#Susan Ptolemy

[heyheyhaydn]

GIANT DUCKS

Going all in on stupid puns, I am very sorry John Allison

[kramerblogrealgood]

A really underrated aspect of Giant Days is the implication that Susan Ptolemy used to be a Nancy Drew-style girl detective who saw so much shit that she's basically a grizzled ex-cop even though she's like 18

[vortexpunk]

My three remaining brain cells.

[incorrectgiantdays]

Daisy: Can't you put your hostility aside for one minute?

Susan: Oh, all right. I'll stack it on top of my anger.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 65

The TARDIS resents it when the Doctor has to borrow pieces of her mechanical equipment, such as narrow focus coils. The Doctor can feel this resentment and is uncomfortable doing this sort of thing. When he has to, it takes a lot of time and effort to get them back to a comfortable working relationship, during which time the TARDIS is unpredictable. (Novel: Psi-ence Fiction)

"Regeneration Operation" was the Master's name for his scheme to steal the Eighth Doctor's body in the TV Movie. (Short story: The Secret Diary of the Master)

After the Master's alliance with the Sea Devils went to pot, he considered finding the planet of the Clangers with the intention to forge a new alliance with them. (Short story: The Secret Diary of the Master) This means that when Colonel Trenchard told him that the Clangers were puppets for children, the Master did not believe him.

The Sixth Doctor's favorite sandwich is peanut butter, lettuce, and potato chips. (Short story: Timeshare)

Garpol was a businessman who stole buildings to fill his Heritage Center, including the Seventh Doctor's Kent House. He captured the Doctor, Benny, and Ace and forced them to act as a normal family for his exhibit, with the Doctor and Benny as Ace's parents. (Short story: Question Mark Pyjamas)

During this mess, the Seventh Doctor read Ace a bedtime story and hypnotized her to force her to sleep. He and Benny slept in the same bed. The Doctor is not good at sharing a bed at all. He had tossed around for five minutes before standing and pacing around the room while muttering in Gallifreyan. When Benny snapped and told him to come to bed, the Doctor fell into a coma-like sleep. He snored loudly and even sat up straight and shouted "But, Brigadier, the Autons are disguised as traffic cones!" And then he fell back asleep. The Doctor did indeed wear question mark patterned pyjamas. (Short story: Question Mark Pyjamas)

What Garpol was doing - collecting all sorts of houses for his Heritage Collection - is clearly illegal, but the Seventh Doctor said that "Irving" would take care of it. He was, after all, on the Board of Governors for the Braxiatel Heritage Trust. (Short story: Question Mark Pyjamas)

The Fourth Doctor once won an entire planet during a poker match against a Draconian. It was still under his ownership when the Fifth Doctor came around. (Short story: Lonely Days)

The First Doctor worked on collecting gold to make a wedding ring for Susan. (Short story: The Book of Shadows)

In an alternate timeline, Barbara and Ptolemy Lagus married and had a son named Ptolemy Philadelphus. (Short story: The Book of Shadows)

According to the Fifth Doctor, the only things that can manipulate a TARDIS are the Matrix and another TARDIS. His TARDIS has enough safeguards to prevent other TARDISes from affecting them. (Short story: Zeitgeist)

The Eighth Doctor once saved the planet Calabria lived on. Calabria became obsessed by her planet's savior and spent many years tracking him down, eventually finding him on Earth. She made contact with him over the Internet and found that the Doctor was trying to rescue his friend, Charley, from a Nigerian prison. To convince the Doctor that she actually loved him, Calabria sent the Doctor money to bail out Charley, but after she does so, the Doctor left Earth. After this, Calabria would wonder why her emails were going unanswered. (Short story: You Had Me At User Name and Password)

The Delphon find the removal of limbs to be sexually alluring. (Novel: Lucifer Rising)

The Seventh Doctor believes that he condemned untold billions to death by not killing off the Daleks at the moment of their birth when he was in his Fourth incarnation. He also believes he could have saved billions more by shooting Davros down "like a mad dog" when he had had the chance. (Novel: Lucifer Rising)

The Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Benny once held hands, and their bodies fused together. They shared a dreamlike state. This fused being was referred to as "Acedoctorbernice." (Novel: Lucifer Rising)

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[lizzienoodles]

ok minty tagged me so i cant say no...

