“Giant Days” #54

The final term is over. Graduation is nigh. John Allison and Max Sarin’s “Giant Days” is coming to an end and there are many goodbyes to be had.

Cover by Max Sarin

Written by John Allison
Illustrated by Max Sarin
Colored by Whitney Cogar
Lettered by Jim Campbell

Summer is ending, and so are Daisy and Esther’s days at university (Susan still needs to finish medical school, of course). These last days together are worth their weight in gold, but soon it will be time for pomp, circumstance, and silly hats, as the girls head out into the world and face their futures!

Before diving into this issue, I did a big reread of the whole series. Oh boy, it was a journey, and I think that condensing the experience like this very much heightened my emotional state going into “Giant Days” #54.

Most importantly, this issue gets Daisy, Esther, and Susan back together again, all under one roof. We don’t have much time left with these characters and I needed to see these three interacting as much as possible before we say goodbye to “Giant Days” forever. This is especially important after “Giant Days” #53, where Daisy was locked off in her own story, interacting with Susan and Esther only minimally.

But, as much as I wanted to see the trio together, this issue isn’t really about that. They’re going to be fine—we know this friendship will live beyond university—but what this issue is really saying goodbye to is everything around that friendship, the roommates, the co-workers, their fellow students, and the daily interactions. Going forward, the days the three of them spend together are going to be rare, small days. The giant days that rolled on over their three years in university are done.

Gosh, I started this on a morose note, didn’t I? OK, all that is the foundation upon which this issue is built, it’s an undercurrent feeling, but this issue is more about joy than anything. You will laugh and smile, and you’ll feel a little bit of sadness because you know two months from now there will be a “Giant Days”-shaped hole on the new comics shelf of your local comicbook store.

Oh, bloody hell. As I’m writing John Allison’s just sent an update email out which serves only to heighten my emotions more. Augh!

I’m really going to miss this team of creators (John Allison, Max Sarin, Whitney Cogar, and Jim Campbell) working together. “Giant Days” owes a lot to the continuity of this team, especially having Max drawing almost every issue from #7 onward. When an artist has been drawing the characters as long as they have, the character acting gets really specific in ways that simply aren’t possible in short-form comics or with rotating artists. Just in terms of facial expression, readers suddenly have a whole library of what’s an in-character expression and what’s an out-of-character expression. Daisy doesn’t just have one smile, she has many smiles, each with a different thought behind it. Suddenly each panel isn’t just about what’s literally happening in that moment or the emotions she’s experiencing in that moment; it’s also about her evolving interior life. Without a word being uttered, an eyebrow lift can tell me if Esther thinks someone said something stupid, or surprisingly honest, or that her empathy’s kicking in harder than she can handle, or if her mind has wandered into sexy territory.

I love than Susan has a shirt that simply says “No” on it, and I love that every single time it appears, Cogar makes sure it’s colored red. I love how insanely expressive Daisy’s hair is (incidentally, there’s a great panel in this issue that takes full advantage of this, with Daisy taking on a frenzied animal look that’s priceless). My god, these characters aren’t just drawings. They don’t just live in the panels, but in between them and beyond the page. We have been so lucky to get fifty-four issues of “Giant Days.”

All this familiarity is used to maximum effect in “Giant Days” #54. Needless to say, things are changing in a big way for these characters, and when we’ve had this kind of continuity for so long, the changes hit hard. I mean, there was a haircut. A haircut! And with it came a blizzard of emotions and if it hadn’t been Sarin drawing it, it would’ve just been a bit of swirly gust of emotions.

There’s a chunk at the beginning of this issue, a mere four pages of Daisy, Susan, and Esther all living together again, and there’s no real plot development at all. It is simply the trio together, their characters bouncing off each other in ways that had me grinning the whole time. That little island of pages is such a perfect distillation of what makes these characters and “Giant Days” as a whole so perfect. And I didn’t want it to end. And neither do they. Those pages don’t do much to advance the plot, but they get us into the headspace of these characters beautifully.

This is what “Giant Days” has done so well from day one. It is fantastic at shared experiences, pulling us into the world in a way that’s unique to drawing. We don’t just watch things unfold, we experience them alongside the characters. One moment we’re sitting around a table having a discussion, the next we’re inside Susan’s head as a super-deformed avatar Susan jumps between floating bricks nabbing scrolls. Yeah, that’s for a comedy beat, but this applies to all the big emotions in the comic too. Reality is entirely flexible as long as it gets us closer to a character’s emotional truth. Just watch the way a scene’s background color can switch in an instant just because a powerful emotion came charging in.

I’d forgotten, however, that this notion of sharing an experience was all explicitly a part of the text. “Giant Days” #1 began with Susan directly addressing the reader, inviting us into this world. And in the final panel of “Giant Days” #54, she does it again. And that’s where this issue really got me, because as the readers we are one of the things the trio is leaving behind. Daisy, Susan, and Esther will meet again and live on beyond the final pages, but for us, we’ll only meet them one last time. Closing this issue with that direct reference to the reader hits that home hard.

So, how am I doing standing one issue away from the end?

As well as can be expected.

Final verdict: 9.5 – There is no other comic out there that makes me feel the way “Giant Days” does. It’s quite simply the best long-form comedy comicbook I’ve ever read.