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popculturebuffet · 25 days ago

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A Sizeable Giant Days Retrospective: Part 1: Love and Friendship Through Small Fires (Giant Days Indie 1-3)

Hello all you happy people! I'm Jake, I review comics and today starts a project i've been wanting to do since I started this blog. Today I begin a long through look at Giant Days, one of my favorite comics of all time and the best set college story i've either read or scene.

For those of you less familiar with this series, i.e. my handful of regular readers: Giant Days is a slice of life series from John Allison. Allison is one of my favorite writers in any medium, a man with deft character work, great comedy and fantastic art. It's not a coincidence two of his comics, this one right here and Solver, a fantastic soft reboot of one of his finest character Lottie Grote. We'll get to her in a minute but now here's here as a dog house.

That image lives rent free in my head and you will not be getting context for it today.

Giant Days follows three women as they enter college:

Esther DeGroot, a cheeful, intellgent goth who has a lot of compassion and a habit for not thinking anything through. Susan Ptolemy, a hardned gumshoe turned med student who smokes like a chimney, thinks as little of humanity as possible and has never met a cutting remark she didn't like.

Daisy Wooten, our last lead and a kind pile of hair whose naive as she is warm, open and optimistic.

There's two other sort of leads in Ed, who we'll get to shortly and McGraw, who we'll get to next time and close to 60 issues. The series is refreshingly done: the series as a whole has a ton of plots going on, character development, call backs, and setups, many of which I noticed reading it in one go after getting a few trades I was missing and my wonderful fan and friend @weirdkev27 getting me the rest for christmas. Yet most issues are nice little one and done stories you can pick up and read whenever you want. Allison is the master of single issue stories, and is a pro at making issues you can pick up and enjoy, while also setting up for bigger payoffs. Giant Days is one wonderful ride and i'm glad to get started all over again, this time taking you all along.

For this first part i'll be looking at the past of one Esther DeGroot before this comic, and the first three issues of it, all self published before Boom Picked it up. All this and Enya, Death Metal, aborted additions to the cast, awkward bedroom talk and one of the most beautiful scenes in comic history. If you'd like to read these issues in paticular you can on Allison's Website if you want.

And if not or if your all caught up join me under the cut!

The Pre-History of Esther Fontenella DeGroot

Before Giant Days, there was Scary Go Round. Scary Go Round was John Allison's second webcomic and first hit. While his previous comic Bobbins had a fan or two, it was messy and random like most early webcomics were till they found their focus.

For John it was a group of 20 somethings he salvaged from Bobbins: Shelley Winters, a charming and peppy redhead whose a bucket full of weird, Tim Jones, local inventor, ladies man and he of massive sideburns, Ryan Beckwith, a weird but charming layabout with a penchant for pet crows and ladies, and Amy Beckwith, Shelley's best friend and overconfident art student with a habit for tattoos and bad choices but a down to earthness her friends badly lack.

It's a solid comic you can buy here on Allison's gumroad.

It's also where a certain goth enterted the scene, then as a high schooler who along with her friends was pissed Amy chatted up the lead singer of their favioite band and took things a touch too far as they couldn't just call her mean names on twitter yet.

Esther and Friends were a lot rougher and weren't really intended to come back just quickly end this storyline because John needed an ending, something he's admitted happened a LOT during Scary Go Round and why he planned things out more later. It's also an arc that included this

This isn't remotely relevant to the discussion, but have you REALLY lived if you haven't shown your audience a metal band following the bidding of a mantis from doncaster who lives in a man's beard and eats his pepperamis?

As you can also see John used Adobe Illustrator in these days. He'd go back to drawing things by hand. It's not terrible art but it lacks the heart of the stuff he'd draw by hand though having seen the original Bobbins and been someone desperate to get content out, I fully understand going with this option as he still did creative stuff with it.

Esther was set to be like these guys, stuck in comics limbo with only an elder god mantis to keep them company, but she got lucky as Allison was feeling stuck in a rut. In his words from the intro to the third ebook for scary go round

So to scratch his itch Allison decided to focus on another minor character: The Boy. The Boy , aka Eustance Boyce, was a pineapple headed sack of hormones and awkward that worked for Tim as his assitant and quickly gained a crush on Amy as she's already a friendly slightly older woman, once you add tattooes it's game over man game over. He got over the crush because Allison had nothing else to do with it and was given a starring story the child alongside the rest of the teen cast. This included a new challenger, Erin Winters

Erin is Shelley's sister, and he opposite: Bitter, cynical and mean to most people, with it later being clear a lot of this comes from being stuck in Shelley's sizeable shadow of weirdness and pep.