Put your 4 favorite characters from 4 pieces of media as options and let your tumblr pals decide which one most suits your vibe, then tag 4 people.

tagging @enjoliquej @ladysqueakinpip @ruby-jubilee @hauntngofhillhouse

[marta-bee]

I recently bought Susan Dimmock’s “Classic Readings and Cases in the Philosophy of Law,” and today read the first chapter/selection on natural law. Is it natural to liveblog a textbook? Let’s just say it’s a good thing I’m past caring about normality, more or less.

(Also posted to El Jay, but I heard some of you like philosophy, so I thought I’d share this here as well.)

I had a half-day off and wasn't meeting up with the Kid until later, so I read the first chapter of my legal philosophy textbook this afternoon. It was a mini-essay on natural law along with a series of selections from Aquinas. Which is such an odd place to start in a lot of ways because it's so based in a whole other political system than our current one. I mean, I focused so much on medieval philosophy and know quite a lot about him though more other areas than the social/political philosophy this was pulling from. And it had a nice nostalgia factor for me. Still, it felt like starting your study of astrophysics by reading a treatise by Ptolemy.

I did find the way the intro-essay framed natural law to be really interesting, though. Basically it says that law is something not dependent on human minds creating it, and it's in our power to discover it. That's a very medieval way of defining "real," or close to it. Not real in the sense of being physical but the kind of thing that would still be true whether or not anyone created a theory or law based on it. It's the kind of thing we can get right or wrong, and we can't just make any law we want. The bits of Aquinas excerpted were a bit vague on the specifics, which is probably good --as I recall Aquinas's politics can get really mired in his metaphysics of authority and where power originates from really quickly, probably way too complicated for present purposes-- but it's definitely based in what's in the common interest. If an emperor (or a democratic society) makes a law demanding people give half their salary to cater to the uber-rich's comfort, while people lie starving in the street that could have been helped with that money, we'd all probably recognize that as an unjust law. Aquinas would go further and say it's no law at all, because it's not geared toward the natural purpose of law, which is justice and what's good for everyone, not just those making the laws.

It's an interesting idea but seems like it would be way too easy to abuse. There's too much danger in allowing people to decide individually that a certain law doesn't apply to them so they're under no obligation to obey it, and I think a society needs a way to collectively say, part of being a part of our group means working within certain rules, even if you disagree, and that if you don't like the law you need to work to change it not just disregard it. Aquinas himself doesn't actually allow for that, but if we're not all in agreement about what the common good actually is, I'm not sure how we keep moderns with our individualistic sympathies from pushing too far in that direction. I was also concerned it didn't give enough credence to individual rights in the face of what's good for the whole society.

I do like the fact it's tied to morality. My starting question was why we should make things illegal or legal if it's not because they're good or right. This side-steps all that by saying, that's exactly what the law's about. It's about identifying what's good and forcing people who weren't already going to act that way to do that. But then it ties us into that whole ethical project I'm sure a lot of people would like to avoid. Even if "good" is real and we can discover it, do I really trust my fellow citizens to all do the work of finding that out? How often do we agree what's in the common good, really?

Which is probably the biggest problem for me here. It's not that natural law is wrong, it's that it's not what we're trying to do in modern democracies when we make laws. In practice, I mean. Because natural law is about having an actual intelligence identifying what's good and making pronouncements based on that. There's an intellect at the heart of it; or perhaps a few intellects who are reasoning together. But democracy isn't about what some small group identified as right, it's about what ideas were popular enough to get the most votes, with no guarantees that voters are well-informed or acting on good motives. And it's about what lawmakers happen to be in a politically powerful position- all fairly random, unreasoned elements. And even with court cases, even at high level like the Supreme Court, they're less arguing about whether a certain law is just, and whether it contradicts some other law or precedent. The rightness of the law seems like such a small part of it. Maybe with international law where there are less adapted frameworks and more reasoning together based off rights, there's more room for this kind of effort. But at a national level, it just doesn't seem like the political process makes space for what natural law needs.

I will say this, though: I wanted to know more. Natural law was intriguing, and I liked the idea that not everything a person in power decrees as law has the force of law, even as that idea scared me. I'd like to read someone more modern explaining how natural law fits into a democracy. And for a short introduction, "tell me more" is high praise indeed, at least coming from me.

I do suspect my own political leanings are more in line with a kind of social contract we've all agreed to work with, rather than set of moral principles some philosopher-king has the right to identify and impose on the rest of us. Maybe there are certain things we have no right to agree to live under, that it's irrational to accept a social contract built around not having the right to do them anymore. Which makes me seem vaguely Kantian; something I never thought I'd say.

