Pages

Saturday 25 November 2017

Giant Days 2017 Holiday Special #1 Review (John Allison, Jenn St-Onge)


Giant Days crosses over with another part of John Allison’s Scary Go Round-verse as Esther, Susan and Daisy visit Shelley Winters in London for a festive tribute to Love Actually (minus Hugh Grant’s dancing = huge positive)!

The Giant Days 2017 Holiday Special is a delightful bumper-edition of probably the greatest comic in the world, just like last year’s was. I love that this is an annual thing now too!

John Allison’s writing is as brilliant as ever and the light and silly romantic storyline, where the girls try to set up Shelley with a suitable beau, is fun. I remember Shelley from Allison’s previous comics That and Murder She Writes where she was a successful YA author so I’m not sure how she went from that to a government job and Allison doesn’t explain it here either, but I expect it has to do with making the Love Actually angle work? I’ve never seen the movie so I didn’t pick up on whatever references are sprinkled here!

It’s an Esther-centric story so Susan and Daisy don’t have much to do though Susan gleefully corrupts poor innocent Daisy by taking her into a sex shop! And the digs at Megabus (an ultra-cheap British intercity bus service) were amusing.

I didn’t love Jenn St-Onge’s art which definitely felt weird as I’m so used to seeing regular series artist Max Sarin’s. St-Onge’s character work is good but the backgrounds were very bare, unimpressive and kinda bland, which is a problem when the setting is a city as remarkable as London! The ending too is a bit abrupt.

That said, Giant Days 2017 Holiday Special is a very enjoyable, perfectly seasonal read for fans of this outstanding title.

No comments:

Post a Comment