Comic Book / Giant Days

From left to right, Esther, Susan and Daisy.

Giant Days is a spinoff of John Allison's popular webcomic Scary Go Round. The series started in 2012 with three independent, sporadically released issues, and returned in 2015 as an ongoing series at Boom! Studios as part of their Boom! Box imprint, running through to 2019 for 54 issues and a one-shot epilogue, with 3 special one-shots produced along the way.

The series follows SGR's Esther De Groot, a flirty, flighty Perky Goth who's just started university. She quickly befriends two of her floormates: Susan Ptolemy, sharp-tongued Deadpan Snarker and former amateur sleuth, and Daisy Wooton, a naive but endlessly sweet girl from a small town. Together the three try to survive university. Along for the ride are Ed Gemmell, a geeky friend of Esther's with a massive crush on her (initially, at least) and McGraw, Susan's wood-working childhood friend with whom she has a complicated relationship. One or two more semi-permanent characters are added along the way.

2018 produced a novel spin-off from the series, by Non Pratt. It's set during the trio's first year at the university, though fitting it exactly into the comic's continuity might be fiddly.

A new story, set during the original series' continuity, appeared online in 2022. As this is a highly unauthorised Intercontinuity Crossover featuring, of all characters, Batman, it is highly unlikely ever to appear in print, or in any other medium where Allison could be accused of making a financial profit, to avoid the risk of legal complications.

Character tropes can be found here due to the comic being part of the Bobbinsverse.

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Giant Days contains examples of:

• A Day in the Limelight: Being the supporting character who gets the most attention, Ed receives a fair share of these. In fact, even though it's by a wide margin, Ed is the character with the most cover appearances in the series after the three main girls.
  • Issue #9 focuses on his short-lived stint as a reporter for the university's newspaper, the paper's attempts to take down the corrupt student council president, and Ed's attempt to sleep with his editor and the awkward aftermath.
  • Issue #34 reveals Ed's backstory.
  • The 2018 holiday special Giant Days: Where Women Glow and Men Plunder #1 revolves entirely around Ed and his visit to Australia to see Nina Archer and her family.
  • Issue #45 sees Ed tackle the turbulence in his relationship with Nina.
• Abhorrent Admirer: Ingrid to Daisy (at first), though it's more because Daisy isn't sure she even likes her romantically and is honestly terrified of just how strong Ingrid is coming on.
• Accidental Pervert: "You’re cupping something that doesn't belong to you, Ed Gemmell!"
• All Just a Dream: Or rather, All Just A Hallucination — the first Winter Special.
• Alpha Bitches: The Girl Posse who drag Esther off to the uni bar in issue 1.
• Alternate Universe: The focus of the main story of the first Winter Special; one where the main trio didn't befriend each other in their first days. As a result, Esther is an exhausted and constantly sick party girl due to befriending the League of Head Girls, Daisy is a barely-seen hermit, Susan is even more antisocial than usual and is constantly enraged by Daisy constantly playing Enya, Ed is in an unhappy relationship with Susan, and McGraw is a long-bearded, lonely man (due to Ed not befriending him). In order to take out the head girls, Susan decides to befriend Esther, befriending Daisy first to prove she can befriend anybody. The three become as close as they are in the main timeline, and while they fail to get revenge on the Head Girls, McGraw takes care of them instead.
• Amateur Film-Making Plot: Issue #15 has the main trio get involved in the Sheffield Short Film Festival (with a grand prize of £5,000), where Esther gets cast in a film her then-boyfriend was making and Daisy and Susan make a film in response. The plot-relevant films advance to the finals due to the accidental destruction of most of the other submissions by festival organizers.
• Answer Cut:
  • Susan is not happy that someone woke her up "playing Enya at 6:45. ENYA." Daisy says nothing... while standing in front of her Enya poster.
  • "What if she's gone rogue?!"/"I have not gone rogue!"
• Art Shift: Intermittently throught issue #46, when Susan investigates a series of thefts at the Danger Nebula comic shop. Emulating a noir detective film, the panels that show Susan doing detective work are black and white (with the exception of her Private Eye Monologue box remaining beige) and use heavy shadow contrasts.