Ah, well. It will be interesting to see where the next chapters lead.

[thenightslayers-musings]

@dat-physics-boi @yaboirezzy @pinkdinkydoon @opin88 @silly-sketchy

Five Character Poll (tag game)

Rules: make a poll with five of your all time favourite characters and then tag five people to do the same. See which character is everyone's favourite.

thank you @jazzandpizzazz for the tag! Starting a fresh post for the sake of length but go vote in theirs here!

I tried to pick a variety of blorbos but boy was it difficult to narrow to five

tagging @linguisticparadox @tedkordisanasshole @organchordsandlightning @mygoodrabbit @halfdoublecrochet !

[keiths3dart]

I LOVE Giant Days, one of my favourite comic book series. Here's my new line of Fanart Characters.

[thebibliomancer]

[filipmagnuswrites]

Giant Days Vol. 06 by John Alison - Graphic Novel Review

Giant Days Vol. 06 by John Alison – Graphic Novel Review

Previous | Next First off, that #21 cover has some bitchin’ ‘Susan as hard-boiled detective’ art. Our girls have been burgled! Well, their apartment has, which is somehow even worse, considering it forces us to visit Susan’s room. The issue turns very serious when Daisy reveals to Esther and Susan that the only keepsakes she had left from her parents have been stolen, too, which opens the door…

[thursdayfictions]

Daily sketch: Susan Ptolemy (Giant Days) One of those comics I wish I could read for the first time again. If you haven't, check it out!! I love Max Sarin's art dearly. Also smoking bad 😐

[racefortheironthrone]

Giant Days Characters as X-Men Characters

I originally wrote this over on Twitter, but it was such a rousing success that I decided to port it over to here, as a way of helping to bring together two of my favorite fandoms.

So without further ado...

Daisy Wooton = Jean Grey

Susan Ptolemy = Logan

Esther de Groot = Betsy Braddock

Ed Gemmell = Cypher

Graham McGraw = Forge

Dean Thompson = Cameron Hodge

Ingrid Oesterle = Emma Frost

[ultrameganicolaokay]

Giant Days: As Time Goes By by John Allison, Max Sarin and Whitney Cogar. Cover by Sarin.

[incorrectgiantdays]

Susan: Sorry. lost my cool for a second.

Esther: Can't lose something you never had.

[popculturebuffet]

Giant Days (Boom) #1 “Like A Sexy Moon”

In honor of Giant Days grand finale one-shot this week, we go all the way back to the beginning of it’s long and storied ongoing where three first year university students consisting of a flighty energetic goth, a hardboiled detective metaphorically in the body of a med student, and a cheerful and naive small town girl whose mostly hair try to make it through lunch without chaos ensuing. Spoilers: Chaos ensues. Class, and a heartfelt mega-paragraph about my love of the series, is under the cut. 

A few years ago, i’d say about 2016, my mom had her annual oscar party. This isn’t all that relevant to the story, and reveals that even at 27 (I kept forgetting to correct my age on my blog), soon to be 28, I still live at home, but it’s important because it’s where I first read giant days. Buying the first volume during a comixology sale that had it for all of three bucks, I lapped up the series almost immediately,  then when I got home got my hands on every issue that had been out at the time and caught up asap, following the series since then to it’s conclusion this week. , only missing the “Where women blow and men plunder” special. For the past few years, in an ever changing comic book landscape where titles come and go, start strong and peter out or are just plain great or foul from the start but leave all the same , i’ts been my rock. My mountain in a sea of ever changing titles... and Wednesday said mountain breaks off and floats off into the either, maybe to become a new campus for the university of north carolina in the sky I dunno. The point is the series means a lot to me and it’s sad to see it go, even if it’s writer John Allison probably won’t leave my life and knowing him our heroes probably will return, or at least one or two of them will, someday, it’s still a sad end to a heartfelt, ungodly hilarious, sometimes rediculous but always intresting journey. My intrest may of waxed and waned, as is expected when a book runs 4 years, but it never left  my heart. So join me won’t you as I go back to where it all began.. not with the whole volume, but with the first monthly issue of giant days. 