Esther was also reintroduced, initally as a mildly creepy goth girl who had a crush on the boy, but quickly evolved into her final form: a bubbly goth who liked to snark, had a kind heart and a low tolerance for jerks, not happy when her friends from before Sarah and Big Lindsay decided to put Erin's head in a toilet to keep her away from the boy. This instead lead to the two becoming friends as Esther found a soggy Erin and helped her clean up as Erin was scared to tell her mum.

This friendship became strong lasting a few stories.. but sadly polyamory wasn't a thing in the mid 2000's so instead this love triangle came to a sad conclusion with the story Giant Days. Tim had been banished after his girlfriend sabtoaged him in an invent off, you know usual relationship drama that coul dhappen in any comic so the Boy and Esther skipped school to go look for him. Erin was painfully aware her chances were low, if mature enough to recognize that it wasn't esther's fault she developed faster. We also get a nice flashback I completley forgot about where a younger, far shyer and far more violent esther met the boy and likely started fanciing him.

I mostly included this for that shot of young esther up top.. she just looks so shy and scared... but still enough of who she is to set Milford's crotch on fire. Milford is the boy's friend, the kind of friend you have in high school due to proximity and classes more than actually liking them as a human being and can't wait to never see again.

The Boy does another brave act by trying to scare some demon bears away, and the result is.. well

It's a genuinely sweet moment and while I remembered the use of these twos sexuality a lot worse.. Allison is pretty tactful about it and the fact these are teens. You can't NOT talk about sex, but it dosen't use it for fanservice.

Sadly.. this ends Erin and Esther's friendship, as Erin runs away sobbing after piecing it all together. You'd think this would lead to years of drama and what not over what happened, maybe piecing the friendship back together.. but by this point Allison had gotten tired of Erin so he wrote her out and due to the sheer exaustion of also trying to tie up a bunch of other plot points just.. had her end up in hell with Allister Crowley who'd tried to make her his bride (Though thankfully is later established to have died soon after they got to hell, Hooray!), and everyone get amnesia that Erin ever existed so he could move on. It's a story i'm not fond of, probably won't revisit unless I cover Scary Go Round as a whole at some point, and is one of the low points in both this strip and Allison's work. I love the man but this was a stupidly convoluted way of solving the plot line and writing erin out when a simple trip aborad and dumping Crowley alone in hell would do.

So Esther and the Boy continued on, happy as can be and with Esther dragging him into more nonsense. Eventually Sarah came back now the best friend spot was open again, soon sporting pink hair and a bit nicer attitude. Big Lindsay.. would be written off with a teen pregnancy because John was not great at writing characters off, but he thankfully was also great at taking that aside and fleshing Big Lindsay out considerably when she shows up in Giant Days. More on that in part 3.

Sarah stuck around as Esther's sidekick, even getting her own storyline. Unfortuantely that storyline was dating the mid 20 something Ryan. To Allison's credit he clearly regrets this: nothing like this has happened again and when brought up in Giant Days Esther isn't exactly proud to bring it up

It's not great as Shelley fully supports it and while Ryan's awkward about the whole thing, he dosen't exactly stop it and it's treated as entirely normal and not you know.. gross and wrong. A lowpoint in his life yes, but it's also treated as an obstacle to his endgame relationship with Amy. Scott Pilgrim made some mistakes, I got into them in my review of the series and Takes Off took steps to rectify some of them, but it was at least always the intention that Scott dating a 17 year old was a sign he was in a bad fucking place.

To his credit John realized this as in addition to above there's another age gap that's about the same length that pops up next time that's treated as it should, along with a creepy predator down the road, and Bad Machinery has Ryan move on to teaching children somehow and being his best self. It's still not good by any stretch and I wish I could've slinked past it like planned, but it's something Allison clearly learned from and thankfully didn't repeat.

This whole mess happened as Scary Go Round was winding down. John had grown tired of it's sprawling nature and had hit a wall with most of the cast, so he decided to end it. And his original plan was... look I don't like that this section keeps turning into Dunk on John Allison and i'l l have plenty of good to say.. but the original ending, outlined in the final collection, is pure uncut crack cocaine

So in a few storylines, John had introduced a mysterious vistor with long black hair clearly meant to resemble/be Michael Jackson using his possible son "The Child", resembling Jackson's own son, to sew chaos. he's the one being burned in effigy on Erin and the Boy's sorta date above.

So the original plan was for the boy to accidently shoot Eustace after a wild teen party, and then resurrect him from the dead to avoid "da law". Zombie Eustace would then go to prom with Esther who rejects him for eating brains. This causes Zombie Eustace to go on a rampage and kill the bulk of the secondary cast before somehow fusing with Michael Jackson and the Child to form a three headed giant monster. Tim would return to give Esther super robot armor and Esther would end the series killing her boyfriend. Also this somehow gets Ryan and Amy together.

DA END

So yeah there's a super duper cursed timeline out there where instead of dealing with blowing up her relationship with Eustace early in the comic.. Esther would be dealing with having blown up Eustace. And most of downtown Tackleford.