• Background Body Part: Issue 29 shows Professor Lord with background horns as he tries to get his hands on drunk Esther.
• Big Damn Kiss: Daisy of all people gets a few of these, sort of:
  • She tries one with Ed in issue 6 to get over her recent heartbreak and figure out if she's gay or not. The trope is deconstructed, as she feels nothing and both feel awkward afterwards.
  • She gets a less disastrous version, this time from a grateful Ingrid in issue 16.
  • And finally, she gets an even better kiss from Saffy at the end of issue 53.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Issue 10: Ed successfully takes out the corrupt student body president and gets a much-needed pep talk from Esther — but in the process, the university paper gets shut down due to Ed unintentionally inciting a riot, and Amanda gently rejects him.
  • The girls' first year ends with Esther and Ed avoiding legal trouble for Dean's scheme and Ed finding romance with his former newspaper coworker Jenny. But Catterick Hall is being torn down, McGraw's new relationship is in peril, and Ed and McGraw are possibly out of a place to live due to Dean fleeing an angry mob.
• Britain Is Only London: Entirely averted (in part due to John Allison being British himself) since the book takes place in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. Additionally, Esther is from the fictional Tackleford (in West Yorkshire), Susan and McGraw are from Northampton (in the East Midlands), and Ed is from Lewes (in East Sussex).
• Brutal Honesty: Susan's M.O.
  Susan: Permission to be frank?
  Ed: S- sure...
  Susan: If you ever want to dip your wick at university, don't chase pretty girls with boyfriends. You PLUM.
  Ed: That was franker than I expected.
• But Liquor Is Quicker: In issue 29, Professor Lord tops up Esther's glass all too generously at a party.
• Calling Your Orgasms: Erin's reaction to seeing Susan's cape.
  Erin: My orgasm just had an orgasm.
  Daisy: Ewww.
• The Cameo:
  • A majority of Esther's class from Scary-Go-Round shows up in issue 13.
  • Shelley shows up for a brief scene in the first Winter Special.
  • Steve shows up in the first Winter Special, still Ed's friend in that timeline due to not sleeping with Esther.
  • The second Winter Special largely consists of an extended cameo for Shelley.
  • Issue 35 is built around a visit by Sarah and (most significantly, as it turns out) Charlotte Grote.
• Catchphrase: Ingrid has "Hallo", showing off her German accent.
• Character Development:
  • Daisy starts the series rather shy and insecure. She eventually grows into the group's Team Mom and frequent voice of reason.
  • Ed slowly goes from being nervous and submissive with Esther to being on more of a level with her.
  • Esther slowly grows a moral compass, and is noticeably more relaxed than she was in Scary-Go-Round. She also slowly grows out of not thinking things through — most of the time at least, though she remains quite prone to highly emotional responses.
  • Susan gradually eases into a long-term relationship with McGraw after several on/off moments and break-ups for the two, to the point she's the first to explain she'll be living elsewhere for the girls' third year; this is after her issues in the first year juggling various elements of her life. She's also the most likely to rail against this slow domestication, to the point she borderline freaks out in one instance while making cupcakes.
  • All three of the girls' Alternate Universe counterparts undergo different forms of development in the first Winter Special, mostly in a short space of time: Susan lets go of her rage towards Daisy after actually meeting her and lets Ed go after realising their relationship is only hurting him, Esther leaves the self-destructive party life behind for genuine friendship with Susan and Daisy, and Daisy finally makes friends.
• Chastity Couple: McGraw when he cheats on Emilia with Susan. He comes up with a "nothing resembling sex" rule, making the cheating emotional only.
• Chekhov's Gun: Esther's status as a "Drama Magnet" comes in handy when McGraw and Daisy need a distraction to go save Susan.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Jenny, the blonde girl who shows up in issues 9 and 11 and worked with Ed at the newspaper, shows up again at the end of Year One and starts a relationship with Ed — though that rapidly crashes and burns, as it turns out.
• Coming-Out Story: Daisy, who slowly realises she likes girls instead of boys, but doesn't know how to tell her grandmother.
