Giant

February 10, 2020
Set during the construction of Rockefeller Center in the 1930s, this spectacularly drawn historical epic brings Depression-era New York City to riotous, romanticized life. At the center of the sprawling narrative is Giant, a hulking, closemouthed steelworker who joins a crew of fellow Irish immigrants, “sky boys” working hundreds of feet off the ground on the rising edifice. Giant harbors secrets carried over from the old country, and he begins an epistolary relationship with the widow of a sky boy (pretending to be her husband, as he can’t bring himself to reveal to her that he’s died). But the storytelling is more about the new world: the personal dramas of Giant’s crewmates and tenement neighbors, as well as the city itself, the graphic novel’s most shining character. Mikaël draws bathhouses, brothels, Catholic churches, and Hoovervilles with enthusiasm and attention to period detail. The rich, classical illustration style, colored in sepia tones, respectfully recalls the art of old N.Y.C.’s great draftsman, Will Eisner. Set pieces, including a trip through Ellis Island and a visit to one of the early Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parades, are rendered with panache. The translation by Madden brings the operatic story down to earth with colorful period dialogue. This melodrama lives up to its inspiring setting, a muscular young city in a nation of immigrants, brimming with stories to tell.

April 24, 2020

In the early 1930s, New York's Rockefeller Center is slowly being erected one piece at a time by the labor of men working long hours under dangerous conditions high in the sky. One such laborer is known simply as Giant. The mysteriously laconic man tries to keep his painful Irish past hidden as he buries himself in his job. When a fellow worker takes a fatal plunge from the top of crane, a final payout from the union is given to Giant to send to the man's widow back home, along with news of her husband's fate. Before mailing on this final tragic bundle, Giant reads a note in the man's belongings from his wife, Mary Ann. Touched by her sincerity, Giant resolves to write her back in the guise of her husband instead of relaying the truth. Little does Giant know that his words touch Mary Ann as well, so much so that she sets out to reunite with her husband by coming to America, not knowing his true fate. VERDICT French Canadian creator Mika�l constructs a heartfelt, minutely detailed, and beautiful epic about the everyday lives, loves, trials, and triumphs of hard-working laborers, the immigrant experience, and finding forgiveness. [Previewed in Douglas Rednour's Graphic Novels Preview, "Picture This," LJ 4/20.]--Douglas Rednour, Georgia State Univ. Libs., Atlanta

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2020
In the early 1930s, Giant works as a riveter on the nascent Rockefeller Center. Known for his skill and his silence, he's tasked with returning the personal effects of a fellow worker, who recently died on the job, to the man's wife in Ireland. Only he, an Irish immigrant himself, decides to impersonate the fallen man instead, setting the unknowing widow's mind at ease with his eloquent letters. The ruse, of course, can't last, and neither can Giant's own dark past stay buried. Often calling to mind the famous photograph of builders sitting on a beam suspended perilously high over Manhattan (which, as the foreword notes, was a publicity photo for Rockefeller Center), this may also remind readers of Will Eisner's Contract with God trilogy, especially in Giant's and his fellow immigrant workers' Lower East Side neighborhood. French Canadian artist and author Mika�l conjures drama in each frame, with high-contrast and earth- and sepia-toned washes that fit the period feel, which is underscored by historical references, the ethnic stereotypes being flung around (which can be jarring), and the wafting sounds of Walter Winchell radio broadcasts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)