Jackson's death meant changing the storyline at the last minute, so instead of being about a zombie nightmare, the final story was instead a soft pilot for Allison's next main comic Bad Machinery. Bad Machinery leaned fully into the school thing, focusing on six kids from age 11-12 to their mid teens as they solved a supernatual mystery each book and dealt with normal tween and teen struggles along the way that the monster was often a metaphor for or tied to in some way. It's fantastic stuff and can be read on go comics in it's entirety.

So one half followed Lottie, Sarah's Sister and Shauna, Lottie's best friend as they finished the boy in a way that wasn't an orgy of blood and robot fists, while the teen characters all prepared for College and to leave, a morose but well done ending. Shelley also left to go to london, Ryan and Amy implicitly got together before being married during the timeskip to Bad Machinery.

DA END

So while Bad Machinery was always planned as John's next main project, he was still a tad nervous this early in his career about fan reaction and it took a little bit for Bad Machinery to warm on his old fanbase. It thankfully did, and would go on to be his second biggest project.

Still John had another in the back pocket, and thus Giant Days was born. John had always intended to have someone else draw the comic, but drew a first issue as a proof of concept.. then never heard back from Oni Press. He published it online, it got a great reaction so he made two more issues to help sell it. Eventually the stars alligned at a convention, he met with Boom and Giant Days became a full ongoing with art by Lisa Tremain for the first 6 issues and Max Sarin for the rest aside from a few fill ins and one shots. This resulted in Allison's most succesful work and the one he's most proud of. Nearly 5 years of comics. Let's get started

We begin with Esther's first day at university, with her parents dropping her off and her dad imparting some sage advice about how accidental fires can be good conversation starters. She has a tearful goodbye with them, one that feels extra painful having re-read the whole series and knowing how distant they'll become

But enough omnius hints at the future. While Esther is one of the leads, Giant Days is an ensemble piece and we soon meet Daisy

It's a nice moment and solid start that says a lot about Daisy before we really unpack her: the big ole truck she overfilled, her avoiding being an "inconvience", her shyness to start. It still feels slightly off, like a lot of pilots do, Daisy feels more passive than she does later, it's remarkable how fantastic she is on the first go.

That also applies to our third lead, as the girls noise wakes a local goblin woman they'll soon come to know as their best friend

It's so damn perfect. It shows Susan as angry, irational, a chain smoker and her magnificent fangs. I just love the pointy fangs and the bedhead and he rnear feral shout of "IN A WEEK" it's so good and expressive. The fangs sadly do not make the jump to Lisa Tremain's art while Max Sarin opts to use them for effect only, something that's fair but still a shame. Luckily Allison will draw two issues of the boom run so we get plenty more of susie with her baracuda fangs.

For now Esther lets the beast sleep, clearly already impressed but also well aware trying to wake her for lunch would cost her a limb. She and Daisy are instant besties though: Esther admires her sweetness and Daisy loves her confidence.. and says it outloud because she's a precious fluffy bean.

So after some bad food the two decide to hit the pub later as it's subsidized. Unfortunately for Esther she now has other problems as the Head Girls from a bunch of other girls show up, your standard mean girl bitch posse squad team. The Mean Girl Bitch Posse Squad Team lie about Daisy being there and abduct gothie while Daisy tries knocking. Susan fills her in on what she missed and invites Daisy in. I love this as it shows that as standoffish as Susan delights in being her reaction to Daisy is largely the same as Esther: She sees someone who needs a friend and provides it. She's trollier about it sure

But still offers our tall stack of floof a cup of tea. I also need that snake mug yesterday. The two hit the shops while Susan internally private eye monologues, something that won't last but I love deeply. She reveals she's from Northampton, a big city I assumed John Allison had came up with but no. Like our main setting of Sheffield, it's very real and in later works John became more fond of using real places, leaving Tackleford behind unless necessary after Bad Machinery. She also talks about having to let the heat die down, which impresses me as even this early John likely had her backstory locked in. But we'll get into her past more next time, for now she correctly pegs Daisy as from a four house village in the idylic countryside. She's wrong about their being a neighborhood crow but hey even batman's fucked up. No detective is 100%.

Meanwhile Esther has an awful night as the Mean Girl Bitch Posse Squad Team go on about their bofyriends, assume Eustace is on drugs or ripped or something, and generally make Esther want to flee, which she does if not before they trash the dining hall.

Esther wisely brings Daisy an apology breakfast, with Susan joining them.. not because of Esther though.

That second panel is perfection: The weirdly realistic enjya, the stuffed animals, Daisy's sweatband which like her love of Enya will be a thing from now on her just blank squashed face as she fears for her life from the cruel elder god standing in her doorframe. It's beautiful.

It's also telling Daisy.. holds nothing against Esther for the incident. Their as close as they already were, while she and Susie now form a bond on mutual hatred. It's a lovely thing.