• Continuity Reboot: Invoked in-setting in issue 29 when Ed goes to the cinema with his equally geeky date Cathy. The film they're seeing turns out to be a fictional reboot of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Cathy, a serious Buck fangirl ("Is Buck Rogers a... big fandom generally?" "No. That's why I chose it. It was very easy to dominate the BR25C slash-fic scene when I was fourteen.") is made extremely angry; "Colonel Wilma Deering didn't have lip gloss, Twiki was a super-violent mecha, and Dr. Huer was too sexy."
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Dean has a car ready to flee the angry mob that forms after he escapes prosecution for his paper-selling ring.
  • Ed has Road House (1989) on both DVD and Blu-Ray, just in case it's too intense in HD.
• Crossover: The new story (set during the previous continuity) that appeared online in 2022 brings Batman to Sheffield. (Allison says that this is specifically meant to be the Batman of the 2016-2017 All-Star Batman.) As this story is not intended to make any sort of financial profit in order to avoid problems with DC's legal department, it's really more like fanfiction using Allison's own characters.
• Cry into Chest: The stoical McGraw spends most of issue 51 holding in his grief over his father's death. Fortunately, when he does finally break, Susan is there for him.
• Cult: There seem to be one or two minor cults preying on the student body. One in particular features in the spin-off novel.
• Cut the Juice: Esther pulls the plug on Steve's band so she can have a private (and angry) word with him.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Daisy, of all people: Her parents were lost over the Bermuda Triangle as a kid, and her grandparents broke up due to how hard it hit her grandma, which is also the reason Daisy was homeschooled. Lampshaded by the fact Esther and Susan are left blubbering messes.
• Deadpan Snarker: Susan.
  Susan: Oh dear who could see our Esther in a dangerous romance!
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud??:
  • Daisy realises she did, but she didn't mean to.
  • In issue 34, under the influence of alcohol, after a long pub crawl, Ed blurts out to Esther that he was once in love with her. Cue both sobering up right away. Though unfortunately, not enough.
• Dirty Old Man: In issue 29, Professor Lord proves all too willing to exploit Esther's emotional state, and tops up her glass all too generously at a party.
• Discreet Drink Disposal: Esther in the first original issue, presumably in order not to be as sloshed as the other girls.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Entrusted to retrieve a bag from "the secret world of women" — Esther's room — in the course of the first story, Ed struggles to keep body and mind together amid Esther's carelessly discarded clothes:
    Ed: Oh Christ. Everything is so SCANTY. Can't concentrate... Bag, Ed. UNDER BED. FIGHT THIS.
  • In issue 50, Daisy demonstrates a formidable natural talent for cricket — until the opposing team deploy the distracting Jessie Lyles against her.
    Esther: Is your head in the game, Daisy?
    Daisy: Ummm, maybe?
    Esther: You know what your problem is? Bad girls are your kryptonite.
• Doomed by Canon: Averted and Played Straight. The Main Cast is immune due to Esther not having shown up Post Time Skip due to this series, and the rest of them being unique to Giant Days. Played straight with Erin, who's destined to become Mordawwa, and Eustace who's relationship with Sarah is destined to fail due to him being lonely and miserable post-time skip and who dies at the end of Bobbins.Horse. (Both ultimately return from Hell in the very last days of Scary-Go-Round.)
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The first issue of the original series, while still containing John Allison's trademark style, is much rougher-drawn than the two following issues, and contains the Scott Pilgrim-esque fight with the head girls which is out of place even for the Bobbinsverse.
  • Issue 3 suffers this trope to a lesser extent with Erin being played up as a major cast addition; due to her being a major player in Bad Machinery and Bobbins NOW!, she was quietly phased out by the time the series was brought back at BOOM!
• Entertainment Above Their Age: Susan and Daisy allow ten-year-old Charlotte to watch the Death Note anime. Charlotte loves it so much that, when her room is seen in a later issue, she has a poster of L on her wall.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • " Hi, hi, Susan Ptolemy. And I've not slept IN A WEEK."
  • Daisy is first introduced heaving a giant trunk all by herself and timidly asking Esther for help.
  • Ed ends his first conversation with Esther with the internal monologue "Please [God] let me marry this one."
  • McGraw is introduced politely talking to Ed and, while he's cold, he treats Susan with respect despite her utter rage at the sight of him, showing both his role as The Stoic and that he's not nearly as bad as Susan makes him out to be.
