By Matt Lune

Giant Days is a brilliant, weird, funny comic about three girls living together at Sheffield University in the UK. Created by John Allison and drawn by talents including Max Sarin, Lissa Treiman and Whitney Cogar, the series has been going strong for several years now, and has amassed a rightfully devoted fanbase.

As it’s set in England, though, and because Allison has such strong instincts as a writer, there are a lot of jokes and references which might fly over the head of the international audience. Here, then, are our annotations to help guide you through life at Sheffield University, provided by our Guest Annotator Matt Lune!

Page 1: 

Clannad are an Irish band from the 70s, whose genre over the years spanned Folk, Folk-Rock, New-Age and Traditional Irish. Susan’s exclamation “for the love of Robin, the Hooded Man” is a reference to a Clannad song of the same name about – you guessed it – Robin Hood. It apparently captured the spirit of the English legend so much that it was used as the theme tune for the 1984 ITV drama Robin of Sherwood.

I love how Susan and, by extension, Esther, have become the parents in this scenario to Daisy’s very fragile child figure. Uni days were always fun for everyone except the one who has to be the parent/designated driver/person who has to say no to jumping out of the first floor dorm windows because “the tree looks soft” (which actually happened to me. I was the parental figure, not the drunk wannabe Jackass star)

Page 2:

There is nothing worse for someone older than a first year university student than a first year university student. Those CHILDREN. Those absolute CHILDREN!! – Editor.

Page 3:

“Not another chicken.” – just how many times have these tricksy students engaged in such FOWL play? We’ll find out later, as a matter of fact.

There’s a famous end-of-year prank where students took four chickens and set them loose on campus. They painted a “1”, a “2”, a “3”, and a “5” on them. Faculty spent DAYS trying to find out where chicken 4 had ended up!

Page 4:

See how Max Sarin set up the fact Daisy had bare feet in the previous page, so we knew in advance that paint-based shenanigans would be particularly risky for her? 

Page 5: 

I think we all know who did this. Whenever you’re looking to find out a culprit, pay attention to who is saying the most. 

Page 6:

I used to wonder how bad/destructive Uni pranks could get, and while I never saw a kitchen recreated entirely out of paper, I did see a student’s room completely graffiti-ed over. The walls, floor, ceiling, bedding, even the light bulb and the underneath of the chair legs. It was almost impressive. 

Look at Saffy in panel three. She knows.

Page 7:

“Such Legendary Bants!” – short for banter, bants was the go-to word for ‘having a laugh’ for a while there a few years back. Masters of the bants were often referred to as the Archbishop of Banterbury, or a Bantersaurus Rex, and even – in rare cases – a “regular Banthony Hopkins”

A “simp” refers to somebody who puts someone else on a pedestal, in turn making themselves wholly dependent or subservient to that person. Usually used in regards to men on the internet who leave comments on model’s twitter photos. It can also be made into something derogatory, as is the case here.

Spread around the room you can see the buckets of paint they used to paint the floor in the hall, and the dismantled kitchen cupboards they replaced with cardboard ones. There’s also a hose pipe for some other unknown prank, and a crudely drawn picture of Daisy viciously scribbled out.

Page 8:

Coralie’s minions take on the form of TweedleDee and TweedleDum in Coralie’s mind, and the explosion of bats only serves to firm up her place as the supervillan of this piece.

“Yeah. On a Permo” – Short for permanent, it’s the feeling of tripping long after the drugs should have worn off. The drugs, in Coralie’s case, being insomnia and hatred.

The uberman method is actually talking about polyphrasic sleep, where your sleep pattern is insane, but completely rigid in structure. Apparently if you sleep for twenty minutes and then stay up for a few hours, then twenty minutes sleep and a few hours, etc etc, you can maintain that pattern forever. It’s… not healthy. Bankers do it.

Page 9:

Look at the face on that student next to Daisy! I love how artist Sarin foreshadows the epic “Shhhhhhhhhhh!” a few panels later. I’m going to miss this series.

