Hey folks,
Alright mark this day in your calendars: I was wrong. Okay I admit it. The following is an explanation of how I ended up enjoying I Kill Giants.
First a flashback: Back in July 2008 I picked up a single issue of an independent comic named I Kill Giants. There was a lot of buzz on the mini-series and it was just 2.99 so I decided to go for it. At the time I hadn't heard of Joe Kelly, who was writing the series. Of course now he's one of my favorite writers after reading his work on Amazing Spider-Man and Deadpool. However in the summer of 2008 I was of a different mindset altogether. After flipping through the first issue I was unimpressed. Maybe it was the heat, but I thought it was derivative of what I had seen in fantasy before. A young girl, different from her peers, who escapes into a fantasy world of her creating which may or may not be real sounded like a Pan's Labyrinth ripoff to me. So I gave it a pass.
However during the next 6 months I Kill Giants was all anyone who reads comics could talk about. It was the Essex County Trilogy of 2008. But still I resisted. Sometimes I have this bizarre irrational stubbornness that makes me retreat from anything that is overtly popular. For the same reason I refuse to see Avatar or read Harry Potter. I fully admit that it's foolish but there it is. I felt the same way about I Kill Giants and so even when the trade came out I said no.
Well then I read Joe Kelly's Amazing Spider-Man arc earlier this year. It was hilarious, funny, and witty. Basically everything I want in a Spider-Man comic. Then I heard a great interview that he gave on Ifanboy and I found out that Kelly had been writing comics since the early 90s. He knows comics. So when I saw the I Kill Giants Titan Edition come thru I decided to give it another chance.
So here it is: I Kill Giants is a wonderful story about a very effed-up 5th grade girl named Barbara Thorson. Barbara keeps two secrets from the world: One is a hammer capable of toppling giants. The other is something far worse. She is different, closed off socially, and finding strength in making the world around her fantastical. But their is obviously something wrong in the Thorson household. The question is whether Barbara is the one with severe emotions problems, or whether she has created a coping mechanism to deal with an external force. Writer Joe Kelly and artist JM Ken Niimura are very savvy to leave us guessing until the final issue. Barbara is an unreliable narrator, but not in a cynical way. The writer is not trying to trick us or smugly wink with hipster cynicism. Rather Barbara's extreme POV endears us to her. She creates a world where she is the strongest person she can be.
However as we find out in this carefully crafted tale, this is not a story of good vs. evil. Barbara cannot kill the most horrifying thing out there: the unknown. Even giants are easier opponents. She has to create a world that she can control because in the "real world" she is helpless. I was very impressed by how Kelly and Niimura deftly switch between POVs. We get to see Barbara from multiple sides who try to understand and help her. It's a very emotional tale at the end. Barbara Thorson goes through a very rich character journey. The reader experiences Barbara's epiphany at the same time that the reader does, which makes it very involving.
So in the end I highly reccomend I Kill Giants. Okay. Are you happy?
Have a great week. Book Slave.
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