Giant Days #51

Boom! Studios

Writer: John Allison

Artist: Max Sarin & Whitney Cogar

I discovered Giant Days around a month ago, I’d say. I’d heard about it prior to this, of course, but I’d never actually read it. Then when I finally picked it up, I was entranced by it, completely and utterly. Everything about John Alison’s take on University life had me hooked, particularly his habit of adding moments of total absurdism into what would otherwise seem like a totally normal day. Having started university myself in 2018 (and had a hell of a time, to begin with), it was good to see the ups and downs of university life represented so accurately, so wonderfully. It’s a comic I very much found myself relating to, in more ways than one.

But anyway, away from me.

Giant Days #51 takes the shock revelation at the end of the previous issue (the death of McGraw’s father), and skips over it, at least to an extent. We never see the funeral, but we do see what comes later. And it’s quite the time, at least for McGraw. You get to see the extent of his grief, and how he personally deals with it. It’s perhaps the best characterisation of his character yet, just making him all the more relatable. While Daisy gets little to do in this issue, everybody else gets pretty much the perfect amount of page time. Esther finds out that she’s won the competition she entered back in issue #43 and uses the money to hire a lodge for a weekend, in order to try and get McGraw away from the suburban life that comes with living in a flat. What comes next, while predictable (from the offset it is clear what is going on with McGraw), is brilliantly written by Allison and emblematic of the best moments of Giant Days, emotional yet funny.

Max Sarin’s art is as usual, wonderful. While it still takes me for a spin, seeing the more tumblr-like art style in a comic book, it’s brilliant to see, and in sharp contrast to the usual art style, you see in mainstream comics. And as previously stated, combined with the absurdist style Allison takes to real life, it allows Sarin to do weirder things with his artwork that he’d usually be restricted to.

It’s hard to believe that the world of Giant Days comes to a close in a mere four issues. The world of Susan, Esther, Daisy, McGraw, and Ed is such a brilliant creation that it’ll be extremely hard to say goodbye. And this issue is just one of many gems in the series. Check it out for sure.