Every two weeks, Big Issues focuses on newly released comic books of significance.
This week, it’s Giant Days #54 and Giant Days: As Time Goes By, written by John Allison with art by Max Sarin, colorist Whitney Cogar, and letterer Jim Campbell, and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #50, written by Ryan North with art by Derek Charm and Erica Henderson, colorist Rico Renzi, and letterer Travis Lanham. These two finales spotlight how these acclaimed series have helped cultivate the new generation of readers that emerge in the past decade. Note: This review reveals major plot points.
The comics industry got a little darker over the last few weeks with the finales of Giant Days and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, two of the most reliable sources for pure joy on the page. While their origins are very different—Giant Days is an extension of the world John Allison created with his Bobbinsverse webcomics, while Squirrel Girl is a reinterpretation of existing corporate IP—the two books overlap narratively and structurally as they tell the stories of young people making their way through higher education. In Giant Days, Esther DeGroot, Susan Ptolemy, and Daisy Wooten go through three years at the University of Sheffield, developing friendships, romances, and rivalries that are some of the richest relationships in comics. Squirrel Girl takes a much more spectacular approach to college life, following Doreen “Squirrel Girl” Green and her squad of squirrelfriends as they defeat bad guys by empathizing with their problems, applying their computer science education, and occasionally throwing some punches.
Debuting just a few months apart at the start of 2015, these series have experienced similar trajectories over the last four years. They both started with shorter trial runs that picked up enough steam to keep the books going. Giant Days was originally planned as a six-issue miniseries but was promoted to an ongoing. Squirrel Girl’s first eight-issue volume debuted before Secret Wars temporarily ended all of Marvel’s ongoing series, and it performed well enough for Marvel to bring it back for a second volume. Both series thrived in collected editions, arriving at a time when the industry was seeing a huge influx of young female readers thanks to the breakout success of Raina Telgemeier’s graphic novels. They were both nominated for Eisner Awards in 2016; Squirrel Girl would win in 2017 for “Best Publication For Teens,” and Giant Days would win twice in 2019 for “Best Continuing Series” and “Best Humor Publication.”
Four and a half years is a great run for an ongoing series in the current marketplace, and part of what makes these books so special is their serialization. Comics for middle grade and YA readers have shifted to original graphic novels as the primary format, but Giant Days and Squirrel Girl committed to monthly issues and made exceptional use of that structure. Both Allison and Squirrel Girl writer Ryan North came up through the world of webcomics, developing storytelling sensibilities built on one-page gags. They both understand the value of the page as its own singular unit, building to a punchline that leaves the reader feeling satisfied before turning the page. For Squirrel Girl, that punchline often comes via a footnote at the bottom of the page, a place where North can be as irreverent as he wants. There’s a fullness to individual issues of these books that you don’t find in other ongoing series, and readers were given a steady supply each month for half the decade rather than waiting months for new graphic novels.
Giant Days ended back in September with issue #54, an outstanding conclusion to the ongoing series that reaffirmed the affection these characters have for each other and their university town. Giant Days #54 is the proper series finale while As Time Goes By functions as an epilogue, taking readers back to the overtly fanciful tone of the very first Giant Days story written, drawn, and self-published by Allison (collected in the Giant Days: Early Registration paperback). That introduction had much more of a Scott Pilgrim energy, with Allison breaking from reality for a climactic action sequence that included a moment where Daisy floats through the air by using “the power of yogic flying”. Allison quickly abandoned that whimsical conceit, realizing that it was far more interesting to show how these heightened personalities interact with each other in a relatively grounded environment. Giant Days would always be over-the-top, but rather than using fantasy, Allison relied on artists Lissa Treiman (issues #1-#6) and Max Sarin (most of the rest) to bring that extra amplification through the emotional storytelling. In As Time Goes By, the book goes back to its original zaniness, a fun way of highlighting the craziness of working life compared to being a student.
