Graphic Novel Review: Giant Days Vol. 1 by John Allison & Lissa Treiman

Synopsis:

Susan, Esther, and Daisy started at university three weeks ago and became fast friends. Now, away from home for the first time, all three want to reinvent themselves. But in the face of handwringing boys, “personal experimentation,” influenza, mystery-mold, nu-chauvinism, and the willful, unwanted intrusion of “academia,” they may be lucky just to make it to spring alive. Going off to university is always a time of change and growth, but for Esther, Susan, and Daisy, things are about to get a little weird.

Review:

Giant Days has been on my radar for a while now and I’ve finally got around to reading it. I have no idea what I thought it was going to be about, but it wasn’t what I got – my own fault for not actually reading the synopsis and basing my want to read this graphic novel on the cover. The whole thing felt like a fever dream but it was very entertaining.

I had no idea Giant Days was a British novel until about halfway through. It sounds weird to say but you don’t come across graphic novels set in Britain very often. The part about “I got it from Poundland. It was a pound!” made me laugh way more than it should. Such a British thing to say, although you can’t really say it these days as not everything is a pound.

The plot was definitely a little lacking and I felt like it tried a little too hard to be funny at times. I did love that this was about starting your first year of university though. But I didn’t enjoy the ‘extreme feminism’ subplot and how one of the female characters made a male character the face of anti-feminism. That didn’t feel good to me and it actually made me cringe a little. The entire relationship between those two characters was a bit weird and just didn’t make sense.

This brings me to my next point. I really liked the characters and how they had different quirks, most of them were very funny and I get that they were supposed to be a little cringe. I’m hoping you learn a lot more about them in the next volume as there wasn’t a lot of development in this one.

The art style is really cool, I especially love Esther’s design. I’m planning to check out more of Giant Days in the future, so I really hope there is more plot and character development.