Page 10:

19! 19 Chicken incidents! That’s more than a Saturday night in Nando’s. Do Americans still not know what “going for a cheeky Nando’s” means? If so, nobody tell them. We must have explained Nandos by now, Matt. I can’t be bothered checking, but I’m sure we have.

Saffy’s eyebrows were made for situations like this.

Page 11:

“Niebezpieczne lekarstwa grypy” is Polish for ‘Dangerous Flu Medication’*, so you can’t say Daisy wasn’t warned.

Daisy quotes “Three Is The Magic Number” from De La Soul. Then she quotes Simon & Garfunkel “Hello Darkness My Old Friend”. She’s having a day of it.

I was tempted to describe Home Bargains here, but the name says it all really. All you need to know is that it’s a real shop where I have zero doubt that you can buy dodgy cheap flu pills. 

*Thanks, Google Translate!

Page 12:

I’m so proud of Esther! John Allison has done a fantastic job of showing the growth of these characters over this series, but perhaps Esther has developed the most. What a feeling to have finished your degree!

I still remember this exact feeling, walking out the exam room early and leaving all that degree stress behind me. Big times, giant days.

Page 13:

Stygian means ‘of the River Styx’ and is commonly used to describe an intense level of darkness.

It’s appropriate that Daisy uses the term ‘Matrix’ here, as she’s seemingly taken the red pill and has undergone a transformation not unlike those unplugged from the Matrix in those seminal movies. As a brief aside, I saw someone recently refer to The Matrix as “one of the finest movies of the late 1900s” and with that I crumbled into dust.

“All Property is theft, Susan. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.” – A prominent French politician from the mid 19th Century, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first person to call themselves an anarchist, cementing himself as one of anarchism’s most influential philosophers. The fact that Daisy is quoting him here (while heavily implying that she stole a huge monitor from somewhere) leads us to think she’s becoming the very thing she’s fighting against.

Page 14:

Max Sarin is now drawing comics for DC, and this page 100% makes the case for an ongoing Batgirl series, right?

Page 15: 

“Maybe she’ll play the brown note over the PA” – The Brown Note has become something of an urban legend about a specific frequency that, when played, makes the listener… poop themselves. Popularised by an episode of South Park, it’s gained a bit of traction as a legitimate frequency, but it’s all bobbins. Bobbins, I SAY!

Villanelle is one of the main characters from Killing Eve, but since I’ve never watched it I’m reluctant to explore further because I DON’T WANT SPOILERS LALALA.

Page 16:

“Salad days” was coined by Shakespeare, I believe! It means the days when you are still young, naive, inexperienced, optimistic. I don’t believe Susan ever had those.

And Saffy finally makes her move! But, alas, Daisy doesn’t realise.

Page 17:

Coralie is DJ’ing whilst wearing a giant electronic helmet, just like Deadmau5.

You have to wonder what Daisy has in all those pouches.

Page 18:

Could Coralie be the most villainous character in all of Giant Days? Literally stealing the most memorable moments from the final days of a person’s Uni experience is pretty messed up. The book is even called Giant Days, for crying out loud! This is a series all about how important this time in a person’s life is, and Coralie has stolen some of them from Daisy.

Page 19:

To cap it all off, the electronic helmet… thing quotes William Butler Yeats to Daisy. His poem “The Second Coming” also says:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Page 20:

Esther calls her “Daisy Duke”, after the famous character from Dukes of Hazzard.

SOOOO EVILLLL!!

Page 21:

I believe their last time sat in this spot came in issue #18 of the series, which finished up their first year of residence.

Page 22:

Well, maybe it turned into one of the most memorable nights of Daisy’s life after all!

“To be Concluded” – the familiar send off changes from it’s usual “To be Continued” as one more bitter reminder that this is the penultimate issue, and our Giant Days are coming to a close. As Doctor Stephen Strange once said, “We’re in the Endgame now.”

 

Giant Days #53

Written by John Allison
Drawn by Max Sarin
Coloured by Whitney Cogar
Lettered by Jim Campbell

 

Matt Lune is a critic and podcaster who has written for publications including PanelXPanel, The MNT and Multiversity. You can find him on Twitter here!

 

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