A very honest and normal look at a hard lifestyle.
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Hawkins
Art: Yishan Li, Linda Sejic
Letterer: Troy Peteri
What They Say:
Dan and Cathy’s swinging adventures continue in this SUNSTONE spin-off as they explore their love and boundaries—and discover that trust is the key to it all.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the glut of comics out there and so many things written about the well-known books, it’s easy for things that fall outside of that to go unheard of for many general comics readers. With a review copy sent to us by Image Comics, I was drawn to the cover for Swing and then completely hooked upon learning what it was about. Done as a series of graphic novels as opposed to singles, it’s written by Matt Hawkins with Yishan Li and Linda Sejic handling the artwork for it. The property was created by Sejic and Hawkins along with Jenni Cheung and it definitely helps that Hawkins likely has all of them to draw on for how to write what’s here unless there’s a lot of firsthand experience. Because so much of this felt like some of my own experiences.
Having missed out on the first installment that came out in May 2018, the book does a solid recap in the opening pages here as we’re introduced to Dan Lincoln and Cathy Chang, a married couple that have been together for ten years. The dynamic was familiar in that they met as first-year college students, he’d been with several women prior to her, he was her first, and as the relationship went on they ended up with kids earlier than expected and that meant a bit of a quick wedding while she was still pregnant. The two have built a solid life together with good careers, interests, a strong love for each other, and a good sex life. But that ten year itch is proving to be pretty strong as they’ve been drifting apart from each other and sex hasn’t been in the cards as often or as strongly as it once was.
The recap shows us how Cathy was the one that initiated swinging and that Dan had some problems with it and their first encounter went pretty badly, leading to some tension. What helped ease things for Dan, as one can imagine, is that instead of dealing with a couple Cathy ended up bringing in a girlfriend of hers to help seduce and it became quite the event. That helped to open the door for Dan to things moving forward from there, though it wasn’t as though Cathy didn’t get anything from the experience. While a little more technical, it fits in with how she narrates her part of the story as she talks about compersion and how she got the thrill in watching Dan with her friend as well as helping to explore her own bit of bi-curious aspects. But the reality is that as much fun as they had in general with this, the pair weren’t quite in synch for what they really wanted to do in opening up the relationship.
Covering quite a few months, if not upwards of a year in time, this installment gives us a lot of family time for Cathy and Dan with their kids that helps to flesh them out and make clear that these are issues that have to be dealt with when opening up the relationship. We get the issues that come in from Cathy’s mother who made sex into a terrible thing which impacted Cathy heavily growing up, which is also why she went all in once meeting Dan in college. But there’s also a lot of time spent in showing the simple joy and pleasure the two of them experience together in the quiet moments as well as the worries, fears, and tensions that come up in our heads, real and imagined. Shifting between all of this amid the more sexual aspects of the book and the open relationship elements itself helps to really ground it in reality.
With Cathy as the instigator for a lot of this, she does accept Dan taking control of the rules – with approval – and how they engage with others online, including just looking for couples as that’s what Cathy wants to experience. He’s definitely understanding of this since she’s never been with anyone but him and while her curiosity doesn’t diminish her love for him, that curiosity is very understandable. You never get the sense that she’s looking for someone else to be with, nor does he come across that way, but Dan does have that fear that it can happen because of the way men are raised with these insecurities about sex and prowess and how the media portrays it as what women are drawn to. So it makes sense to see how she does try to reassure him, even if it gets a little tiring at times, and why he struggles with it.
When the two do get to searching out for a couple to be with on the dating services, it’s very amusing to watch as they run into so many that are not what they seem. The scammers are abundant and plenty of people that just want to waste time or collect pictures for their own fetish. There are some hard realities found upon meeting some in person but when they do click with one couple the idea of a quick video call helps to move the narrative forward better – and they feel foolish for not thinking of it before. It’s something that helps to open them up to other couples later as well and to give them more confidence in general. The first couple they really do get together with, Mary and Clint, couldn’t have gone better overall as there was a good ease to it, a nice buzz with a little alcohol, and just an openness about them all that really made it possible – from videoing to meeting to hanging out in the bar for a bit before moving to a hotel room.
The book also delves into some of the other troubles, such as how some couples do go a bit wild upon entering the lifestyle, and you can see touches of that in how Cathy wants to experience more while Dan’s still a bit wary and protective – more so in these lifestyle club places simply because so much more is going on and out of his control. This allows the story to deal with the struggles and anxieties well so that even when things are going well they’re reminded that there is a lot of care that must be given to their core relationship. The flow of everything works well and giving us these harder moments to deal with, especially with how the book ends here while teasing us with more, is spot-on because of the way you begin to really do make sure that you’re saying the right things and not saying the wrong things.
The book also comes with a backup feature special with artwork from Sejic called Pegging Wonderland. This does a lot of videogame style stuff as Dan is having a dream of playing the game that he enjoys only to end up in it naked while the women inside are in some luscious and delicious costumes. It’s a comical chase sequence of events overall but when he’s pinned down by his wife in the form of an attractive spider and she pegs him, that puts him on a whole new path when he wakes up. I hope that it’s not really the end of that story here and that it blends into the main storyline for the next volume when that arrives.
In Summary:
Honestly, I had no idea Image Comics was putting out work of this nature with the “adults only” sexual material. It’s not super explicit or anything, just standard nudity and certainly not hentai in nature. But it does engage in more mature and character-driven storytelling with an erotic angle playing throughout it. It is, more than anything else, a relationship book for people to enjoy as it deals with some complicated issues. I imagine for those that have been in the game for some time that it’s a reminder of where they started while for others it could serve as a light guide toward it. Hawkins talks about the help he got from people with aspects of the terminology and more, but I’m sure you could find dozens and dozens of couples easily that would corroborate everything that happens here as basic stuff that goes on with most couples that enter it initially.
I absolutely loved this book. Hawkins’ writing is spot on. Yishan Li’s work on the main story is fantastic and I pretty much loved every panel of it, every expression in the normal days or the intimate scenes, and I loved the eroticism of it all. Sejic’s backup story was an absolute delight and I hope there’s more of that planned in the future as well. This is likely one of the best things I’ve found in comics in 2019.
Grade: A
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Image Comics
Release Date: September 18th, 2019
MSRP: $16.99
