Image Description: the book cover of Giant Days, Vol. 4 by John Allison. The background of the cover is hot-pink with white text (book title and creator credits) taking up the top 50% of the book cover. The bottom half of the book-cover is an image of Esther, wearing black jeans with a black jumper with torso bones and a red heart, in the act of dropping a microphone on a stage with a black cable looping next to her.
Title: Giant Days, Vol. 4
Creator John Allison, Max Sarin (Illustrations), Liz Fleming (inker), Whitney Cogar (Colorist), Jim Campbell (Letterer)
Social Media: Goodreads
Publisher: BOOM! Box
Format and Price: Paperback from my local library
Stars: 5 stars out of 5
About The Creators:
John Allison: John Allison is the author and artist of the British webcomics Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery.
Lissa Treiman: Lady, story artist, yarn-hoarder, nap-taker. Currently workin’ for the Mouse (Disney).
Max Sarin: Freelance illustrator and comic artist goofing around and enjoying life.
Whitney Cogar: Whitney Cogar is a freelance illustrator based in Savannah, Georgia. She specializes in sequential art such as comics and storyboards. She is a colourist for the 2017 Steven Universe comic series and has also done storyboards and art assets for the film “The Conspirator” as well as art assets for the film “X-Men: First Class”.
Jim Campbell: Jim Campbell is a professional comic-book letterer, one-time writer (perhaps again in the future!) and occasional artist (although his enthusiasm rather outstrips his actual ability). He knows more about print production than mortal man was meant to know and has also scanned more images than you’ve had hot dinners. Unless you’re ninety years old.
Liz Fleming: Liz Fleming is an award-winning travel writer who writes a weekly and a monthly travel column for The Toronto Star, regular features for Cruise and Travel Lifestyles Magazine and a travel column for TripAtlas.com.
About The Book:
It’s springtime at Sheffield University — the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, and fast-pals Susan, Esther and Daisy continue to survive their freshman year of college. Susan is barely dealing with her recent breakup with McGraw, Esther is considering dropping out of school, and Daisy is trying to keep everyone and everything from falling apart! Combined with house-hunting, indie film festivals, and online dating, can the girls make it to second year?
The Eisner Award-nominated series from John Allison (Bad Machinery, Scary Go Round) with artist Max Sarin delivers another delightful slice-of-life adventure in Giant Days Volume 4. Collects issues 13-16.
Yarr, thar be spoilers ahead, ye have been warned.
General Observations:
~Supportive Female Friendships: The supportive friendship that Daisy, Esther, and Susan give each other is truly the backbone of the graphic novel. Although I do admire Ed and McGraw’s friendship as well (both are good and more depictions of good friendships are needed). When Esther begins to feel as though university life is too much of a struggle, Susan and Daisy help her to realise the truth, and that she should continue with her studies. When Daisy and Susan make a parody movie mostly about Esther’s bad acting, Daisy and Susan are concerned Esther might get mad at them, but she doesn’t. In fact, Esther’s delighted that they entered the short-film compeition and used her as inspiration.
~Character Development – Esther: A large chunk of this volume is focused on how Esther is forced to confront a lot of her less than stellar past choices. The reader finally finds out what happened with “the boy” and why he and Esther broke up. Sometimes we out-grow the friendships we gain in secondary college, however, sometimes we should also make the effort to keep in touch. We also get to see Esther learn some emotional maturity and she realises that her actions have a deeper impact impact on other people than she realised.
~Location, Location, Location: As the campus student lodgings are being torn down, that puts Daisy, Susan, and Esther in a position of having no lodgings when they return from the break, there’s a lot of humour in finding “the perfect place”, and wouldn’t you know it? They just happen to find a place right next door to Ed, McGraw and Dean Thompson. I sense neighborly shenanigans will be afoot.
All in all, an enjoyable addition to the series, and I’m looking forward to more scenes with Daisy and McGraw.
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository | Kobo Books
Ambiguous Pieces 