One night during my sophomore year of college, a friend and I witnessed a group of sorority girls in the midst of an “ugly face” photo spree on the train. So used to smiling the same way over and over, they relished the opportunity to break from the routine and contort their faces in new ways. This was before Instagram and the rise of the selfie, the photos taken on flip phones and digital cameras by sisters who would erupt in laughter when they moved across the train to show off the pictures. Of course, these were still sorority girls. They weren’t going for Jim Carrey levels of facial exaggeration. Their version of “ugly face” was the kind of face you made all the time. The face you make when you realize your roommate’s food has spoiled in the fridge. Or when you read a passive aggressive note on the kitchen counter. Or when you try to stay awake in class after an all-nighter.
The sorority girls defaulted to expressions of disgust, annoyance, and exhaustion, the kinds of emotions that people aren’t rushing to post on their social media feeds. These are the emotions that Max Sarin adores, and most of the laughs in any given issue of Giant Days come from the way Sarin manipulates the characters’ faces, taking the “ugly face” to its most exaggerated point. In Giant Days #54, Sarin uses this skill to carry emotion across scenes as Esther ends her university experience riding a wave of contempt toward her parents, who have just freaked out upon discovering the back tattoo she got as a first-year. As she puts on her cap and gown, Esther glares with her eyebrows furrowed and teeth bared, biting her lower lip. As she accepts her degree on the next page, she’s still wearing that same expression, the victory spoiled by her parents’ judgment.
Squirrel Girl isn’t as entrenched in the college experience as Giant Days, but it does hit on some major university themes: discovering your identity, expanding your social circle, gaining and losing mentors. Squirrel Girl #31 in particular is an incredibly touching celebration of the bond between roommates, a tribute to the relationships that shape you after you leave your childhood home and start living independently. The book’s final issue explores similar ideas, although it moves into more metafictional territory as the creators say goodbye to the character that had a huge impact on their lives.
When Squirrel Girl and friends are about to perish at the hands of a truly terrifying group of supervillains, Galactus appears to save the day, taking Doreen on a trip to the moon where they discuss inevitable changes to come in the future. Galactus becomes the mouthpiece for North in this scene, telling Squirrel Girl how much he enjoyed the time they spent together before he uses the power cosmic to rewrite history so that the events of this series don’t contradict with what Marvel is doing with these characters elsewhere. Artist Derek Charm and colorist Rico Renzi bring a lot of tenderness to this conversation, with Charm using the drastic size differential to emphasize how the power of Doreen’s heart is much larger than her physical form.
The cover for Squirrel Girl Vol. 1 #1 shows Doreen imagining herself being propped up on the shoulders of the Avengers, the ultimate goal for a young superhero still carving out her place in the world. For the series’ final cover, we see Doreen sitting on the shoulders of Kraven the Hunter, surrounded by all the friends she’s made in this book. Her reality is so much cooler than anything she could have dreamed for herself in the past, and this cover encapsulates how both the character and the comic have evolved in the last four years. Original Squirrel Girl artist Erica Henderson returns to the series to draw a musical montage at the end of this issue, highlighting key moments from this run while offering readers a few last visual treats like Mr. Sinister getting his head smashed in with a coffee mug and Squirrel Girl taking Thanos to therapy.
In Giant Days #54, there’s a small moment in a comic shop that speaks to the decade’s big shift in the comics audience. The entire staff of Danger Nebula assembles to say goodbye to their beloved coworker, Esther, and welcome Hayden to the other side of the counter. “Behold the welcoming new face of comics!” Esther says as she salutes the young, non-binary employee. With the publication of Smile in 2010, Raina Telgemeier built a gateway for millions of new readers who were increasingly encouraged to read more graphic novels by teachers and librarians. This has essentially created a new generation of comic readers who came up outside of superheroes. There are some superhero titles that have attracted that audience—Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, DC’s new lines of middle grade and YA graphic novels—but if those readers don’t want to read superhero stories, there are thousands of other options.
This scene at the Danger Nebula ends with Hayden asking Esther why the Red Hulk doesn’t have a mustache when General Ross clearly does, which Esther treats as the ultimate taboo in a jab at overly sensitive superhero readers that can’t handle anyone poking holes in their inherently ridiculous stories—the kind of readers who can’t fathom the idea of Squirrel Girl befriending Galactus or rehabilitating Kraven the Hunter. For a long time, those readers were the gatekeepers of the industry, pushing newcomers away because they didn’t know enough about the dominant genre. There are more kinds of comics and ways to read them than ever before, and books like Giant Days and Squirrel Girl have made the industry more welcoming, showing readers that comics can be enjoyed by anyone and everyone.
