10 Best First Comic Book Issues From This Week (Dec 5, 2018)
9. Giant Days: Where Women Glow And Men Plunder #1
Ed Gemmel is a dweeb with tons of doubts, with his out-of-his-league girlfriend, Nina, taking him to Australia to meet her manly men family. Yes, for the Holidays, John Allison wrote a fish out of water story.
One of the defining features to the main Giant Days series has been the cast of characters and their dynamics while navigating through school and life. Taking all of that away to focus on a supporting character whose key feature is a crush on one of the others by giving him a girlfriend and shipping him to the land down under was a huge risk that pays off.
It is a fish out of water story, but the boon is John Allison's ability to capture the magic from mundane moments, and pair it with character-driven comedy that makes the whole situation flow perfectly.
Allison also pulls double duty as artist, which is a first time since the series was picked up by Boom! Studios. It could be that we've gotten used to Max Sarin's art, but Allison's illustrations bring a unique but familiar feel to make the new exotic locale of the land down under, and the surreal humor that comes with it distinctly brilliant.