I know I’m behind by years on this one, but I just finished Joe Kelly and Ken Nimura’s I Kill Giants. This is such an interesting book! It follows a D&D addicted nerd through middle school as she attempts to come to terms with some personal issues. Whatever, the little things like plot and setting don’t matter: this book is actually about self-invented mythology, and the momentum ideas can gain in time of crisis. When I was a kid I would pretend that if I stood real still and breathed slowly I could jump between different realities. It was actually just a way to control my asthma attacks, but after years of doing it my brain was in another place. I obsessed over old Star Trek and Twilight Zone episodes, read everything I could find on sting theory, and read the first few chapters of A Wrinkle In Time almost daily. If I didn’t get distracted by puberty I don’t know what would have happened.

Uh, so… that’s more or less what I Kill Giants is about.

Nimura’s art is loose, kinetic… there are strokes that feel so carefree that it’s hard to believe the layouts were planned at all, which fits so elegantly with the narrative. This is a really wonderful story. I give it three out of four boners.

I wish I had time to make a boner scale graphic.