31 Comments
I don’t know a better place to ask this, so here goes…I’ve been out of comics for some time. When I was still reading them, I was into stuff like Sandman, Hellblazer, Lucifer, etc. Basically if it was the 90s and on Vertigo, I liked it. I mostly like horror and crime/mystery stories. Does anyone know anything recent-ish that sort of fits the bill? Most of the stuff I’ve seen here looks a little too… YA for me. Thanks!
Well the Vertigo stuff you mention still exists (as of recently) and is marketed as the Sandman Universe. Gaiman is overseeing it, but it’s a group of writers of varying skill levels taking on properties like The Dreaming, Books of Magic, and Lucifer. Reaction has been mixed but supposedly the Dreaming is good. Same author as the Dreaming (Si Spurrier) just started a new Hellblazer book but it’s only got one issue out.
Now, if you want something in keeping with the tone but not the same characters, your options open up. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips do crime books together and have since the early 2000s. They’re stuff is pulpy and noir themed, taking its cues from 60s mystery novels. Fatale is their series that has the most supernatural in it (being about a lovecraftian curse that makes a woman irresistable to men…but in a much creepier less objectifying way than that sounds). For my money, Criminal, which involves no supernatural stuff and is instead an anthology crime book is their Magnum Opus (and less of a commitment since each volume is self-contained).
Black Monday Murders is a supernatural mystery book that involves black magic and the economy by Jonathan Hickman and Tomm Coker. Absolutely fantastic, but plagued with delays due to the poor health of the artist.
Injection by Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey feels like it grew out of the roots of late 90s vertigo. It’s about a group of experts from various disciplines who create a haunted artificial intelligence that begins to introduce horror mythology into the real world. Heavy on horror and smart storytelling. Remains unfinished for the moment, but the three existing volumes are great.
It’s a little far from your genre but I might also recommend East of West which is one of the books that got me back into comics. It’s a sci-fi, fantasy, western epic that follows the horseman of the apocalypse death as he seeks to right some old wrongs in a future alternate america still bearing the scars of the civil war. Great writing by Jonathan Hickman and breathtaking art by Nick Dragotta. In no particular order, here are some odds and ends from horror and/or crime that I really like (and definitely fit the, not-YA, bill):
Harrow County by Cullen Bunn (in the south, a girl may be a re-incarnation of a particularly nasty witch)
Black Magick by Greg Rucka (A wiccan police detective is targetted by something nasty)
The Old Guard by Greg Rucka (Immortal soldiers face the impossibility of keeping a low profile in the 21st century)
The Wake by Scott Snyder (Scientists capture a mermaid…but it’s a less pleasant experience that any one would have expected).
Southern Bastards by Jason Aaron (An old soldier return to his home in the deep south to discover the local diner owner/crime boss has it under his control. Violence ensues).
If you like mythology/dark fantasy stuff, I’d check out Hellboy and BPRD (unless those are part of the “etc.”). BPRD wrapped up the story in a sense, but they’re still publishing prequel series, so they’re not running out of stories anytime soon. If you want to get a feeling for the tone of the comics, I wouldn’t recommend the live-action adaptations, but rather the two animated films they did Hellboy: Sword of Storms and Hellboy: Blood and Iron. The latter is free to watch (read: ad-supported, you have to link/make an account) on IMDb; the former is probably out there free as well. Or you could just poke around for illegal Youtube uploads.
I’d start with any of the Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips books. Phillips did a lot of work on Vertigo books back in the day and he’s better than ever these days. Their book Fatale is great horror, Kill or Be Killed is a great horror/crime mashup, Criminal is the ultimate crime series. Just brilliant. Oh, and The Fade Out is a great mystery set in early Hollywood.
I’ll second (or third) the Brubaker/Phillips recommendation. I’ll buy anything they put out, and I’ll even reach back for their “Sleeper” which was a crime/noir story set in the superhero universe – A super-powered individual goes into deep cover in a super-criminal syndicate – which is terrific.
