Writer/Artist: Bob Fingerman
Collecting MINIMUM WAGE #1-10, plus additional material
Price: $24.95
Publisher: Fantagraphics
ISBN: 1560975024

BEG THE QUESTION exists in that space where sex is a constant conversation between couples and friends. It's a book for anyone who's ever overheard their roommate having sex.

There's a story an old friend of mine likes to tell about an apartment he once lived in. Every afternoon the next door neighbours would engage in wild, screaming sex with the bedpost banging against the wall. He shared his living room wall with their bedroom and would quietly try to focus on watching television while the neighbours moaned and grunted and screamed.

The walls of this apartment complex were thin and weak and it came to pass that one afternoon while the neighbours were engaged in the act of love that they broke the wall down. Literally. The wall fell in and there they all were suddenly sharing a bedroom and a living room. My friend sat on his couch and stared dumbfounded at the sight of crumbling plaster, a ruined television set and his neighbours naked as the day they were born staring sheepishly at him.

There's nowhere to go from there except to laugh. And that's what BEG THE QUESTION does. It's a funny book that deals with the responsibilities and consequences of sex.

Bob Fingerman originally conceived BEG THE QUESTION as a series of comic books called MINIMUM WAGE. MINIMUM WAGE told the story of Rob Hoffman, a struggling illustrator who made his living drawing comics for porno magazines, and Sylvia Fanucci, a bisexual hairdresser. Rob and Sylvia live in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and love each other dearly. When we first meet them in BEG THE QUESTION, Sylvia has stopped by the apartment Rob shares with his celibate, cow brain-eating roommate, Jack. Within the first three pages, Jack becomes that lamented roommate listening to his friend having sex in the next room.

Of course, later, when Rob and Jack head out to White Castle, Jack mentions the escapade and Rob is understandably embarrassed. But it's a credit to what Fingerman is doing in this book that instead of having Rob attempt to bury this interlude, it's discussed between the two friends openly and honestly. Sex is an open discussion throughout BEG THE QUESTION. Even though the characters who exist in BEG THE QUESTION are young and often immature, sex is handled maturely because, quite honestly, it's a subject that's rarely not on the minds of all creatures great and small.

When you're living in a city where everyone is packed so closely together, it's difficult not to find yourself sharing in the intimate moments of friends and strangers. And when the main character of a story makes his living illustrating comic books for a magazine called PORK, well, it's a safe bet that sex is going to come up frequently.

BEG THE QUESTION takes place in the mid-to-late-nineties and deals with a group of friends struggling through their relationships and work. Rob and Sylvia face the consequences and responsibilities of a loving and sexual relationship, first through an unwanted pregnancy, and then through their decision to move in together and get married. They're such painfully likeable and believable characters that's it's impossible to not want them to succeed. And their friends are just as oversexed and esoteric.

There's Matt, the acerbic rich kid, who's dating Azure, a stripper who arrives at a comic book convention dressed as Vampirella. In one grotesquely funny scene, Matt and Azure are interrupted in their lovemaking by the Dominos Pizza delivery guy. Matt answers the door with such a poorly concealed boner that the delivery guy drops the pizza and runs away screaming.

Then there's Jack, who collects signed Martin Amis novels to the point of obsession, and there's Elvis, the obese editor of PORK who guides Rob through his work. Rob is struggling to break in to the cartooning world. He shops his portfolio around and does time at a comic book convention where he shares a table with a cartoonist named Kevin Orkin - based on Evan Dorkin, creator of HECTIC PLANET, MILK & CHEESE and DORK. Orkin gives Rob advice on getting through the convention unscathed, while Rob worries about other cartoonists he's panned in print hovering about around them.

Beyond the flesh-and-blood characters that inhabit BEG THE QUESTION, New York City itself lives and breathes through Fingerman's skewed perspectives. Fingerman's clean style renders even the most mundane deli or butcher in loving detail. Crazed lunatics pick fights on the subway. White Castle exists as a microcosm of filmmakers and gangsters. For everything there is to love about New York, Fingerman counters it with something to hate. But none of his characters would trade the city for anywhere else in the world.

If BEG THE QUESTION suffers from anything, it's simply that the transition from single-issues to book form is wobbly at times. The introductory matter brings in the cast of characters quickly, while the plot wanders lackadaisically, and self-consciously so. The concluding chapters have the plot nearly forced on them. But it all comes together in the end, and there's that sense that no matter what, Rob and Sylvia will turn out okay.

Frank Smith is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

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