The Dirty Mind had become the Pleasure Center. What had been a place for sexual exploration is now a government-run institution for reprogramming deviants. Things change. Some things stay the same in the sixth issue of writer Tina Horn’s SFSX: Safe Sex. Artist/colorist Jen Hickman submerges the narrative in shadowy darkness that feels substantially murky without overwhelming the page with brutality. This is fine for the most part, but Horn’s script DOES occasionally call for a bit of viciousness. A splash of blood erupting from the chest shouldn’t feel as calm as a conversation between characters, should it?  

The former sex workers of The Dirty Mind have broken into the government reprogramming facility it has turned into. They wanted to save a friend. Naturally, things have become much more complicated. Now they find themselves trapped in genuine danger as the government closes-in on them. Infiltration was actually kind of easy. Escape is going to be another matter altogether. Escape is going to be risky, and it’s going to involve danger, blood, bondage, purple gas, and a couple of rather large canisters of lube. (The only way out is to improvise. That’s going to mean using the only things available to the heroic fugitives.) 

Horn’s script is clinging to peril in the sixth issue of the series. There’s a respectable amount of tension as the heroes try to make their way out of the Pleasure Center. The drama is clearly defined. Passion, aggression, and desperation spill out with the occasional punctuation of blood and gunfire. There isn’t much room for subtlety of characterization in an issue like this. Still, Horn manages to find some intricacy around the edges of a chapter that seems to be making some progress towards something truly original as the series reaches the end of its sixth issue. 

There’s real menace in Horn’s script that doesn’t exactly transfer all that well in the art. Hickman is an exceedingly competent artist delivering a suspense story with a powerful pulse. Still, the tension of the escape from the Pleasure Center doesn’t feel quite as intense as it could be. Sudden bursts of blood and gunfire have the potential for tearing a hole through a drama like this in brutal ways...instead blood spill feels as casual as a spilled barrel of lube. It’s a bit frustrating, but not a disaster. Hickman delivers enough intensity to the pages to keep them turning briskly from cover to cover. 

Now that the series crawls out of the Pleasure Center with new revelations, Horn and Hickman can start to move the series in a new direction that takes into account a larger perspective on the world of SFSX. It’s been a strangely-paced journey into a dystopia thus far. A lot of the basic elements of the world have been rendered now. It’ll be interesting to see where the story moves from here. There’s a potential danger in repetition as the fugitives continue to explore the edges of the dystopia. Still, Horn and Hickman seem to have a solid grasp of where they’re going with the story in an issue that has an excellent progression.

Grade: B