• Fanfic: In the unauthorized online Batman crossover (itself perhaps a kind of fanfic), Esther is so taken with him that she is rapidly reduced to writing deranged erotic-Gothic fanfic about him and a character named "Hester". It's so excessive that Clippy The Paperclip shows up on her word processor and tries to stop her.
• Fanservice:
  • (Of the non-sexy kind.) Invoked, at least, when a cover describes Giant Days as "The return of Esther that you very politely requested."
  • Also invoked in regards to issue 13, due to the number of characters from Scary-Go-Round who pop up.
  • Done in the conventional sense a handful of times - perhaps to be expected given the leads are university-age girls; this manifests most prominently in Esther, whose gothy outfits can leave little to the imagination. Australian Nina adds to this later in the series.
• Fire-Forged Friends: The girls after the events of the original series. Lampshaded by Susan.
• Evil Gloating: Parodied. "We've got about twenty seconds before they come out of exposition mode"
• Flat "What":
  Daisy: FACE THE AWESOME POWER OF YOGIC FLYING
  Nita: What.
• Freudian Trio: Esther is the Id, Daisy is the Ego and Susan is the Superego.
• Gilligan Cut: Daisy thinks having a big night out is "a lovely idea". Cut to them sitting in a dark dive bar with Esther angrily demanding another round, and Daisy saying "this was a TERRIBLE idea".
• Guy of the Week: Esther's gets through at least three.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Esther's good and bad angels show up for a page in issue 14 of the ongoing series. Unusually for the trope, they're Esther's own size. Being Esther's good and bad angels, they're a couple of rather fetching, slightly snarky goths.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: "Effing jeff(er)" is used a couple of times, plus:
  Susan: Turn this effing ess the FLIP down!
• Hacker Cave: The house in which Esther and Ed both take rooms in their final year is largely occupied by computer geeks, and so has something of this trope about it.
  Daisy: I thought they would be expensive, but it turns out that in this house, broken laptops are as freely occurring as aluminium in the Earth's crust.
  McGraw: I believe that's only the third most abundant element.
  Daisy: Oxygen and silicon are represented by power supplies for no-longer owned peripherals and casually abandoned twisty ties!
• The Heart: Daisy, being the most innocent and kindest of the group.
• Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut: Everything associated with the Black Metal Society.
• The Ingenue: Daisy, home-schooled in a small village and ignorant of the ways of the world.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: The online Batman crossover of 2022 combined the two continuities in an unauthorised fashion. Given that Esther was once, long ago, revealed to wear Batman underwear, but doesn’t know of him in this story, it’s unlikely that this comic was previously meant to take place in that universe.
• Interquel: In terms of its sometimes loose relationship to the Bobbinsverse, the series is retroactively an interquel, taking place during the Time Skip between Scary-Go-Round and Bad Machinery.
• In Vino Veritas: In issue 34, Ed admits to Esther that he was in love with her after she drags him on a lengthy pub crawl. Then, sheer embarrassment at the admission makes him climb a building to distract the pair of them; he falls off and ends up in hospital.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: The realization that she has feelings for Ed doesn't stop Esther from encouraging him to pursue his fledging relationship with Nina. In issue #42 she holds back tears while telling him to visit her in Australia for the holidays and in issue #45, she makes Ed reconsider dumping Nina after their relationship hits a bump.
• Land Downunder: A number of Australian stereotypes are played with when Ed visits Nina's family, but in the end they're mostly averted. The family live in a small rural town where a lot of the men (and some of the women) are boisterous, brawny types who use their share of Australian slang, and Ed spends a lot of time worrying about funnelweb spiders — but the people he meets aren't too stereotyped overall, and he finds acceptance despite his ignorance of sports. Still, he remains unsure if he's strong enough to survive in Australia, and even Nina refers to the Australian family unit as "the most barbaric environment known to man".
• Lame Pun Reaction: When McGraw reacts in horror to Daisy's shoddy workmanship in installing a shelf, Ed makes light of it with a pun and McGraw chastises him for it. Not for the pun itself, but for the subject of it:
  Daisy: (about the shelf she installed that fell down) I just nailed it up with lots of nails.
