Giant Days #41, by John Allison (writer), Maz Sarin (artist), Whitney Cogar (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Poor Tim Allen, those Hollywood libruls made him replace Wilson with an angry British lady in his Home Improvement reboot. Don't worry, there is no Home Improvement reboot. Although watching Susan try to flick cigs into Tim's mower's gas tank might be worth it.Susan fears she has lost her edge for confrontation. Esther is trying to keep Daisy from having to interact with Ingrid. Esther is also slightly discomfited to see Nina hanging out with Ed is his tiny room. At the Halloween party, Esther and Susan get drunk and try to intimidate Ingrid, only for her to verbally eviscerate them until Daisy arrives and does the same to Ingrid. Considering Susan did not try to punch or stab Ingrid, I'm going to agree she's lost her edge. And Esther was practicing cultural appropriation with that geisha outfit, so she kind of deserved it.
I have the most horrible feeling the nude male model in the art class was Dean Thompson. Although the "Ubuntu" back tattoo seems out of place for him. Oh God, I just noticed the poster on the door of his room as Esther leaves Ed and Nina alone! It was Dean! Where's the bleach?!
I can't decide if the meeting in the park between Daisy and Ingrid was Ingrid being genuinely remorseful for her behavior in the art class, or some trick on her part to get Daisy back. I doubt Ingrid is actually smart enough to pull a stunt like that, but I can't rule it out. So many unpleasant theories this issue is bringing up in my mind. Well, I'm pretty sure I'm in a down cycle right now, so it's to be expected.
The Seeds #1, by Ann Nocenti and David Aja - Unless "Art Director" is some new title for a color artist, I think Aja handled that and the lettering himself.There's a wall. it divides a city, into a place for people who want more technology and those who don't. There's a reporter, Astra, who wants to do a story on the non-tech side of the wall, but her editor won't approve it until she does one hyping some club that will supposedly let you experience death. Pfft, just go drive in Chicago, that'll take care of that for ya. There's a fellow named Race, possibly an alien, out collecting seeds from various species on the planet, because we're about to die. But Race is falling for a woman named Lola, and she might like him too. Except Astra's seen the face under his mask, and now she's on his trail for a story.
It's a quiet book so far, people talking and maybe trying to figure stuff out. So Aja spends a lot of panels on the stuff that makes up their lives. The plate of bugs they're eating, the contents of Asta's fridge, Gabrielle (Astra's editor), stubbing out a cig. The little things, motions, that people do as they go about their days. The first issue is 28 pages, and 14 of those are 9-panel grids. Half of the remaining pages are 7 panels, two rows of 3 panels, and one row that's just a single panel that stretches across the whole page. The larger panels are what Aja uses to establish the setting. What the wall looks like, topped with barbed wire and soldiers/cops/somebody patrolling with guns and gas masks, SAFE in big bold letters stamped on the side of their halftrack.
But everything stays in that grid pattern, ultimately. It does actually work very well for me in establishing the pace of things, in a way panel layouts usually don't. I'll read reviews of comics where the writer says, "So-and-so used {insert layout} to set a {insert pace description} to create. . ." and I almost never feel that way. I read most comics and I feel like I move through them at my pace. Fast if I'm skimming because something's happening I don't care about. Or I stop and linger over a panel if I'm hunting for background details or body language cues. But here, it actually works. The second-to-last page, as Nocenti and Aja build to Astra noticing Race's face worked really well. Panel of her sliding an arm into her coat. Next panel her lighting a cig. Next panel, Race and Lola moving away down the alley. Next panel, Astra's getting ready to take the cigarette out of her mouth to exhale smoke. It's just so obvious how short a span of time it all is that it really drives the deliberate nature of the thing home. I was surprised, maybe impressed, they didn't go for a bigger panel for the shot of Race's head. The zoom-in works just fine, but I'm conditioned to expect the artist gets more space for the big surprise, and they went against it.
Something that seemed relevant to me was the editor's speech about how, if you spread a lie or a myth long enough, people will make it come true. Her classmates insisted she slept around, even though she didn't, but everyone believed, and eventually she did. So if they say the club lets you experience death, maybe it will. But will it really be a brief experience? Also, her story doesn't touch on the idea of what the people who start the lie intend. Why did they want everyone to think she slept around? She brings up Roswell, that letting people think their were aliens gave the government cover for other projects they didn't want known. Maybe the idea was to present the truth in a manner no one would believe it, with a lie dressed up as the "real" truth others could use to dismiss the "lie".
There's a lot more here - there's a whole thread of a beekeeper bemoaning the loss of his queen bee I didn't mention earlier, and two birds on a wire - but it's only part one. I need to see more of this before I can figure out where exactly Nocenti and Aja are going with it.
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