We also get another thing i'm shocked stuck this early: Daisy's taking Archeology which will be her major. Esther's is literature suprising few and as i've mentioned Susie P is pre med.

So in her next class we meet our fourth main character. I mentioned Ed earlier. He's a lanky guy who has a giant mane of hair this early on and falls for esther at first sight

He's a super nerd, into battlestar galactica back when that was a thing, but while she doesn't share his intrest in sci fi she's a pretty goth girl whose nice to him. As an awkard neard myself, especailly when I was ed's age that was everything. I was also a tad stupid as is Ed, whose kind and makes good jokes, but also lets his hormones do the walking. Just like someone else Esther's currently dating huh. She attracts a type.

So while the Mean Girl Bitch Posse Squad Team plots to keep Esther from her new best friends, said new best friends invite her to join them at the dance that evening. Well Daisy and Esther will dance Susan will stand as much as she pleases or else.

Unfortunately the Mean Girl Bitch Posse Squad Team abduct Esther again. She could just tell them to fuck off but is trapped by societal convetions and these girls stalking her like a rabid wildebeast.

Esther gestures for them to save her when she arrives at the party but Daisy's GESTURE ILLTERATE! Oh No. Thankfully the Mean Girl Bitch Posse Squad Team makes the key mistake of telling Daisy to back off. Oh that sweet naive member of the Mean Girl Bitch Posse Squad Team whose name shows up in the issue but i'm not looking up has no idea whose bread and butter she's fucking with and Susan straight up decks her.. and hurts her arm as despite her whole deal she shockingly dosen't punch stuck up snots in the face on a regular basis and threw it out.

It's here where the comic pivots.. up to this point it's on point for what the comic would be the rest of it's run: a charming tightly written slice of life with characters who perfectly bounce off each other with Gilmore Girls level dialogue, while having them slowly develop over time as they grow as people.

For this one John decided to say fuck it and try something outside his wheel house. A slice of life... that also usually involves people getting into high energy fistifcuffs. Yeah Giant Days #1 takes a hard turn into Scott Pilgrim, something John hadn't tried before or since. He does another weird turn in the finale but more as a fun bookend and more in line with the usual bobbinsverse kind of supernatural.

Here the head girls are all the strongest fighters in their school, as it's a requirement they each master a fighting style, and want to pummel susan. To save her Esther has Ed go fetch her boxing gear, she took up boxing back in high school and it comes up ocassionally here. Oh and to buy time... daisy meditates.. and reveals SHE CAN FLY WITH THE POWER OF YOGA

While Allison isn't above nonsense, he quite enjoys it to the point he made a whole X-Men comic about Kitty and Wolverine going to a concert for a bruce springstein expy introduced in the trainsformers comics based purely on his vauge memories of 80s marvel, this style didn't last. It feels more like a Scott Pilgrim Homage than something taking that basic idea and doing it's own thing with it. It's something I want more of, and Allison probably could've pulled off.. but it's not where his heart was. His heart was with a coming of age story he could do fun one ofs about student life with. About building fun sitcom scenarios off the characters. He just couldn't squeeze a bunch of fights in there. Scott Pilgrim was built with this idea in mind, perfectly designed for the punch ups with each one esclating in how much it intersected with Scott's personal life, going from wacky side brawls in the first two volumes to directly solving his problems in volumes 3, 4 and 6. John Allison can do whatever he damn wants if he wants to, but it's clear by the next issue going soley for the slice of life stuff and a massive emotoinal punch he realized where the series strengths, and his were. I would love for someone to make a good Scott Pilgrim spirtiual succesor, this just wasn't it.

So Ed gets esthers thing, she cleans house, but the last member of the Mean Girl Bitch Posse Squad Team fights with NO STYLE.. which means all of them at once. So Batman Style. Also Ed accidently cups daisy whose cross about it, the first time we see the rage underneath the surface. Thankfully while Esther can't counter no style, Susan can.. with fire. She sets her hair on fire. So does that mean she and Esther are soulmates now? I mean I knew that and McGraw is probably okay with a third. Seems to be her pattern.

At any rate everybody parties and we get a quick wrap up at Caddrick Hall, the girl's residence: the Mean Girl Bitch Posse Squad Team has disbanded, like they were never there and peace reigns while Esther wonders what the fuck just happened. The Boy pops in for a cameo and they run into Ed whose morose to realize she's taken as Esther takes the Boy to go plow and Susan presumably takes daisy out for a nice tea to avoid the primal sounds that would etch onto her poor innocent soul.

