A young girl wakes up to find her parents missing in a world of giants in this coming-of-age, sci-fi, and dystopian graphic novel, written by one of my favorite Star Wars authors, Kieron Gillen, with beautiful art by Stephanie Hans. While I will go over a portion of the book, similar to my last blog, I wanted to address another part of the comic industry that can get overlooked by the public at times; the fact that, yes, these stories can have a beginning, middle, and end at times, which can’t necessarily be said about superhero comics today (as great as most of them are, don’t get me wrong; I don’t plan on covering that genre as I feel it may turn people away, but if one generous reader of this blog picks up the latest Ultimate Spider-Man series from this one recommendation alone, I’ll take it).
Minor spoilers for We Called Them Giants
As mentioned, the story begins with a girl named Lori waking up, only to hear nothing from her parents. After looking around town (I love the use of white space with the trees from Hans), she soon finds Annette, a friend from school. Starting to feel the effects of a potential apocalypse, the girls go to Annette’s pantry, only to find it empty. What begins as a simple search for food soon turns into encounters with a mysterious figure in a mask, a gang called The Dogs, a wolf with blood-red eyes, and, oh, two giants, one red and one emerald. Later on, with the chaos of what has happened thus far behind her, Lori starts to wonder if these giants are motivated by good or evil. If a giant took you into its hand as Lori eventually finds herself in, would you be hopeful or nervous? Gillen and Hans lay out the rest of the story in great fashion from there.
When I think of Kieron Gillen’s stories, I think of him expertly taking a concept that may be familiar to other people and applying his unique British take on it, whether through sci-fi in Star Wars, Greek mythology in The Wicked + The Divine, or role-playing fantasy in Die (all available to try out at your local library, or venture out to your local comic book shop and ask for these books, I’m sure all of them will have his). On the other hand, as you can hopefully see in the attached art, Stephanie Hans’s artwork is simply gorgeous, with a watercolor look to them amongst other unique art choices. It’s one talent to simply draw comics for a living, but it’s another one to draw, ink, and color one’s own work as Hans does. This team previously worked together on the aforementioned Die (named after dice in a table-top fantasy game).
With the always-seemingly-daunting task of where to start in comics, the story of Giants is told in 104 pages, much shorter than your typical novel today. With books containing art like the kind you see attached, though, I hope it interests you to give this book a try. Gillen crafts characters well whenever he uses the inner monologue technique for his main character, which comes across as an overarching journal entry (similar to narration from the main character in a novel), complementing Hans’s art in spades. Like any comic, if the story doesn’t pull you in, the authors and artists won’t take it personally (I’ll bet they’re as nice as I think they are). However (and this part never gets old to me), if you finish a story and want to find more, comics has you covered and then some, whether it’s through books by the same author or equally great stories in the same genre, these stories, whether told in long-form or in contained works, have the potential to have the same impact on you, the reader, as you can get from your favorite novel or author (You may even find out that your future favorite author writes novels and comics too – who knew!)
Liam Jarot – Blogger: Liam is a Senior at Lewis University, majoring in English with a concentration in writing. His hobbies include watching movies, reading comic books, and listening to music. Some of his favorite authors include Charles Soule, Stephen King, and Brian K. Vaughan. After graduating, he plans on working with organizations through technical writing while pursuing creative writing on the side.