If you want stuff that just started and you can read month-to-month:Si Spurrior has just started his run on John Constantine, Hellblazer, which is looking to be great.Joe Hill is curating Hill House Comics for DC, which includes Basketful of Heads and The Dollhouse Family, horror comics that look very much like Vertigo (and also pretty Stephen King-ish).Something is Killing the Children is an excellent horror comic by James Tynion IV about a monster hunter named Erica Slaughter.
The whole Locke and Key series by Joe Hill, who is Stephen King’s son.
Piling on the Brubaker/Phillips train, Criminal is their best but Fatale gives you both crime and horror. Greg Rucka is also always good, his Stumptown is classic PI stuff updated for the present and apparently has been adapted to a new TV show. If you’re willing to go into spy territory, his Queen & Country is outstanding (it also has the Sandman-ish touch of a different artist for every storyline). And Brubaker and Phillips teamed up for the excellent procedural Gotham Central, basically Batman stories from the police POV (this is really where Renee Montoya took off) — if not Vertigo in publication, very much Vertigo in tone and level of maturity.This might be a bit outside your scope, but Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda is very strong fantasy with horror elements, it reminds me a bit of Lucifer in its world-building.
I’m going to miss Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, but that finale was amazing.Now I really want North to write a series about Kraven the Hunter — the Kraven who tried to do what was right while fighting his darker impulses.
That Spider-man: Hunted tpb was pretty good – kept Kraven’s end intact whilst introducing a young, fresh replacement that fits the visual of the Kraven mantle.
And of course, North’s greatest contribution to Kraven’s mythos. . . the Kra-Van.
Squirrel Girl has consistently been my favorite comic out there. It’s just perfect, and I’m sad to see it end.
They aren’t as good, but both the 3 tpbs of Patsy Walker: Hellcat (with she-hulk and Jubilee as sidekicks) & the Unstoppable Wasp comic share the same optimistic energy as USqlGl.
Fact: disliking Squirrel Girl makes you a bad person.
Hmm, turns out I’m a bad person. I had always suspected but it’s good to know for sure.
I liked Squirrel Girl but I found Doreen and Galactus’ moon chat about the ever-changing nature of comics a little on-the-nose (which is maybe appropriate given how on-the-nose a lot of North’s writing is) when Gwenpool kind of did the same thing a year ago in a (to me) much more affecting way.
I can’t edit my post because Kinja is garbage, but I’d like to thank everyone that recommended stuff to me. I’ve got a lot to look into now!
I’m sad Giant Days ended, it had a great finale of course but I could have read the slice of life stuff about those characters like eternally.
Allison understands his characters so well that he can drop back into their lives after their main adventures are over. He’s currently revisiting his Bobbins characters in their early 2000s days to keep a toe in webcomics and it’s great, I wouldn’t be surprised if he puts out an annual or something else with the Giant Days crew.
Sad to see Squirrel Girl gone, as it was one of the last Marvel titles I still get that encapsulated that “here’s a comic about super hero stuff, but it’s going to head in a more lighthearted and/or not super dark direction and/or is aimed at a non-traditional comic audience and/or whatever other reason fits in here” vibe that popped up for awhile. Although I still have Runaways! Which sounds like it might be headed for its own conclusion finally after the current arc. And Ms. Marvel, but that feels like it lost a bit of a step after G. Willow Wilson departed. And to be fair, they launch something along those lines from time to time, but it seems like those almost always fall into the category of things that either end up as stealth miniseries or get cancelled/considered miniseries once they suddenly end.And on the topic of Giant Days, I need to get back to buying the hardcovers. I think I stopped after the second, only because my shop at the time ended up not ordering it like I’d asked. Or Diamond fucked up, which is also likely. I also started to get confused about what collections I needed to buy, since I feel like Boom has had a bad habit over the past few years releasing things and not being as clear about where they fit into things adequately.
So far there’s only three hardcovers, so you’re not that far behind. I feel like #4 will be coming pretty soon though.
