emotionally or mentally equipped to handle. And it just delighted me to no end. [Laughs] So instead of, "In this issue, Batman punches Superman," instead of your big A-list stuff, I'm like, "Hey, this side character -- turns out, he had an interesting lunch!"

Building on everything you just said, being close to the cast of this book and pushing them in very difficult territory, especially what we see in issue #20 -- for a reader it feels real and upsetting to see. What's that like for you as creators, in putting these characters in these heartbreaking positions?

Zdarsky: It's easier for me than it is for Matt. I made a suggestion to murder a character in this arc, and Matt just would not rise to that.

Fraction: I was scared -- even to write the m-word. I think it's like Beetlejuice. If you say it three times, it's going to happen to someone you love.

It's hard, it's tough. The good news is, we know where it's going. That's why we read this stuff -- if nothing happened, it wouldn't actually be dramatic. If there wasn't conflict, if there wasn't opposition, if there wasn't obstacles and intention, that's not actual drama. Which inevitably is the failing of perpetual serials -- the nature of the thing precludes that. This is why we're here.

Zdarsky: In a book like this, because we own it, because it's finite, when things happen to characters, they happen to them. They have repercussions for the rest of the series. That makes the decisions a bit harder -- what you're going to put the characters through. You can't count on someone undoing it in a couple of months, because it's all in our court.

Fraction: Jon is just going to forever have that cybernetic arm now and we just have to deal with it.

He can't transfer his consciousness to a clone body?

Fraction: Spoilers! Come on now.

Sticking with more downer material, this arc hits the topic of depression in a serious and real way, which is something that's been a recurring theme of the series. How important do you see that aspect of the comic -- normalizing these things, talking about things that people don't want to talk about?

Fraction: It's super-important, and you will see it more in this upcoming arc. It's not like a manic pixie dream boy situation where, "I've found the perfect guy, but he's got depression!" Traumatic exposure to a horrifying event has affected her in different ways. It's a want to be able to explore how the things that make them feel separate from the world allows them to connect with one another.

At no point in the early days with Chip and I were we, "Look, we're going to start with dick jokes. Then we're going to get to depression."

It's a classic progression, though.

Fraction: Classic. Like Lucy and the football -- we hold a dildo, and then when somebody comes to grab the dildo, we yank it away and point at the bleak nothingness of existence.

It came about naturally. It came about in the telling of the story and realizing we were going to have the room and the space and the time to tell the story of this relationship, and that meant going places you normally don't get to go.

Zdarsky: Even though the premise of the book initially is wacky and rooted in quasi-science fiction, you still want the characters to represent real people and real-life experiences, to ground them and make you emphasize with them more.

Fraction: The quasi-weird stuff is all cover to get to the real stuff.

Zdarsky: There's no pretense of a very special episode -- "we'll take a month off from this and we'll focus on so-and-so's drug problem" -- this book was never going to be like that, all because the reality of the characters' lives is embedded in the DNA of the book, which means that it has to reflect people's existence. Depression is a thing.

Fraction: A spoonful of cum jokes helps the realness go down.

It's a shame it's too late to use that quote in the marketing for the trade paperback.

Fraction: You know, that's the wonderful part of being a member of the Image family: it's not! We can just pulp the whole run! It's on us. We're going to pay for it. Always excited to find new and exciting ways to lose money with my chum.

What's coming up next in the book -- and when might we see that start to unfold?

Fraction: I think it's January. The arc is called "Five-Fingered Discount." Fingered is past tense -- very classy. It leaps ahead about six months after the end of #20, and we see where people are, in a romance comic where your two romantic leads have broken up.

Surely you're asked a lot about this, and maybe you're tired of talking about it, but about two and a half years ago news broke about a TV deal for Sex Criminals -- any current update on that front?

Fraction: Not that I'm allowed to say.

I'm very excited. I hope that we will have big, exciting news soon. I hope soon. Maybe not. Who knows? Nothing happens soon.

And I've got to ask the question on everyone's mind -- what's the current status of Chip's Harvey Award?

Fraction: I have actually lost it.

Zdarsky: He actually has.

Fraction: I am not certain where it is.

Zdarsky: I was in his home, days ago, and he told me he's lost it.

Fraction: I had given it to my wife -- it was used as a piece of set dressing on her pilot that was shot for NBC but not aired. I was hoping that if it had made it to air, Chip's Harvey would have been on TV. Somehow, post-her return, I have done something with it, and I don't know what. It's here somewhere.

Zdarsky: Do you know that it actually made it back, or is it in like, the NBC prop department?

Fraction: I know that it made it back. I totally know it made it back. I'm pretty sure it made it back.

Zdarsky: I'm never seeing it, am I?

Fraction: I know I took it to Emerald City. I'm not sure where it is.

This is a good cliffhanger to end the interview.

Fraction: The French writer Pierrick Colinet and illustrator Elsa Charretier are currently guests in my home, and I would love to be able to give Chip's Harvey to them, so it can get a taste of international-ness.

Sex Criminals Vol. 4: Fourgy is available now from Image Comics.