Graphic novel -- originally a seven-issue miniseries -- by
Joe Kelly
and
J.M. Ken Niimura, published by
Image Comics back in 2008. I got
the first issue of this when it first came out but never ended up
getting anything after that. I used to regret that, but I’m actually
happy about it now, because I think this story works best as a
stand-alone graphic novel, rather than as a series of individual
comic
books.
The story focuses on an
eccentric but
whip-smart
fifth grader named
Barbara Thorson. She's a
glorious character --
she’s terrifically
smart, she’s got a
smart mouth that can cut you
to shreds from 50 yards, she’s an awesome
D&D dungeon master, she knows more than anyone her age
should know about obscure
baseball trivia, she loves to wear weird
animal-ear headgear, and possibly unsurprisingly, she has almost no
friends. She lives at home with her older brother and sister -- her sister does
most of the work to keep the family going, as their father left the
family and their mom is mysteriously
absentee.
And Barbara sees
fairies and
monsters everywhere, tells everyone that she
fights and kills
giants, and has forebodings of
titanic monsters on
the way to destroy everyone around her.
Yes, maybe Barbara is a bit more than merely
eccentric.
Just
about anything else I could tell you about this story would constitute a
spoiler, and I wouldn't want to spoil any of this for you, because
it's vastly fun to read and discover on your own. So I can't tell you
much about Barbara's mighty weapon
Coveleski (other than that it's
named after
Stan Coveleski, a
pitcher who played in the majors in
the 1910s and '20s), or about the secrets hiding in the upper floors of
her house, and definitely nothing about the giants themselves, and
whether they're
real or
imaginary.
Joe Kelly’s writing is
entirely masterful. Killer
dialogue and excellent
characterization
-- you will love the heck out of Barbara even while you’re wishing you
could take a switch to her. The plot builds slow, with more and more
pressure stacking up. And Niimura’s art is pretty amazing. It’s
cartoony -- almost sketchy -- but it’s vastly
eloquent at expressing
emotion and action and mood.
The ending of this story is going
to leave you terrified and
breathless and maybe sad, for all the
right reasons. It’s one of the few comics out there that gets me
choked up every time I read it.
If you haven’t read it, you should read it. It's very good.