Giant Days Volume 1 - Book Review

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Susan, Esther and Daisy are three students sharing a dorm room in their first semester of university. Sweet, curly-haired, formerly homeschooled Daisy is eager to make friends. Esther, the goth, exudes a 'drama field', meaning that life around her is never boring, and med student Susan has a personal vendetta against the moustachioed, lumber loving McGraw.

I've had a copy of this book for at least a year and only just finally got around to reading it, and I can't believe I waited so long because it's terrific! There is personal drama, awkward romance, drunkenness and talking to pigeons. It made me feel happy from cover to cover.



It reminded me a little of Lumberjanes , though there are no supernatural beasties in Giant Days, which is grounded firmly in real-world Britain. You don't see Northhampton appear in comics very often, but it does in this one. Giant Days is also a bit more grown-up than Lumberjanes. It's not violent, and there's not much swearing (I can't actually remember any, but it's possible I just didn't notice) but there are some sexy times, drug use and a lot of drinking. It's a university story, after all.



I tagged this one 'gay and lesbian' because there is a storyline about Daisy having a crush on her friend Nadia, although it isn't clear yet whether Daisy is a lesbian, bisexual or just still figuring things out.



The art, by Lissa Tremain, coloured by Whitney Cogar, is bright, cheery and full of characters who look like real people- not in the sense of being drawn in a terribly realistic style, but in the little details of their clothing, body language etc.

Writer, John Allison, keeps things fresh and fun by switching between several ongoing plot threads, such as Susan's beef with McGraw and Ed Gemmel's unrequited love for Esther, as well as day to day challenges the characters face, like an outbreak of the flu on campus and a sexist website created by young men on campus to rate the "fresh meat" among the female students, á la The Social Network.

Giant Days is a warm fuzzy comic about female friendship and personal growth, with a good jolt of whimsy and humour thrown in. The upside of being late to the bandwagon of this series, of which the first volume was published in 2015, is that that there are now ten volumes of this wonderful comic already published, so I won't have to wait to pick up volume 2. If anyone needs me I'll be in a bubble bath, reading, so please leave a message.

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