------------------------- Giant Day is the creation of John Allison, who before creating this and other print works By Night and Steeple, which having not read past issue 1 or read it yet respectively will certainly pop up here eventually, was the creator of a large number of web comics, all of which I discovered thanks to Giant Days, in part because Giant Days itself is a Spin-Off from Allison’s second comic strip, and his most famous work pre-Giant Days: Scary Go Round

Scary Go Round itself was a spinoff/sequel to Allison’s previous comic strip Bobbins, originally following two minor characters from that strip before they were slowly shoved out of the strip in favor of Shelley Winters... and yes the name i intentional, not the actress from Cheers but a bubbly red head with a skewed sense of reality and a can do spirit and her two best friends: local layabout with a heart of gold Ryan, one of shelly’s old friends and Amy, the daughter of Shelley’s ex-boss, a sharp tounged young woman with a healthy libidio who grows from a spoiled princess to a responsible buisness owner. The three deal with relationship issues, wacky shenanigans.. and the supernatural stuff that happens in their town of Tackleford because it’s a hub of spoopy shit Just in case you thought it was just his other print works that were kinda weird in comparison to the mostly grounded Giant Days, nope. While his stuff post the original bobbins is well grounded in character work, it’s all got a tinge of weird to it. If you have the time check it out. While some things may fly over your head unless you read the original bobbins, and I strongly suggest you don’t, it’s otherwise a very good read and very much the blue print for his stronger later stuff. 

And as noted it’s from this weird and wonderful early goop we get the protaganist of this book: Esther DeGroot, a perky goth girl who intitally showed up with her best friend Sarah and their muscle Big Lindsay to have LIndsay beat amy into the ground for chatting up a singer they liked. Thankfully she quickly grew out of having her friends beat up college drop outs and instead became a weird, snarky goth and rival to Shelley’s snarky buttoned up sister Erin for the heart of local shy awkard lab assitant Eustace “The Boy” Boyce, himself introduced as fumbling assitant to local inventor and longtime pal of Shelley’s Tim. And you can now see why I had to get into everyone else as SGR’s characters tend to intersect and that web only widens. 

Esther would eventually win, and Erin would eventually end up in hell then forgotten from everyone’s memories shortly after, with Esther and Eustace staying together for the duration of the strip and through many shenanigans and were actually a rather adorable couple. By this time Esther and Eustace were just as much leads as the main three and Esther was a close friend of Ryan’s to the point he and Sarah went out briefly in their Senior Year.. when Sarah was 18 thankfully. Though Ryan did get punched over it by a drunken awkard teenager so things sorted themself out. Big Lindsay quitely disappeared and was revealed to have gottten pregnant. Both would later show up in Giant Days. The strip ended, after a soft launch for the next strip which we’ll get to in a second, with Esther and freinds graduating, Ryan and Sarah breaking up, Shelley leaving town (She’d later return but story for another time), and Ryan and Amy, who had a whole will they or won’t they thing, getting together. 

Allison did this for a reason: He felt Scary Go Round was collapsing under it’s mound of Continuity and thus decided to switch to a fresh cast. Same continuity but with less ties to the old so new readers wouldn’t be turned off. Thus came Bad Machinery. Set up during the waning days of SGR, it followed Sarah’s weird sister Lottie, her sluthy best friend Shauna and a bunch of other bright young kids i’m only not getting into because i’ve introduced enough characters and most of the ones i’ve introduced are either vital to SGR or show up in Giant Days , but are all fantastic, focusing more on the mystery while also having some coming of age stuff of it’s own as by the series end years later, the characters all grew into their late teens. It’s an excellent read and again worth checking out if you haven’t and unlike SGR is in print with the print versions adding more pages to the story and revising bits. I haven’t read them but I intend to eventually because of the revisal, but if you can’t afford them the entire originals are online free. 

Bad Machinery would later be a hit in it’s own right, as the print collections show, but in it’s first years it was actually a shaky proposition to uproot everything, replace almost the entire cast (Though Ryan and Amy, now married, stayed around as supporting cast, with Ryan being the kids teacher and Amy eventually mentoring Shauna), and change the genre from 20 somethings and teens slice of life to a bunch of 11-12 year olds coming of age and solving mysteries. And at first things dipped a bit apparently and Allison panicked and started working on a backup plan. And that backup plan was where Giant Days comes in: A Spinoff following esther and two new characters as they navigate college. He did three self published issues of it, the first put online, before focusing back on bad machinery as it picked up, and many other projects we’ll cover some day. Esther as a result was kinda left in limbo while Erin and Eustace’s stories moved forward. It seemed Esther and her new pals Daisy and Susan were lost to time...

