I Kill Giants
Joe Kelly, illustrations by JM Ken Niimura
Image Comics
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/General Fiction/Graphic Novel
Themes: Cross-Genre, Dreams, Fantasy Races, Girl Power, Imaginary Friends, Schools
****
Description
Barbara Thorson isn't your average girl. While others gab about fashions or dates or TV shows, she reads gaming manuals - but not just to play dungeonmaster with her
brother and his gamer friends. No, she's looking for information on monsters. She sees them all around, from tiny winged people to great ghostly harbingers... and they
all tell her that a giant is coming to town.
A giant Barbara alone can slay.
If she slays the giant, maybe she can save the one person who truly matters in her life, the one who's slipping away...
This anniversary edition contains all seven installments of the I Kill Giants miniseries, with bonus art.
Review
I Kill Giants has a surreal concept, blurring lines between reality and fantasy. Barbara herself is drawn with animal ears, part of her growing delusions spurred by trauma and pain at home. She's an abrasive heroine, often crass and repellent, spending more time in detention or the principal's office (or with the school psychologist) than in class. The new girl Sophia reaches out to her with mixed results, becoming entangled with a vengeful school bully as Barbara's tendency to push others away creates crossed signals and pain all around. The story spends a little too much time dancing around what is reality in her world and what is Barbara's twisted view of it, not to mention what Barbara hopes to accomplish with her peculiar rituals (and the reason behind them), making the climax feel a little jarring. That dancing almost cost it a full fourth star in the ratings. Beyond that is a harrowing portrait of a girl in pain, struggling to fight against a world and a truth that's even more terrifying, and harder to face down, than giants - a truth she fears she's not strong enough to handle, little realizing that she doesn't have to do it alone.