I Kill Giants

"I Kill Giants was published by Image Comics in 2008 and was adapted into a feature film, which came out in 2017 and starred Zoe Saldana. I will be the first to say I did not care for the film very much at all. We have talked about what makes a successful adaptation and what makes an unsuccessful one. I think that the work that they were adapting may not have been the best suited for the film. Comics can do things visually that movies can’t, and this is an example of a book where I think the silver screen just came up short compared to the visuals of the book. I will tell you straight up right now, of all the things that I am recommending on this list, this is one of the most searing and beautiful and compelling and interesting short stories that I have ever read. It is a magnificently drawn, beautiful limited series. There’s a genuine chance that as I describe some of the plot elements to you, I’m going to cry. It’s about a girl who lives by the sea. She is a bit of an outsider. Every night she takes her big hammer and goes out to the sea and fights and kills giants. It’s very much a fantasy construction that is getting her through some interesting and difficult times. My voice is cracking because this is one of the best and most emotionally resonant books that I’ve ever read. I am very happy that the people who made it got paid for the movie rights. I wish that the movie was as good as this. When we were talking about what you can do in the comic book medium in such a short amount of time, in such a parsimonious space, across just seven issues, this is a really good read. It is genuinely a remarkable book, and it’s definitely worth reading. Limitations do exist within comics, but the visual language and the mechanisms with which you can tell stories in comics are unmatched by any other medium. You can get some more verisimilitude with film, but with film you can’t get the degree of imagination, visual flourish, and ambition of what you can represent, that you can on a two-page spread in a comic book. You can draw what you know. With enough work, anything can be drawn and illustrated. When it comes to how you are able to tell stories by blending the visual with action and words, graphic novels are fundamentally different creatures from traditional novels. You’ll feel empathy far more readily with the protagonist of a graphic novel than you will with the protagonist of a novel. I know that because I’ve worked in comic book storytelling when it comes to adapting news stories, such as the profile of Zumrat Dawut that we discussed earlier. We’ve seen stories of people that, when they’re in print, don’t necessarily resonate. You’re able to bring new perspectives to stories when you have a character that people can identify and see and fall in love with. We’re fundamentally visual creatures. There is really no way around it. Comic books are not simply screenplays for eventual movie adaptations, and they are not just books that have pictures in them. In and of themselves, they are a truly exciting art form that allows you to tell stories that you can never tell otherwise."