Until 2015 when Allison agreed to do a mini-series for Boom! Studios that picked up where the original series left off, eventually getting picked up as an ongoing that lasted all the way to last month, with 2 winter specials, a one shot trip to Australia, and a final one shot finishing the series Wednesday.  As for said series I do own it, Boom has since republished it, and we will get to it.. but I felt given this is where I and probably most other fans of the series came in, it was the best place to start and issue #1 of the boom series recaps what’s come so far and re-introduces the cast well. Kinda like the second episode of a series after the pilot: some things have changed, including the series now having Artist Lisa Tremain on board to draw instead of Allison himself, some new characters have been added, but it’s still the same show and still a good point to start. And with ALLL that exposition out of the way, including exposition to set up characters for ISSUES down the line, and a little more to go, let’s dig in.  As seen at the top, the first cover is great. The yellow and red works well, as does the simple image of a morose Esther fiddling with her phone, boxing gloves on the back for reasons we’ll see shortly. A good genre setter and an excellent cover, something the series always delivers with. 

We open on our three Heroines, on their third week of college,  with a helpful narration that does a good job summing each up, so I don’t have to and you know how I like to jabber, the giant barrage of paragraphs before should be proof: Naive cheerful Daisy, dramatic and funloving esther, and serious and sardonic Susan. There will be, and already is, more to each as they grow and we learn more, and Esther of course has a few years of comics behind her to start, Giant Days even being named after a Esther and Eustace centric arc from Scary Go Round, but not something I could fit into the exposition wall. 

As you can see the ladies are having a nice talk about if they would be friends without living in the same hall, with Susan bursting Daisy and Esther’s bubble.. but it fits her personality. Susan is a realist, she sees the world how it is. Daisy is an optimist seeing the world how it SHOULD be and Esther navigates the space between, as she can be realistic once in a while but mostly tries to avoid reality like the plauge in this series. She had a tad of this in Scary Go Round but it’s really dialed up here, but there’s a good reason for why i’ll get to after Susan helpfully outlines the indie issues for me and new readers.

See this is why I went here first: while I will cover these issues, themselves covering their first three weeks of college, eventually, it covers most of what happened pretty well and makes it easy to fill in the blanks that it glossed over. The first issue did indeed turn into a scott pilgrim style brawl where Esther boxed her way to victory, Susan set someone on fire and Daisy tried to use meditation to fight but Paul Mcartney’s ghost said no. It’s not a bad issue but tone wise the series would be something much more diffrent. 

Issue 2 is where I need to go into more detail: Esther cheated on Eustace with the douchebag you rightfully see in a heap above, who then spread their night around and got his commupance. Esther told Eustace.. who dumped her over it and drove her into a depressive state, a weird heavy metal society, and booze, which she can drink because you can drink at 18 in England. She was saved from it by her new galpals.. and Erin, who was supposed to likely be a recurring character, possibly on the same level as two we’ll get to soon, and definitely figured into a major plot with Daisy, as Allison admitted. But with the gap between issues and having other plans for Erin, he decided to write her out.  Susan pegs Esther as a drama queen soon after, a “sodding drama magnet”, attracting attention like I attract X-Men comics and Kirk Cameron attracts terrible Christian movies designed to stroke his own ego. She proves this by handing her a piece of paper and well....

Well look on the bright side Esther, you have a good career as the bride of dr.doom with those skills. I mean he’s single, has a spooky castle, does magic.. he’s basically a goth’s wet dream he just needs to black up his uniform a bit. Or put on that awful leather made out of a human armor he had. Yes that was a thing. Comics are weird. 

The rest of the group chase after an angry Esther who after this immortal line, challenges Susan to a bet: if Susan wins she gets a nice massage, if Esther wins she gets to dress Susan up however she likes to torment her.

 And somehow DAISY is the one who has a coming out story in a few issues. Jokes aside I do like the friendship here: They’ll razz each other, give Daisy time, and poke at their flaws gently, or be brutally honest, but their truly and honestly friends and it shows. It feels real and it’s one of the series big draws.  The girls run into Esther’s friend Ed. Ed has a huge crush on Esther, even when she had a boyfriend something to the series credit he was called out on, but not the nerves or charisma to actually try and ask her out. Shockingly, I liked, and still liked, Ed a lot as he reminded me of well.. myself in college. Pining after girls or starring without actually going anywhere and the series will deconstruct this as we go. He’s also basically the fourth main character, getting issues focusing entirely on him and arcs of his own, but the girls are still the main focus. Susan freezes however upon seeing his friend...