Issue 1 is excellent and a solid start to the series. While parts of the characters are still settling it fits it being the first week of college: the cast isn't comfy because their in a new place dealing with both the recent dramas of the past in Susan and Ed's case and the shellshock of a new place in everyone's case. While I never went to a university Community College was still disorienting and your still lost figuring out what the hell your doing for some time, which is a large part of our ladies first year. Yet our heroes find each other anyways: A confident goth, a shy new age sweetheart and a horror from a stygian pit with a heart of gold. Their gonna need each other.. especially after the next one.

I like this cover. It's not one i've really thought of but I like it's casualness.

So we begin with Susan and Daisy having started a side hustle of doing other students laundry since most don't know how. While relaxing between loads , Susan picks up on the obvious

While I don't' want to have to think about Ed's awkward penis, especially with that expression I LOOOOOVE Susan's face in the last panel. Just the happiest troll right there.

Susan has just met Ed and she's already worried Esther's gonna break his heart. We also get a nice revealing little sentence when Daisy asks an understandable question

It's clear Susan's already impressed and it's cute as hell. Her suggestion to deal with this... less so as her plan is "make it so ed walks in on Esther and Eustace doin it". Daisy rightfully points out while Esther will break his heart "You'll atmoize his insides!" and i'ts a bit TOO extreme of a solution

I love this scene as it's where it feels like these two really click into place: Now her guards down a little after the first few meetings, Susan is the Susan I'm more used to from the rest of the series: snarky, doubtful of people, but with a heart. And not just the one she keeps in a jar. While her solution for Ed's dilemma is fucked up, she gets the guy is pining after someone whose unavailable and not really that interested if she was, and that going down this road is only going to lead to pain. And without spoiling how... it does. Daisy likewise gets to show more of her iron will hiding beneath the innocense and optimism, as well as her insight into people: she may be naive.. but she gets this is the dumbest outcome possible in an already bad situation. The fact Susan backs down in the face of this says it all: Daisy may be less wordly than her.. but her carring means she gets people more. Susan is primed to think the worst.. and Daisy thinking the best means she cares if they get hurt, while Susan feels i'ts just ineveitble. Its something that'll come up again at the end of the comic.

For now we meet Ed's friend steve. Steve sucks. Steve is a cap wearing douche who assures ed he's in the friend zone, and gives vauge answers on his chances after meeting her for reasons that will only prove incredibly greasy and obvious. Fuckin Steve.

For now Daisy and Susan talk more on the ed situation that night, with Susan realizing letting nature take it's course happen.. but Daisy's still worried.

Susan soon has bigger issues as she has to deal with some noisy assholes the floor above who won't stop playign the fucking guitar at 3 in the morning. The next morning she's the only one sleep deprived as Esther is a heavy sleeper and Daisy made the smart decision to have earplugs and a mask... and a keen sense of smell should fire happen.

We see more of Fuckin Steve, as he has a guitar and a well set up room. He spends most of the lecture fucking around and plans to get some more fucking around, making an excuse to ditch ed so he can hang out with Esther after the lecture. And Ed's told him about the boyfriend thing but unlike ed who happlessly pines for Esther and figures he has no real chance but can't stop himself, Fuckin Steve plans to drive the wedge. Somehow. He'll figure it out. He's Fuckin Steve dammit!

Ed goes to visit Esther and finds Susan instead who invites him in and hears him out... and actually finds a way to try and solve the situation that won't embed Eustace's dong into his memory forever more by giving him some sage advice

The next the Night Band has kept susan up as she hasn't found a day band, ahhhhhh, to counter it and missed breakfast. Daisy being daisy suggests going to dinner with Esther to cheer them up.. only for this to be a mistake. Esther is fresh off a phone fight with Eustace, unwilling to talk about it and lashing out.

Feeling pissy and boyfriendless, Esther wants to drink through her anger and suggests a night out... unfortuantely she takes the girls to the Slag Pit, a very real club it turns out. I found this out after John recently used it as the setting for a halloween party the cast of Solver attended, notable for both plot reasons, their 40's vintagewear loaned from their dowager benefactor, and just how damn crisp the page was.

Daisy naturally dosen't enjoy this and when Susan tries to get Esther to leave with them she's a real dick about it so Susan leaves her to it. Daisy is.. not so capable of brushing this off

I love this little moment. It's not super load bearing to the plot but looking back on it for this review.. it's just so sweet. Susan is clearly baffled this made Daisy sad, more used to interpersonal drama as we'll get into... but still is willing to act like the big sister daisy needs and perk her up, likely imitating the one sister she actually likes a little. I thought at first this might've been midlly sarcastic but no.. Susan gets Daisy needs her and switches gears instantly.

So with Esther pissed and Fuckin Steve happening to be int he right place as the club closes... he offers his place... and she makes a terrible decision. She fucks Fuckin Steve. And somehow he's not the worst mistake she makes. More on him next time. But it is the one that'll leave the biggest mark on her, a wound that won't heal for most of her first year. While these issues can be skipped to get there, the impact of cheating on Eustace and the fallout is something that haunts Esther for some time and something that while she moves on from and gets some closure for, she never quite forgives herself for.

