Gigantic Review

Gigantic trade paperback
Writer: Rick Remender
Penciller: Eric Nguyen
Colorist: Matt Wilson

Totally Not Based On A Song By The Pixies

Sometimes a comic book just leaps off of the shelf at you, for no good reason other than the sheer look of the thing.  Gigantic is a great example.  The cover art is gorgeous, deftly shaded pencil work picked out in bright colours, with a washed out light bloom effect, and, most importantly, a fucking huge robot dude being attacked by aliens with kanji script thrown all across the thing, loudly proclaiming it’s kaiju cinema heritage.

So yes, I went in expecting a kind of Ultraman riff, with a mega-sized hero smacking the shit out of skyscraper sized monsters.  What I wasn’t expecting was a wryly satirical look at the entertainment industry, poking fun at broadcasting corporations, reality TV, and professional wrestling.  In retrospect that’s probably because I never bothered reading the back-copy, which specifically name-drops The Truman Show (dear god, if you haven’t seen it, stop reading this and rent it now).  So, yeah, that probably should have been a clue.

Boom!  Kick!  Explodo!

Gigantic gets off to a good start.  Altogether we get seven pages worth of exposition and character development, with some humour scattered about, and then BOOM!  Giant man shows up and trashes the city for the rest of the issue.

The actual premise here is that our hero, Gigantic, is essentially a power-suited pro-wrestler who ran out on his contract by coming home to Earth, in a desperate bid to escape the alien version of Fox TV who own his ass.  Now he’s being chased by alien bounty hunters, and the whole thing is being aired live.  Oh, yeah, and Earth itself?  That’s just another TV show.  The planet is a set, and we’re the unwitting performers in the galaxy’s most popular reality TV show.

The comic centres on the dynamic between our hero, Kane, and his brother Scotty, now an ageing farm-owner.  These two don’t exactly get along, for very good reasons, and the interplay between them, on an arc towards reconciliation and redemption, is really nicely handled.  Scotty is easily the most engaging character in the story, lending genuine emotion in amongst all the giant-sized silliness.

The Bigger They Are…

On the whole, there’s a lot to like about Gigantic.  The core characters are well developed, the artwork is frequently superb, though the human characters don’t come off nearly as well as the giant-monsters, and there is some fun humour in there.  Some.

Unfortunately, that’s about it.  Whilst some of the gags are good, a lot of it just feels strained, and old.  It’s all stuff we’ve heard before, and in some cases it’s just plain incongruous.  Gigantic’s initial rampage is astonishingly brutal, drawn from a “man on the street” perspective, showing clearly the awful devastation and the terrible cost of this kind of epic level brawling.  Then, in the middle of it all, we’ve got stereotypical brainless army goons who name their helicopters after Reagan and utter lines like “What kind of pinko-liberal monster did they send us?”  I mean, really?  Yes, bashing on Republicans is fun and all, but at least try to get some good material out of it.

With the storytelling and characters, it’s more of the same; there’s good stuff there, but aside from the core cast, everyone else is pretty much one note, at best.  The villain is basically just your typical corporate suit, only all alienified, there are some pretty cheap get-outs, and the plot itself has more than it’s fair share of holes.

Gigantic?  It’s Only 5 Issues Mate!

Really, Gigantic’s problem is this; it’s too damn small.  It’s a 5 issue miniseries, collected as a trade, and 5 issues just isn’t enough time to really make this idea work.  There’s a little too much going on, and not enough time given over where it’s needed.  Ironically, where I’d expect to be complaining that all the panel time goes to action sequences, at the cost of character development, Gigantic actually gives over plenty of time to the characters, and not nearly enough time to the giant city-destroying kaiju monster fights.  In most comics, I’d call that a good thing, but when you’re picking up a book with a picture of a skyscraper sized machine-man on the cover, called GIGANTIC, you really expect to see some time spent on the city smashing, earth-shaking monster fights.  As it is, we only really get one genuine super-monster dust up, and it’s disappointingly short, as the story scurries towards it’s resolution.

Expanded out to a 10, or 12 issue run, this thing could have been awesome.  It’s got a fun concept, which the writers do some fairly interesting things with, it’s got some well developed characters (and some less well developed, who might benefit from the extra time), and it’s got a truly perfect excuse to have a giant man in power armour smack the shit out of monsters.

And it really is a lot of fun, but it’s also kind of rushed, hacked together, and ultimately flimsy.  It’s the sort of comic that’s a pretty good read the first time through, but you don’t want to go back to it, or you’ll start noticing how everything doesn’t quite hang together.  Would I call it money wasted?  Not exactly, but I’m not sure if I’d want to recommend it either.  Honestly, if the whole giant-monster kaiju thing appeals to you, I’d say skip it, because there isn’t actually a lot of that going on here.  If the idea of a wryly satirical poke at the entertainment industry sounds like your deal, then maybe give it a look, but don’t go out of your way.