In what way do you think the post-Wilson run of Ms Marvel (Salamin Ahmed’s run) has misstepped? I’m aware that her team-book Champions has strayed really far from the original line-up and feeling, isolating some of the fandom from the book, but havent heard anything negative about the new solo series run. As for Giant Days (& Squirrel Girl) i went for the tpbs because i prefer those covers to the mediocre (in my opinion) HC designs. That said I am a sucker for a good deluxe edition e.g. DC’s Rebirth for Detective Comics & Nightwing.
Oh, I didn’t really mean anything negative by that. Just that with a new writer, it feels like the vibe of the book changed some, which is totally understandable. Just one of those things after having roughly the same creative team for a number of years get switched around. I suspect it’ll be the same way if/when Squirrel Girl gets a new series presumably within the next year.
Thanks for writing this, Oliver! This was a lovely rundown of the two series merits. It’s also important to emphasize that, even more than any value they have representationally, these are two of the funniest monthly comics ever published. Giant Days #50, which was all about cricket, has my vote for the single issue that I had the hardest time finishing reading because I couldn’t stop laughing at it.
With these two of my favorite series having ended, my pull list feels really empty now.On the plus side, John Allison is writing Steeple for Dark Horse, and three issues in it’s really good! Worth checking out for any Giant Days fans or fans of humor/gothic horror comics.
Oliver talks about Allison’s webcomics background and ability to tell self-contained stories in strip/page/book form, and that really makes his humor pop. Decompressed storytelling has gotten stale for me, it seems like a cover for lazy storytelling — not only does stuff happen in Giant Days, it’s funny. EDIT: Did not meant to shortchange Tremain and especially Sarin for their work in the storytelling, the facial expressions and looser line than Allison’s portray action better than he can, and he’s no slouch.
I’m waiting to finish both when the final collections go on sale, but one thing I want to mention about what I can no longer say are the two best comics being currently published, is the reread factor for both books is incredibly high. I’ve reread the Giant Days (I actually think this is the best comic I’ve ever read, and I read mostly superhero stuff) collections I have four or five times, and I always find some new thing to laugh at or notice about the characters. Likewise, rereading Squirrel Girl I still laugh multiple times each issue, usually at the Twitter page summary at the beginning. Even though I’m sure the creators will go on to make great books, I’m comforted by the fact that I’ll be rereading these books until my kids put me in a home.
John Allison has “By Night” as a new ongoing comic and Ryan North did a long sequence of “Adventure Time” if you want some followup material to enjoy right now.
I really need to get on Squirrel Girl, I love Dinosaur Comics, but totally agree on the reread value of Giant Days, I can pick them up whenever I’m feeling a bit down.
Very late to this, but thanks for this write-up Oliver. I’m a big John Allison fan from the Bobbins days and I’m really glad you’ve been championing him (and analyzing his work) for so long in AVC coverage.
In the 2010s, under the influence of tumblr, comics got significantly uglier and the writing stagnated into either boring “remixes” of popular arcs and characters or degenerated into didactic political drivel. Some good stuff came through fantagraphics and other publishers like Koyama grew in stature and quality as well, but for the most part it’s been disastrous. The industry itself is in a bad way financially right now. France is beginning to poach big name alt cartoonists with boutique publishers like Cornelius. And the aforementioned woke tumblr cartoonists tried to cancel Robert Crumb again – and failed because great art is too powerful to succumb to what Eve Sedgwick called “good dog, bad dog” criticism. It’s interesting / scary to imagine what the landscape of comics will end up looking like in the next decade. Things will even out though. The dark age will end.
Practically everyone is “non-binary” in that practically no one hews rigidly to regressive “gender” strictures. No one is “non-binary” in that no one doesn’t have a bodily sex of either male or female, as even those who suffer disorders of sexual development are identifiably male or female. The fact a girl wants to wear her hair short & engage in activities stereotypically regarded as “masculine” doesn’t mean she isn’t a girl, and the fact a boy wants his hair long & to engage in activities stereotypically regarded as “feminine” doesn’t mean he isn’t a boy. Calling oneself “non-binary” shouldn’t be regarded as a way to make oneself special; it isn’t special at all, and certainly no substitute for doing special deeds.