So the next day Ed finds out because Fuckin Steve is the kind of guy who brags about it. Susan is sure it's bullshit as despite only having a vauge description of Fuckin Steve from Daisy knows Fuckin Steve is a bastard man. But it's true. In a moment of weakness, anger and loneliness and being reminded of Eustace by Fuckin Steve despite Fuckin Steve being nothing like Eustace, Esther diddled Fuckin Steve. She also broke his guitar but given he wasn't good at it it's no loss. That and it belonged to Fuckin Steve who was busy plowing someone else's field with someone who while sober enough to remember everything, so he at least isn't that level of monster, still had sex with someone he knew he was taken while she was emotoinally vunerable. I mean Esther's culpable: she made a big mistake. But Fuckin Steve till took advantage of her emotoinal state. Ed pining after her is sad and he should've just.. been honest sooner and let the pain happen so he could move on. It'll be a while. I wish i'd been that honest when I was his age and I get it's hard. But Fuckin Steve manipulated Ed out of the way, slept with someone he knew a friend fancied, and had a boyfriend, and played his shitty guitar all night long disturbing susan.

Yup turns out Fuckin Steve's the head of the night band. Before susan can rip out his beating heart and feed it and his guitar to him as he dies, Esther storms into deal with steve herself. She has her friends leave as this is something she's gotta do herself, so they have a night egg.. and Daisy tells her about the alone with Fuckin Steve part and not the whole "going to probably tear him several new assholes and build a condo with his remains" part.

So unlucky for Ed he sees Fuckin Steve fuckin somebody. Esther had already left so sadly the whole Giant Days crew minus Esther has Fuckin Steve's Fuckin Dong etched into their memories forevermore.

Daisy solves the night band by going to their RA.. and when she finds he's been smoking the drug pipe gets some of his letterhead and makes an offical sounding note, ending the night band. It's the first show of Daisy's cleverness and I love it. I also love their weird stoned RA who thankfully got a whole boom box short story later on.

Later that night Susan and Daisy walk on in one of my favoirte scenes in the comic: Esther's talking with Eustace and.. it's not looking good. And as you can probably guess it's over. It wont' be fully spelled out till next issue but it's the end. And after going over their relationship again it's sad. They did have something, something that probably wasn't forever but was still vibrant. It's clear form her tantrum over him not showing up the loneliness was getting to her, I mean if she's seeing him in a fuckboy like fuckin steve of all people it's critical. She had friends.. but she didn't have HIM. She lashed out impulsively. It's the key moment that shows Esther's impulsiveness as her big weak spot: that tendency to act and then get hit with consequences for it. She just wanted to feel loved again.. and lost love because of it. It's a wound that won't quite heel and will take 5 years, someone else, and dying and coming back as a horse than as a man again for Eustace to finally get over. It just hurts. Seeing there meet cute right before made it hurt worse.

So Daisy wonders if they can help Ed and we get one of my faviorite lines of the comic

It lays out who the two are: the eternal pessimest whose seen the worst of people.. and the optimst who can't help but see the best.. and Daisy's proven right as despite his pain and confusion ed picks up a guitar and plays.. and Susan is glad she and daisy are Friends. Daisy thinks she might be drunk but it's a genuinely sweet moment and the first time Susan's armor really cracks open and she realizes she may be wrong about people. It takes more than this.. but it shows why these two despite being nothing alike are so close: Susan looks out for Daisy and Daisy keeps Susan from plunging into her worst self. Encourages her to see world from a lighter view... to be a person who dosen't HAVE to lash out at everything, just as Susan helps daisy come to terms with a world more complicated than she might've been ready for. Just as Esther is the perfect partner to susan's snark and antics and the perfect cool big sis to daisy (Which Susan can do), Susan and Daisy compliment each other in a way the best friendships do and i'ts amazing to see.

Issue 2 is where Giant Days finds itself. It adds some depth with Esther cheating on Eustace, shattering their relationship and leaving an impact for issues to come, Susan and Daisy's conversatoin and everyone gets shaded in more. Except Ed but that takes a bit. While he shows flashes of depth here and there he really dosen't shine till he gets his own spotlight in issue 9. It's a masterful issue that was even better on this read and a sign of where the series was going

She may look a touch different.. but she's back. It's the Erin issue! So before she shows up proper let's get that out of the way: This issue John considered adding Erin to the cast: while her fate was set in stone by Bad Machinery, there was still a gap between "coming back from hell" and "becoming a local reporter who takes credit from children". He even had her in mind for a later story we'll get to next time.. but decided likely due to using her again in the present day for Bobbins.Horse that it was best to have her just disappear into the either. IT's a shame as she plays off everyone well, but it's probably for the best as explaning why Esther dosen't remember her , especially if she stuck around for any of the reunion adventures, as well as having a died in wool fate to write to, it was probably best she stayed off campus after this. Still her one guest spot is a memorable one and it is nice all of Esther's major supporting cast gets to show up. More on that in part 3.