  McGraw: Nails? That borders on nihilism.
  Ed: She's a nail-ist.
  McGraw: Only a monster would make a joke out of this, Ed. Nails!
• Left Hanging: As Time Goes By, the epilogue one-shot, ends on a minor cliffhanger: Will Esther stay in publishing after she reunited with Daisy and Susan to defeat her bosses?
• Lipstick-and-Load Montage: FIF! BLUST! ZIIIIIP! "One hour, thirty one minutes! A new record!"
• Lonely Together: Eustace and Sarah. It goes quite well for them, considering.
• Magic Tool: Parodied and averted; the highly practical McGraw carries a multitool which he can employ to generally good effect — but he has his limits.
  Daisy: (as McGraw is trying to pick a lock) Can you...pick faster?
  McGraw: It's a 12-in-1 multi-tool, Daisy. That means it does twelve different things very badly.
• Manly Facial Hair: McGraw's mustache contributes to his image of prematurely mature old-fashioned masculine solidity.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • All over issue 21: The issue starts with the girls lightly bantering over their burlesque drawing class, only for them to come home and find they were robbed and that the last reminder Daisy has of her parents was taken. We then bounce back to comedy with Susan's overreaction to McGraw giving them a new door and some jokes with the police — only for us to get back to Daisy's utter devastation and her tragic backstory. Thankfully, the second half is more comedy-based, with the girls trying to get their things back.
  • Inflicted quite harshly on McGraw at the end of issue 50. While he’s celebrating his team’s unlikely victory in a (hilarious) pub cricket match, he takes a call from his mother — who tells him that his father has just suddenly died.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Early on, Susan most of the time, or McGraw when Susan loses the plot over her relationship to him.
  • Daisy gradually takes over the role as the series goes on, though Susan still serves in this role towards her, and even Esther proves capable of sanity from time to time.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Ed notices something is up when Susan shows up to check on him after his "accident". Then Daisy comes in with a 7 layer cake...
• Premature Ejaculation: Happens to poor Ed when he has sex with Amanda. The situation is not helped by the fact that McGraw ends up telling Susan and Daisy about it due to Susan's needling and Amanda ends up telling their coworkers at the paper.
• Private Detective: Susan, in the past.
  • It seems she's a cross between Nancy Drew and Philip Marlowe:
  Alpha Bitch #1: Susan Ptolemy, 19, "a dangerous loose cannon who plays outside the rules."
  Alpha Bitch #2: Bleugh, is that from her Facebook?
  Alpha Bitch #3: No, it's a quote from the Chief Inspector of Northamptonshire Constabulary.
  Alpha Bitch #2: "'...but, she gets the job done', he added reluctantly."
  • It turns out in issue 5 that she pissed off a very powerful family on her way out of town as a result of her sleuthing and her heartbreak over McGraw leaving her.
• Private Eye Monologue: Susan's internal narration in the first issue reflects her recent past as an effective amateur gumshoe. The monologue returns prominently in issue #46 accompanied with an Art Shift when Susan investigates a series of thefts at the Danger Nebula comic shop. Esther and Susan make fun of her for it:
  Esther: (internal monologue) Moving with the shadows in a world of internal monologues. The night was black as tar and twice as sticky.
  Daisy: (internal monologue) Cheese was what Daisy liked. Cheshire cheese. Or cheddar. Good, simple cheese.
  Susan: There's a lot more to detective work than talking to yourself in the dark! There are a lot of dust-ups, bundles, rumbles, and knock-down, drag-out tussles.
  Esther: Oh sure, darling.
• Prophetic Name: McGraw blames “nominative determinism” for the fact that a team from a pub called “The Cricketers” are so successful in a pub cricket league.
• Punched Across the Room: Happens in issue 1.
• Raging Stiffie: Discussed; one of the reasons given by Susan for suspecting that Ed has a crush on Esther is "low slung bag to conceal ardour?"
