In the style of Marvel’s What If…? stories, the Watcher-esque cosmic being Day-Zee asks the question: what if… Esther, Daisy and Susan had never been friends?
Giant Days is one of my favourite comics so this was a must-read for me. Is the Holiday Special awesome? Buh, yuh, duh!
The bumper-sized comic starts off a little dark and ends very light so it has that classic Dickens Christmas Carol flavour to it. Esther falls in with the mean girls, Daisy becomes a shut-in, and Susan hooks up with Ed Gemmell! It delivers on its Elseworlds-premise and I loved seeing the familiar crew in the familiar setting yet skewed and unfamiliar at the same time.
While John Allison has done the “Esther joins the mean girls” thing before in Giant Days: Year One, he does more than enough differently elsewhere for this special to stand apart as its own story – McGraw silently crushing on Daisy was such a daaawwww moment! It was great seeing Lissa Treiman returning to draw Giant Days interiors again too (she’s a Disney storyboard artist so she’s usually busy working on movies like Zootopia instead).
The backup story featuring Esther, her family and Desmond Fishman wasn’t as great though (also who’s Desmond Fishman?!). Des steals the de Groots’ Christmas turkey and Esther must recapture it. It’s not bad but it feels oddly flat for Allison, though Caanan Grall’s art was good.
Giant Days 2016 Holiday Special #1 is as funny, sweet and charming as fans have come to expect from the series – a welcome and very enjoyable festive read!
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