Review: We Called Them Giants

We Called Them Giants by Kieron Gillen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This graphic novel suffers from the two biggest faults it could have, in my view: inadequate worldbuilding and characterization. Yes, I know there's only 100 pages to tell this complete story, but that clearly wasn't enough; the ending didn't feel like it wrapped things up at all. Too many threads were left dangling, and precious little was explained.

In a nutshell, this is the story of an alien invasion by giant bipedal mecha monsters, combined with the rapture-like (as in, almost everyone vanished, not even leaving their empty shoes behind) disappearance of the entire world population. Except, that is, for Lori, our protagonist, a distrustful and cynical foster child; her schoolmate Annette, who she runs across the first morning after the disappearance, when she is wandering the abandoned streets looking for others; and Beatrice, and older woman who has a hidden camp in the shadow of the Giants, as they are called. There are also some others, who, in typical Mad Max post-apocalyptic style, have banded together into gangs roaming the empty city searching for food (and presumably people to rape, although thankfully that doesn't happen in this story). Lori, Annette and Beatrice stick together, but they are headed into winter, the temperature is dropping, and food is getting harder and harder to find.

All well and good. But this promising setup is pretty much wasted, because we never get the slightest explanation of what is going on. Are the Giants mechanical or organic beings, and why are they here? Where did the rest of the people go, and did the Giants make them disappear? Why were Lori, Annette and Beatrice, and the various gang members, not raptured, or whatever happened? There is a bit of platitude at the end about one of the Giants taking the three protagonists under its wing, as it were, bringing them food and providing shelter, and eventually giving its life to defend them from another mecha, but there is no real communication and no revealing of why they are here or what they are doing. It's frankly more than a little disappointing, especially coming from a writer who produced the excellent series The Wicked and the Divine.

In fact, now that I think about it, don't even bother with this. Go read The Wicked and the Divine instead.

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