Thursday, January 3, 2008

Willworld page 76

In this page the text tells the message that the artwork has been telling all along: little boy Hal says to adult Hal, "Time isn't linear, it's simultaneous." His (adult) face is central, and though the word balloons mask what Seth was doing, it is in a circular frame. From his circle Hal is watching everything, including himself in other times, and marveling at it. Part of the action is in a ragged-edged panel, which seems to me to show the raggedness of memory; sometimes it is clear, but it is not always reliable, and past events appear and disappear.

The panel where Hal as a little boy is gazing at himself as a man (both with nearly the same expression on their faces) is also rounded, like the one with Hal's adult face. The three upper panels form a unit, divided by a wide margin from the one at the bottom. It seems clear from the format that Hal is attracted to the world of his childhood at the top, and would much rather stay there than to deal with the mess in the bottom panel.

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