Interdependent Parallelism, part 1: Page 4 (read this first!)

I wanted to explore pages 4-5 in “City of Glass” because I think the prose of the original novel was combined with some engaging artwork to create a most unusual effect. I think I’m going to split page 4 and 5 into two separate posts, because this might become too long otherwise.

In these two pages, overall, we are really inside the head of the main character (we are in most of the book) and the words at the top reflect this. It is an overview of how Daniel Quinn escapes into the labyrinth of New York daily to essentially disappear (he wants to be nowhere), and the memories of his three-year-old boy; then the abrupt sound of the phone ringing in his apartment.

The pictures follow this story, and yet they are doing so in most interdependent way. I think Scott McCloud might almost invoke the “parallel combo” label for page 4, because the pictures essentially veer off the train of thought to focus on something very particular, namely buildings becoming a maze, and then eventually the image of a fingerprint staining the inside of the apartment window, which looks out on the New York buildings and skyline. And yet this series of pictures helps to also illustrate the main character’s frame of deep thought, his desire to be alone (in his apartment away from people), and even the physical manifestation of his disconnect (his fingerprint on the window looking out over New York).

What kind of transition is this? I think it follows a kind of subject to subject transition progression over several panels, because the subject changes from buildings, to a maze, to a fingerprint, but this effect is done over an entire page of panels which gives it a very ponderous and deliberate feel (an eternity lost in thought). But it is not a straight subject change, because it’s really our view as a reader that is being challenged, as if we were looking through a kaleidoscope as someone was talking. I liked this page a lot.