Sixty-six
THE GIANT DAYS SELF-PUBLISHED ARCHIVE IS BACK UP!
FROM GIANT DAYS #3
The gap between Giant Days #1 and #2 was 18 months. The gap between #2 and #3 was one week. I knew I was onto something, and ideas were coming fast. But this third issue is still a test of the parameters of the series. There are things in here that are very clearly the series as it was published by Boom (the Indie Society plotline) and things that were dead ends (the Black Metal Society “supernatural” element). The indie society came from a story my then-girlfriend gave me about joining Indie Soc at Bristol University. They all met in a pub, and then whoever was in charge suggested they “write down a list of indie bands.” This seemed utterly absurd.
Another weird thing about this issue is that Erin Winters from Scary Go Round is in it, but Esther doesn’t recognise her. I only remembered writing this that Erin had been erased from the collective memory at this point. The kind of oughts webcomic plot over-stuffing that now gives me hives.
This was me monkeying with the chemistry of the series to see what worked. The red-haired girl needn’t have been Erin, really I just wanted to show Daisy and Susan testing the parameters of their little group, like it wasn’t quite settled yet. Erin appears briefly in one scene in the Boom series, writing her out.
Looking back at this (quite experimental) third self-published issue, I can see how I would do it now and make it more coherent with what followed it. You send Esther to indie society with Daisy and Susan, and she punctures it, then you send Daisy and Susan to black metal society, and Susan accidentally becomes president. But I worked some stuff out about Daisy through her interactions with Erin, that would pay dividends several years later. Getting it wrong is sometimes more valuable than getting it right. Just don’t get it wrong too often.
I do not remember reading this one when it ran, which seems weird, because I definitely remember reading #2, and I’m pretty sure I’d remember Erin and Phyllis appearing, if nothing else. Maybe that week’s break threw me off and I forgot to come back to check when updates resumed.
I remembered like half of it (the tattoo and the weird blood sacrifice and Susan becoming King of the Indies) but I completely blanked Erin’s appearance out of my memory. Maybe she just has that effect on people.
Turns out the curse of Hell even wiped her from readers’ memories
Also she used to have fluffy orange hair instead of short bright red hair, so that can be a factor.
I re-read these when you re-uploaded them earlier this week, and completely forgot Erin was Erin Winters until the reveal of the car numberplate. She works well as a character here without all that plot baggage.
I imagine that if you’d written the plot with Susan and Esther switching up groups and expectations then you’d never have written Steeple. I love Steeple.
I would, but Steeple would have been about Reverend Penrose flying around in the actual church steeple which would have fired off the church like a rocket, and docked when his mission was over. This stuff pours out of me.
“Vertical Helen”
The fact that it’s apparently notable for Helen to be vertical seems to imply something about Helen but I’m not sure what…