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: When McGraw’s pub cricket team are almost all laid low by food poisoning on the night before an important match, Susan pulls various primary and secondary characters together to save the day. Their Avengers Assemble montage consists mostly of Susan bullying people into signing up before they can run away fast enough. They never quite have a Misfit Mobilization Moment, but McGraw and Esther’s speeches to the demoralised Paul near the end of the match come close; see Rousing Speech below.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In issue 41, Daisy gives one of her own to ex-girlfriend Ingrid after overhearing her smugly and cruelly attempting to list off perceived faults to a drunken Esther and Susan. This comes after Ingrid spent most of her appearances being a selfish Jerkass too engrossed in her own world to compromise with her girlfriend, leading to them breaking up and Ingrid outing Daisy's homosexuality to her grandmother out of desperation, so it's long overdue.
  Ingrid: Your safe little lives are set in stone. (to Susan) Tired doctor, bad wife. (to Esther, who looks like she's about to cry) Boring, lonely woman hiding behind her clothes and makeup.
  Daisy: (shown to have been standing there for a while) THAT'S ENOUGH. You are the most fascinating person I've ever met. But you really aren't very nice.
  Ingrid: (shrinking) I can be nice!
  Daisy: No, you can't. And that's why I am never taking you back.
• Relationship Chart: After finding out that McGraw has been emotionally cheating on Emilia with Susan, with Emilia having recently become her friend, Esther pictures herself in the center of a relationship chart with the other three. The chart includes an errant arrow pointing away from the chart connecting McGraw to his ultimate love, big-box hardware stores.
• Rousing Speech: Towards the end of the cricket match in issue 50, McGraw attempts a personal rousing speech to the demoralised Paul, to limited effect. Then Esther cuts in and parodies the trope to magnificent effect.
  McGraw: Look at Gemmell and Thompson cowering in the outfield. Two lads who know nothing but the sick note, yet they took their lumps today.
  Paul: Yeah. They did.
  McGraw: And Esther, a barely coordinated goth—
  Paul: I get it. I'll bowl, skipper.
  Esther: Listen, I don't know much about cricket, but I know this much: no one ever failed by pretending they were a huge robot with wings... ...and and that the sun would explode if they didn't achieve their goal. Do it, Paul. Do it for the sun.
  Paul: I will do it for the sun.
• Rule of Cool: Esther's boxing gloves fall right onto her hands. This makes sense in the comic's world.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Daisy, early on. Hanging out with Susan and Esther maybe has an effect on her.
• Scam Religion: The yoga group who Daisy joins in the spin-off novel turn out to fit this trope.
• Secret Relationship: Susan and McGraw. Twice. The first time they get together, she keeps it a secret from Esher and Daisy in the beginning. One of her excuses is that she wants to avoid rubbing her relationship in Esther's and Daisy's faces since they had had bad times in love. When they start hanging out after their big break-up, they also do it in secret since McGraw is emotionally cheating on Emilia. Their relationship becomes public again after McGraw formally breaks up with Emilia.
• Serious Business: Being a Head Girl requires mastering a fighting style and most of them are plotting world domination.
• Sexiness Score: Susan and Ed discover that Esther was ranked 3rd on a website of the top 25 hottest freshmen girls at the University of Sheffield. Worried that Esther may react poorly to being objectified like this, Susan decides they need to handle the situation delicately. Cut to Esther's horrified reaction after learning about the website from Daisy, who thought that Esther would be happy to have gotten the equivalent of a bronze medal. Susan gets revenge on the trio of shallow Fratbros who made the list by calling their mothers, who are appalled by their sons' behavior.
• Ship Tease: Esther and Ed share a tight hug in Issue 18. They quickly break it, blushing madly.
• Shout-Out:
  • Esther de Groot: ... Wouldn't join a club that would have her as a member.
  • Daisy spends all of issue 8 obsessed with Friday Night Lights, down to impersonating Coach Taylor and Tami.
  • The Crystal Gems make an appearance◊ in issue 19 at the music festival.
  • Younger Susan wears a t-shirt with a hattifattener on in issue 25, while Snufkin is briefly glimpsed in Dreamscape of Guilds in issue 26.
  • The second Winter Special is an acknowledged shout-out to the films of Richard Curtis — despite Allison acknowledging that he hasn’t watched any of them for years.
• The Social Darwinist:
  Anna: Head girls are a special breed! Naturally selected over seven years along strict Darwinian lines!
