Giga #3

Giga #3

Vault Comics 2021

Written by Alex Paknadel

Illustrated by John Lê

Coloured by Rosh

Lettered by Aditya Bidikar

Evan’s oldest friend returns to find the prosthetics she once built transformed into her doppelganger. Mason and the Order of The Red Relay investigate an elephant graveyard of towering Giga remains.

There is something about this book that is completely and utterly fascinating to me. To build their cities out of Mechs that have seeming shut down and in my humble opinion lie dormant seems a little excessive, or overkill, if they are trying to save themselves from those who live on the ground. Of course I suppose if they didn't live there they could hijack the technology and fake being more advanced and civilised than they truly are. The whole mishegas with Evan and the religious group was probably the best thing that ever happened to him, and yes I am fully aware he lives in the slums but he’s a free thinker now and isn’t blindly following along lapping up what they are trying to feed the masses by the spoonful. I like that we open up here with a look at the past with Aiko as it pertains to the present and what’s going to happen, I love foreshadowing.

I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told. How we see the story & plot development through watching the sequence of events unfold alongside how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. I honestly hadn’t expected to see what we see at the neck though the language I had expected to see but i’ll get into that shortly. That was a shocker to me and I enjoy it when we see the unexpected occur. The character development that we see is fantastic! The guards who are little men in a position of power, to themselves, and speak like they do show how small and insecure they truly are. Now what I do love seeing is Evan and Track who while have a convoluted history really do trust each other in ways many wouldn’t understand and we see that portrayed so beautifully here. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story culminating in that cliffhanger ending it has this way of drawing the reader in so they don’t want to leave.

The interiors here are spectacular. The linework that we se is impressive and how through the varying weights we see the detail work come to life in some astounding ways. The backgrounds that we see do more than flesh out the city or the country they also bring us some great depth perception, sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope of the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show an extremely talented eye for storytelling. The colour work that we see is absolutely divine. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is astonishing. How we see the colour able to add definition and patterns in the clouds or the clothing show an expertise when it comes to how colour works.

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With the way we see this being structured with the layers within the story coming to life as they grow, evolve and emerge in new ways we see some great writing talent and ability from Alex. how we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow while moving the story forward is exemplary work. Science fiction comes in all shapes and sizes, genres and mixtures thereof and what we see here has that kind of unlimited potential that feels like only the surface has been scratched for what’s still possible. This is an intelligently written and highly entertaining story that engages the readers mind and imagination at every turn.