For now we begin our last issue of the pilot run with some running. Daisy's taken Susan jogging which goes about as well as you'd expect for someone who spends most of her days smoking in a dark room with only a skeleton for company. Susan decides she and Daisy need a hobby

God the lines in this series are next level. Also yeah that second panel... woof. While Susan is cynical given her militant level of feminism in the full series this seems.. off to be so worried about "Oh no people might think i'm gay because I hang out with my friend of the same gender oh deary me nooooo!". It dosen't feel very Susan to give a shit if someone happens to think she's gay for stupid reasons. And yes I might think she's bi but her dialogue with Esther is hard to tell between flirting and just friendly banter in my ship poisoned brain.

So Susan decides to get out. Daisy tried tabletop gaming but thought it might be satanic because she's very daisy. And while a Buddhist now, still grew up in a religious environment so she fears Satan. Which fair, he's a dick, but Lucifer's a real pal once you get to know him.

Still he's a bit of a mess right now so they instead join the Indie Music Society. This quickly turns into an evening long bout of "how many people can blather on about their very standard tastes before Susan stabs someone in the leg. Thankfully a drop of water appears in this desert of mediocrity

Naturally the two instantly hit it off. And it's another reason I dont' think she stuck around. Susan and Erin are very similar. Their not the SAME character, Erin dosen't have as much Empathy as Susie P, but they fulfill similar roles. Had Erin's past not been locked under hell amnesia she still could've slid in easily, her complicated history with esther, her issues with her sister (Something Susan, youngest of 5, can relate to), the possibility of Eustace being available now and what she does with that, and a storyline with Daisy that was intended for her all give erin stuff, but she was always stuck with one arm tied behind her back. Always strung to the future. While this series left Esther out of the present day shenanigans going on in bad machinery, her not being involved gave her freedom, her storyline ambiguity as to where Gothy ends up and what happens with her new forever friends. With Erin... we know she ends up back in tackleford doing the news and that the amnesia hasn't warn off. If the series ever gets a film or tv series, something I badly want but doubt given Allison's disinterest with the only spinoff media so far being the YA Novel I haven't read yet, you could remove the hell baggage and various exits due to crisis crossover and have Erin as a plotline and fully unpack her and Esther's relationship, while hers with Susan and Daisy throws a wrench into the dream team. It's a good germ of a storyline but it's easy to see why John backed off. Erin's a character with potetial but one he never fully enjoyed using, and it was easier to let her off into the wilderness with an origin story for her car in Bad Machinery than try to crowbar her into a story that had the main cast it needed.

Susan and Daisy soon meet Thom, the up his own arse president of the club who got in because the previous club pres bought an album with their dues.. an album of drugs! And with no hope of the other canditates actually winning Susan decides to end this dude's career and runs.

Meanwhile oh yeah Esther's in this and gets an invite from a mysterious duo of metal heads to go to a metal club. While that goes on Daisy and Susan hang out at Erin's place. She's ditched the glasses at this point to avoid looking like her sister and offers everyone some booze, which Susan only turns down because there's a Daisy present. She's on antibiotics. While Susies over the moon, Daisy feels out of sorts, as drinking and pubs just aren't her. She's used to a quiet jigsaw with her granny she misses. Also if your curious about the whole drinking thing, it's entirley legal once your of age in the UK and should be here. I get trying to stop teen drinking but.. it's not doing that so why keep it. And I say that as someone who rarely if ever drinks.

Meanwhile Esther apologizes to eustace's photo: She feels bad.. but she can't mourn what she did forever and has to move on. She does. The wound dosen't fully heal but she does move on with her life. Esther enjoys the black metal club she visits, hard as hell and scary enough to bounce.. but also enough to stick in the mind, with her asking Ed along the next night. Ed reluctantly agrees having lied and said he's into metal. Ed strikes me as more a synth pop man.

So that night with Esther mia and Susan preparing for her presidential bid, Daisy decides to hang out with Erin whose inviting... they have to leave the kitchen as the rugby players living in the same small building come in and wreck up the place but it's still nice. They also run into Thom whose washing his car, the most indie car.. and the most pathetic. Erin is upset he asked for that and treats it like a woman. And really the fact most of her dialouge could be done by susan proves my point.

Back with Esther and Ed's Metal Misadventures, Esther takes Ed to the party and metals him up and he's clearly just.. deeply not happy. Not helping is that the black metal society throws him the fuck out while they court esther, telling her he got some. We're still 9 issues from that. She wakes up with a mysterious tatoo she's understandably freaked out about. I mean Allister Crowley was her school principal and tried to make her his child bride, it's understandable she'd be worried.

