With story by Gail Simone and Art by Cat Staggs, Crosswind features the kind of body swap that gets me all tingly and excited; a macho hit man trades bodies with a mousy housewife. I love these kinds of switches because not only do the main characters exchange bodies, but they are forced into lives with distinctly different gender roles.
Even better, the force that switched them orders them to fully immerse themselves in their new lives. The hit man, for example, finds himself ordered to cook, clean and a be a perfect hostess when his husband’s boss comes over for dinner the night of his swap. He is told unless he embraces his role, he will be stuck as a woman and a housewife forever.
Now, for those of us who love body-swaps and forced- femme stories, it couldn’t get much better. How will this tough guy deal with being a housewife, step-mom and hostess?
Well,this is where the story lost me because he just does it. We see him go shopping for groceries, cook and clean, deal with his bratty step son and then cut to him wearing a sexy dress as he plays housewife. There is no conflict whatsoever. He just does it all as comfortably as if he’d been dressing as a woman and playing the supportive little wife his whole life, and he handles other situations with ease as well– for example, being sexually harassed by a couple teenagers, who he just beats up as if he were still a man– although it is a little funny as he does it with a frying pan.
The hitman finds it so easy to be a woman that he even says at one point that it’s kind of fun and not hard at all.
The woman, meanwhile, rapidly gets over her “icky, blood and murder” reactions, quickly dropping into the male role and seeming to have little problem with her sudden life change.
Now, I read only the first three issues so far, and it is very possible that the story lines may develop more and involve more awkward struggles– but right now it is a story that does very little to really explore the radical life changes these characters have experienced.
The art is gorgeous, and the story moves very fast. I still find myself intrigued, but it feels a little too easy for the main characters so far as they each seem largely unphased by their new sex and role in life.