  Nita: DESTINED TO RULE!
• Spin-Off: What Dark Esther from SGR did when she went to university. Issue 13 contains a plethora of SGR characters, and the second winter special depicts a little of Shelley’s lost days in London.
• Straw Feminist: Deconstructed. Susan prints a crappy, mostly ironic man-hating rag to get back at some chauvinists preparing to auction off Esther's phone number, but it fails to impress anyone but some local teenagers who take it seriously... and start harassing innocent coverboy McGraw as a result.
• Team Mom: Daisy evolves into this as the year goes on. It's lampshaded when she takes on the role of Tami Taylor.
• Thanks for the Mammary: Ed accidentally grabs Daisy in the chaos of the fight in the first issue. Fortunately, she realises that it's an accident and just swats him away.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • Ed, the series' usual butt monkey, gets to lose his virginity to Big Lindsay and gets complimented on his prowess by her afterwards, the two parting on good terms after his horrible attempt at a first time.
  • In issue 15, after being forced to skip a paper to edit Susan's movie, Ed gets a portion of the prize money when it wins a film competition.
  • Ed ends Year One as the only member of the main cast who seemingly has a positive romantic future: Esther and Susan are single, Daisy has Ingrid interested in her but is unsure how she feels about it, and McGraw's relationship may end over the break. Ed, meanwhile, strikes up a relationship with his old coworker Jenny. Sadly, it doesn't work out.
• A Touch of Class, Ethnicity and Religion: The Girl Posse that Esther meets assume that since she's not so privileged, and northern to boot, her boyfriend must have a load of tattoos, piercings and a drug habit. Which is quite an in-joke for those who know anything about The Boy.
• True Companions: The main cast.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: Daisy gets one in issue #38 as part of her Resident Mentor training. It's revealed on the second page, but tipped in the first panel since the three incompatible flatmates are named Coby, Ash, and Maru.
• Wham Episode:
  • Issue #2 (V1): Esther cheats on Eustace, ending their years-long relationship.
  • Issue #6: Daisy kisses Ed after seeing the girl she had a crush on with someone else, Susan and McGraw have sex and are sent a text threatening their lives on the way home.
  • Issue #11: McGraw breaks up with Susan leaving both devastated.
• Wham Line: The best kind.
  Alpha Bitch #1: You see, to be head girl of a prestigious English school...you have to have mastered a fighting style.
  Anna Trevellian: Team GB Captain, Taekwando
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • McGraw lays into Susan after her mock-feminist magazine spreads around town, with him as the villain-coverboy — despite him actually supporting women and offering her help when she took the picture.
  • Esther and Sarah call each other out when Esther finds out she's been seeing Eustace, Esther over Sarah lying to her and dating her ex, Sarah over Esther getting mad when she cheated on Eustace and he had no one else to turn to.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: An interesting case: Erin Winters appears in the third issue of the original volume, yet doesn't show up or even get mentioned in the BOOM! series, despite having befriended Susan and Daisy. Her lack of mention by her old classmates is somewhat justified by the fact that at the time Giant Days is set, everyone may be suffering Laser-Guided Amnesia regarding her. She still shows up in the present day of the Bobbinverse in Bad Machinery, New Bobbins, and Mordawwa, though, meaning she hasn't vanished from the universe overall. It's complicated.
• You Never Asked: Why Daisy never told Esther and Susan about her parents, though the two clearly feel guilty about it.
• Younger Than They Look:
  • McGraw looks like he's in his mid-20s at the least, but is actually 19.
  • Ed and McGraw's housemate Dean Thompson looks and dresses like a fifty-year-old man, down to having a visibly wrinkled face and jowls on his neck. Yet he's never mentioned as being a mature student, and he is presumably of a similar age to the rest of the main cast.
• World of Pun: To a moderate degree. Characters will regularly make puns in response to current situations or conversations with other people, usually prompting that other person to groan. Esther is arguably the most recurrent offender.
  Sarah: (about her college degree) It's heavily theoretical. I'm reading a 500-page monster on the spinning jenny. It's the worst.
  Esther: It's... the worsted.
  Sarah: (smirking) Awful. Bloody awful joke. Esther. Go to jail.

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