Thursday, August 23, 2007

Willworld page 59

As promised, here is a page from Willworld also belonging to Julien Schantz, where a lot of time goes by between the beginning of the page and the end, and Seth has managed to give us a sense of the stretching out of time. The 33 small panels each with a small amount of action, are like time-lapse photography, showing the same characters, doing much the same thing in each panel. You can appreciate the effect if you have ever driven through the USA from coast to coast, along, say route 40 or route 70. You drive and drive through those big flat states in the middle of the country, where you look for anything other than broad expanses of flat land: Wall Drug in only 65 miles, The World's Biggest Ball of String, Alligator Wrestling... The reader also has to slow him- or herself down to appreciate the effect of the small panels. Someone who is rushing to see what happens next, and so just goes straight for the word balloons, misses out on the full effect of the slow trip through the hot desert and doesn't feel the thirst that Hal feels as he approaches the oasis.
But that's why you read the book again.

No comments: