The cover reads "For Mature Readers." That's putting it lightly. Naifeh and Crane explore a dark side of Western culture that a minority of us have experienced. I'm not in that minority, but I was fascinated by this journey into a counterculture of sexual indulgence and indifference. This dark story explores extreme characters, and in the process, subtly exposes their flaws, their universal humanity. Plot is secondary here. This is all about characterization, about players to test the limits society has set out for them. Ultimately, it seems as though these lives on the edge are as unfulfilling as those that lead others down paths of business suits and martini lunches.
The sexually ambiguous Catherine encounters her "friend" Nick at their usual watering early one day, and they compare notes after a crazy weekend. Nick's story -- replete with lies and half-remembered hallucinations -- is one of pleasure and paranoia, ego and emptiness. Catherine's is far stranger. Spent with makle and female twins (of a non-biological nature), she is torn between her split genders, each one wanting something different from her, but ultimately, the twins are unaware of what they really want.
Naifeh's angular and supernatural style suits the almost alien qualities of these characters quite well. He captures their exotic and strong sexual nature with seeming ease, as well as the ugliness of their perceptions and the posses that surround them. The black-and-white format reinforces the oddly sullen and empty atmosphere of this sexually charged story. Naifeh's art also captures the androgynous qualities of several characters quite well, and that's a key element in this series.
Nick's story is a vague one that nevertheless manages to say plenty about the character quite clearly. He is a creature of ego, and his stories of drugs and debauchery are really only a means for him to achieve his real fix: an audience. His personality feeds off attention, and he's opted to get it through shock value. He believes himself to be the king of the world in which he exists, but in reality, he's dangerously out of control.
Catherine's story is a more challenging one, but again, there's a grounded message to be gleaned from it. Naifeh and Crane demonstrate that the hermaphroditic Catherine is far more confident and clear about her sexual identity than the twins, who represents a clear split between the masculine and feminine. Ultimately, I think the writers point out that the twins have nothing but a facade of sexual exploration, that they're playing at a life of experimentation and edge. Catherine destroy the illusion for them, and now, they're lost, stripped of their extreme personae.
