REVIEW: 'Giga' #3 by Alex Paknadel, John Lé, and Rosh

 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.

GIGA #3

Writer: Alex Paknadel

Artist: John Lé, Rosh

Publisher: Vault Comics

Release Date: March 31, 2021

Cover Price: $3.99

Score:

★★★★☆ (4/5)

Having just jumped into Giga with this issue, it really is a fascinating read. Alex Paknadel has put together a sophisticated drama that's intellectually challenging and full of ideas involving class, authoritarianism, worship, terrorism, and loss. It's all under the guise of giant robots but it really has more to do with the complexity of humanity. 

We come across "world-building" constantly in comics and it's a necessity obviously but while some stories can describe the world in its superficiality, Paknadel is giving us all the intricacies, the minutia, the politics, the societal divisions, everything. He's laying down everything from the foundation to the penthouse, brick by brick, and as expansive and this world seems with its once mighty robots, deified, dead, and strewn about the landscape it's the three main characters that become our focal and emotional touchstone. From a storytelling perspective, no one in comics is working harder to immerse the reader into their world like Paknadel. And he succeeds on every front. 

Artists John Lé and Rosh manifest the script with some extraordinary visuals that are cinematic and washed in bright colors. The scope to which this world is made up of gigantic monuments now used to inhabit humans creates an eye-popping landscape of immense imagination and detail. 

Frankly, I'm going to immerse myself in issues #1 and #2 to further understand the motivations of the characters. It's already an enthralling story based on issue #3 alone and it's as dense and thought provoking as any comic has a right to be in under 30 pages. 

'Giga' is a complex ecosystem unto itself. Despite the giant robots, the world Paknadel and Lé have created isn't that much different than our own messed up reality. It's Rome. It's Shakespeare. An Empire on the brink. It's tragic. Above all, 'Giga' is ambitious storytelling.