Big Girls # 1
Image Comics
Story & Art: Jason Howard
Lettering: Fonografiks
Some people allow the scope of the situation to sway their sentiment towards it. A jingle I heard growing up stated “that’s about the size where you put your eyes”. A comic titled Big Girls could seemed like a kaiju type storyline. Jason Howard manages to fit a building size brawl in the pages of this first issue from Image Comics, it is the street level story that suggests the early success for this series.
Issue # 1 of Big Girls introduces us to Ember our narrator. Ember is one of the “Big Girls”. I only assume organizational naming was too small a detail for the current state of the world. As Ember indicates, a small microbe, a small cure to treat a small problem was cause. Even worse, the group tasked with solving the problem was so small they died working on a solution taking that small fragment with them.
As Ember explains a small problem got bigger and we ended up with Jacks. The Big Girls protect the Preserve, a small area safe for normal humans to live. A small difference in genetics and the same “mistake” that created the Big Girls causes males to become these large, wild creatures. Don’t ask me “Y”. The take away from this issue is the mission statement of The Cube. In order to maintain what remains “problems” must be solved before they can get bigger.
The most impressive portion of this comic came with the presentation of proportions. The action sequences that Howard illustrates provide grand acknowledgements of the problems facing the Preserve. I mentioned kaiju type battles and sequences and you get two this issue. Scale comics are for me both entertaining and challenging. However, Howard proves his ability providing attention to both the small and larger characters on a panel.
I found that it is the smaller moments of dialogue that make this issue. Even the idea of the Preserve highlights the importance of proportion, particularly in terms of property. High Marshall James Tannik, the agent in charge of Ember’s missions provides the distinction between mission and morality. Watching his reaction to the image of the Jack that Ember just helped them deal with, I felt the full gravity of mainkinds failure. The discussion between the High Marshall and Ember is also quite powerful and asks the question we currently face, when do you act on a problem.
Big Girls # 1 forces you to focus on the follies of man. Or as Ember states it “Men….The Giant Insane Monster Men”. It also brings up the conversation of what matters, is it only the massive that has meaning. Or should we take measure and look for meaning in the miniscule as well.