This is our fifth lead, McGraw. Basically a more emotive and british Ron Swanson who as you can see clearly has a history with Susan and Susan splits before they can say more. While McGraw falls back on the old men streotype of “We don’t have to talk about it”, though unlike say Tim Taylor it’s less “I genuinely believe this nonsense, as well as that men are  incapable of commuincating unless my neighbor tells me otherwise and all loves sports. I unsuprsingly got divorced once the kids all left the house, aug aug aug”  and more “I don’t want to talk about this nor do I want to force my new friend to talk about a touchy subject yet. “ Susan is likewise closed off but in her own special Susan way and Esther reveling in Susan having drama after accusing her of being a drama queen. This ends about as well as you’d expect. 

Daisy has had best friends for all of three weeks and she’s already figured out lies are a key part of friendship. Good for her. Esther heads off for the Gym, and while Daisy declines due to, and i’m not making this up this is a genuinely good joke of john’s, worrying she’ll become a killing machine. Esther however needs it to work out her feelings over Eustace because punching shit is better than wallowing in her misery over loosing the love of her, at this point, short life. 

That panel on the right... that’s a blessed image. And really this image showcases the true heart of the series: as I said the girls are there for each other but it dosen’t feels schmaltzy or forced, it feels real and has plenty of great lines to add to that. Daisy goes back to try talking to Susan, but Susan takes a bit and when she finally works up the energy to visit daisy. 

I I understand that feeling. It’s like the realization Mr. Rogers had sex at least once. You don’t WANT to know something that pure and innocent is capable of fucking, but you do now and it will haunt you like that ghost that won’t stop stealing my soap. BUY YOUR OWN SOAP JEREMY I’M BROKE SON. Of course this wasn’t actually sex stuff as Susan soon relays to Esther as she fears she upset the poor humanoid afro lesbian. 

Side note I love the phrase having a fiddle and will save it for future use. But yeah with Susan somehow spooked, she suggests Esther change the subject as soon as they get in there. 

Susan.. ya brought this on yourself. Naturally she tries to avoid getting into the subject until eventually this happens. 

I’ll be saving this for future reference of course. And Susan gives us a LITTLE to go on... about two panels worth of ominus foreshadowing to the eventual reveal without any actual info about what in the bloody hell actually happened. 

Of course Susan calls for dinner time and says they’ll have to earn the rest later. Naturaly McGraw is also going in for dinner and Susan once again tries to deflect as her friends bascially call him a snack. I mean he is ron swanson crossbred with berkely brethead. who wouldn’t?

I love the line above.. especially since really the comic DOES pass. While there is boy drama, and girl drama for Daisy, this issue has plenty else going on besides wanting to bang someone, though given Esther won’t shut up about McGraw while talking to the human equilveant of an active volcano.. 

She’s lucky she didn’t instead bash her face in with a tray, but she’s a friend after all. Susan saves the savage beatings for her enemies and McGraw is wise enough to not let his tray anywhere near her and to duck if she tried her own. Natrually given her Drama Magnet powers Esther somehow finds the one cowboy in all of England. 

His chivlary, genuine or dudebro wise unfortunately causes a chain reaction. 

Naturally Susan was hoping for something like this, loudly gloating at activating the drama field and at having won the bet and tries to use the high that being right gives a person to run McGraw out of town. 

Unfortunatley for her, while her speech is awesome i’ll admit, it’s also entirely unfair: She expects him to change schools, and given his focus on architecture and general no nonsense nature he choose this one for a reason. Just because you two have a history dosen’t mean you can just make him leave and McGraw, as seen above, isn’t taking it. And he responds just as badassly. 

Gross? A little. But worth it to basically win the argument without even invoking the fact you have the moral highground. Yeah he had to know she was going here too, but again he came her for a reason and has no reason to leave. She can be an adult about this and work past it or just avoid him, also like an adult. Esther, not wanting to deal with Susan’s smug or her rage both of which are probably ping ponging back and forth, sits with Ed and talks about her dramatic nature. She really dosen’t intend to call it on herself, but does like not knowing what will happen every day. 