So at the meeting Susie P destroys Thom with the greatest cape in the history of man and possibly widlebeast. I'll try my best not to share full pages, as I want you to check out these comics on my own.. but this is one of the best scenes in the series and a defining moment for Susan so .. enjoy

I want that cape so bad. Also very telling reaction from erin and a line that's stuck to my brain for better or worse.

So back a few hours ago Esther gets brushed off by Ed something that's entirely forgotten by next issue for a fresh start and given he's just mildly upset and this could easily be settled with a "they told me you got layed i'm sorry", i'm fine with that. Esther prepares for FINAL INTITATION and to probably murder someone. Probably.

Back at the debate Thom challenges Susan to a fucking.. challenge after she wins the presdiency and erin talks her into getting him to bet his car. It underlines a sad fact.. that aside from exposition and setup for a storyline daisy would have with someone else entirely, Susan could've done most of what Erin does in this issue.

So Susan challenges him to arm wrestling, which he refuses because she's a girl and she talks him into promising not to snap his arm brundlefly style. She does easily win as while Susan dosent' really exercised she is coming off a profession where being able to kick someone hard enough their testicles vanish into thin air if they come after you while your taking pictures is a valued skillset, while Thom is a smug little man in love with his car.

So Susan wins and gives Erin the car since she can't drive while Esther arrives at the graveyard. She meets a right bell end and regrets her life choices.. just in time for the rest of the gang to show up.

So with that Esther realizes she's not alone and never was. And while it's not outright stated I get the sense Susan realized trying to make a bunch of friends who you can't stand being around is more trouble than having two good friends you can count on to rescue you from a graveyard, optics be dammed.

So our story ends with our temporary core four hanging out at Erin's place, with erin impressed by Esther scaring the fuck out of the hooligans in her building and esther worrying about her tattoo. Meanwhile the black metal society kill the silly little guy esther was with and make omnius threats there's always another day. They were never seen again and this is the closest giant days got to a scary go round type story.

Issue 3.. is decent. I mean it has Susan in a cape destroying a man's whole career. It's still the weakest out of the three.. we don't really focus on Esther's grief in her relationship and it's full of evolutionary dead ends that would be discarded in the rest of the series.

The one exception is how Esther treats ed. It's a small bit and while abandoning him wasn't her fault, she was actively lied to, her dragging him along to the club fully Crystalizes their dynamic. He pines after her and tends to do stuff in the hopes she'll notice, while she uses him as an emotional placebo as he's similar enough to Eustace. That last part is revealed much later in the series but is impossible for me to ignore: she knows he's into her.. but dosen't want to loose a good friend, which is understandable: she likely knew, might've considered turning him down gently due to eustace.. and then Fuckin Steve happened.

She likely saw or at least got a glimmer of how emotoinally destroyed he was by it, and got scared, thinking if she did that she'd loose a friend not grasping that he dropped Fuckin Steve because he's Fuckin Steve, and they could mend things eventually. I've been rejected and had wonderful friendships afterword. But it's a very human mistake from someone whose badly missing her boyfriend she's loved long before they were together and feels lost in her new environment and wants as many emotional liferafts as possible. It fits her character well: esther dosen't consider the consequences often as the series goes, and thus woudln't consider that this would leave a mark on Ed. I will grant Ed could just.. give up on her or tell her and clear the air, but I get it's hard and these are both still teenagers: their not thinking clearly. I thought at that age staring at a woman from a far was deeply romantic and not deeply creepy and also a valid technique to make someone love you. I get it. These two are awkard as shit and are going to fuck up. IT dosen't make their actions okay but the deep understanding you have of them makes it work.

So with that we've finished part one. I hope this is a success and i'm nervous about how it'll do... but I also have had so much fun doing this, just doing something just for me I wanted to do that it's worth it if no one reads this. But if you did thank you

Next Time: Uh-Oh! Love comes to town as the series properly launches! And with it we get the dawn of McGraw, a man with a mysterious past with susan and a glorious mustache who completes our main cast at long last. Susan deals with her will they or won't they, Daisy grapples with her sexuality and Esther has a forbidden and stupidly reckless romance with someone older than her. There's also dances,questionable poundland cold medicine, a searing look at lad culture, ASMR, sledding, monster trucks, Susan sexing with a boy, and one of our main characters gets dangled off a roof! All this and more in February! Remember, i'm pullin for ya we're all in this together.

#john allison #giant days #comics #slice of life #esther degroot #susan ptolemy #daisy wooten #boom studios #boom box #webcomics #erin winters #scary go round #college #university

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popculturebuffet · 5 years ago

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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.

#Giant Days #john allison #slice of life #esther de groot #susan ptolemy #daisy wooton #ed gimmel #McGraw #scary go round #bad machinery

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