Review: ‘Huge Detective’ #1 Is A Giant Success

A murder mystery with a unique perspective, the world of Huge Detective is one in which ancient giants awaken from their slumber beneath their Earth forty years before the start of the story. They wage war on humanity before a detente is reached, resulting in the giants forming a nation within Australia and entering into an uneasy coexistence with humanity.

This premise is all laid out in the opening three pages of Huge Detective #1. It’s not the most elegant of exposition dumps, but it is necessary information to get across sooner rather than later. The rendering of the exposition from artist Magenta King, in gloriously subdued washed out colors, is also far more visually-engaging that a simple introductory text page would be. It sets the tone for this first issue, in which its main characters get a bit overwhelmed by the world-building and plot setup, but the end result is still a fascinating comic that leaves us eager for more. 

After the initial exposition, the plot reveals itself: there’s been a murder, and a man named Manny who believes himself to be a “Huge” (the book’s word for giants) is in custody. Detective Tamaki and her partner, a Huge named Gyant, are trying to determine if Manny is the culprit or merely a witness to the crime. This relatively-straightforward “investigating a murder” premise serves as the perfect vehicle for writer Adam Rose and King’s world building. In the course of their investigation, it’s revealed that Huge (“Huge” appears to be a word where the singular and plural are the same, like “Jedi,” a linguistic detail I adore) communicate with each other telepathically. Talking — or “throat speaking” — is difficult for them and they can’t read human minds. They have a heightened sense of smell, such that it can confirm or reject DNA tests. Huge refer to humans as “dolls,” and some humans willingly live in Huge theme parks where their needs are met by the Huge in what is, basically, a zoo. 

All of these details help to immediately create a richly-realized world. It is in these details, as well the hook of the murder mystery, that Huge Detective #1 succeeds. This is a premise and plot that immediately hooks you and makes you want to know more. Characterization, meanwhile, has a bit more room to improve. Tamaki, in these opening pages, is little more than a collection of noir-ish detective tropes; tough-talking and worn-down; Jake Gittes or Sam Spade with a partner who’s a giant. There are hints at something more complex — Detective Gyant thinks she smells like “bad doll medicine,” the implication being she has some kind of health problem — but beyond that, she exists mostly as a stock type. Similarly, Gyant himself remains a cipher. The idea of the first Huge to walk on human soil since the end of the war and operate as a detective is intriguing in and of itself, but little is offered yet to suggest why Gyant made these choices. 

Art-wise, King has to walk a tricky path, and does so mostly with aplomb. Constructing scenes in which one character towers over the other is no mean feat. King employs various in-universe devices (like helicopters that bring Tamaki to Gyant’s level) to accomplish this, but even when such devices aren’t present, King succeeds at making sure the characters’ physical relationship to one another is accurately represented without being disorienting. Backgrounds occasionally become generic, and the panel-to-panel flow is sometimes hard to follow, but for the most part, King meets the visual challenge of the premise well. 

If the biggest complaint in the first issue of a new series establishing an entirely new kind of world while also doing the usual “beginning of a story” stuff, like introducing new characters and kicking off the plot, is that the characters feel a bit thin, no one is doing anything too poorly. There’s plenty of room remaining for Tamaki, Gyant, and Manny to come into their own and develop beyond stock types or their role in the plot. What is present in Huge Detective #1 — detailed and compelling world-building alongside strong visual storytelling — is more than enough to hook readers.