This really sums up Esther’s character to start: She enjoys life, loves the hell out of it, but often fails to see the consequences of her actions. The drama field sometimes is just shit happening to her because she happens to be young, attractive and entergetic, but other times it happens, like with the blow up of her relationship, because she does something impulsive and it blows up in her face. Speaking of character insight we get a character defening inner monologue from ed. 

And that’s Ed’s pain:  To Esther she sees it genuinely as him just being her friend. And I do think even with his massive crush he genuinely cares about her more than just wanting to be with her, but worried she’ll reject him, as I can again relate. And even worse is the worry of not wanting to make their friendship weird. And i’ve had crushes on female friends that have gone both ways: it’s made things toow eird to continue, but i’ve also had plenty where I was gently turned down and we’re still on good terms to this day. One of my best friends was a result of this. What makes it work, when we’ve seen this plot a thousand times before, is that both the narrative and Ed don’t think he’s ENTITLED to Esther. Yes the above has him asking god to make her love him.. but it’s not in a forceful sense.. it comes off more as a desperate want for them to end up together or for him to be able to move on. It’s what seperates ed from a “nice guy”: Sure he’s into Esther, but he dosen’t think he deserves her, or that because their friends he’s earned her or any such nonsensical bullshit. He’s just hopelesly infatuated with the first girl he met in college and wants to either see where it goes, or have the feelings end so he can move on with someone he does have a future with. I”ve been there. Shit sucks and Allison handles it well without falling into entitlement territory, and given just HOW many geek gets the girl storylines have been written, having it treated realistically with it being treated with him having to get over her instead of her just being oblvious is refreshing and I wish i’d had a narrative like this when I was Ed’s age to smack me in the face and tell me “No it dosen’t work that way, say something or move on man. “ With that monster of a pargraph done let’s check back with the girls. 

Again, I love the character interactions and how that’s the focus here over anything else, even my word sandwitch up there. But speaking of things, Esther just up and asks Daisy what she was watching. Turns out...

Yup, Daisy just likes ASMR, which I now know just what it is, just a static reflex people get. Susan tests it to prove Daisy is normal and it’s just good clean fun. Esther tries to put nosepicking under the same, Elbow’s susan over it and we get this to close out our main trio for the issue. 

I am glad he showed off more lady friendships, but they would’ve been a hell of a couple had Allison went that way. Could be an intresting AU, especailly if you keep Daisy gay and have their being bi or pan, dealers choice, affect things. HOw would that effect their relationshpis, how long would it last, would the McGraw thing impact stuff.. it’s some food for thought is all i[’m saying. We close however on Ed and McGraw as Ron Jr. unpacks his stuff and helps ed with his key sticking by rubbing a pencil on it because Graphite is a lubricant. Huh. Neat. And then we end on this. 

And on that note, we end issue 1. No write in contests though i’m damn sure given he’s mentioned he’d want a ROM/Giant Days crossover for the absurdity John Allison would love that. 

Final Thoughts;  An excellent start to the BOOM! series and a good second pilot. It’s clear stuff happened but the series helps you get the gist well enough to not have to buy the collection of the first three issues, and the characters are all dynamic with plenty of laughs as well as genuine moments. Susan and Esther’s banter is hilarious and both Esther and Susan are given plenty of layers: Esther’s grappling with her sorrow over her nuking her first romance and Susan being sharp witted, quick to be smug with Esther, but still gentle with Daisy and trying to careful with her given her sheltered life before College. Daisy isn’t given much layers in this issue, but is sitll shown to be incredibly sweet and realstically naive. McGraw is a welcome addition, his past with susan providing an intresting mystery for what was intended to be just 6 issues and solved by the end, while also having some intresting swagger to him enough to not make him JUST her love intrest or Ed’s best friend. Tremain’s art is also great, diffrent than what most of the series would end up being, a bit sketchier with more dot eye, but still nice and stylish. I’ll also confess the cafeteria scene is what let me know the book existed as I read it in the back of another boom title, I can’t remember which honestly, wher eit was featured as a preview and was intstantly intrigued. Overall a strong start. There’s a reason the series both caught on and lasted as long as it did and i’ll miss it terribly. I won’t be reviewing as time goes by this week, though I may post some quick thoughts on it, but I intend to review the full series, including the 3 indie issues and specials, so i’ll probably get to it at some point. An excellent series that I can’t recommend enough. 

If you liked this review, feel free to reblog it, follow me for more, or comisson one for a comic of your choice for just 5 bucks. Until then, have some giant days of your own.