Pages 36 & 37

After reading Art Spiegelman's Introduction to "City of Glass," I was immediately intrigued to figure out how David Karasik and David Mazzuchelli would transform he cinematic techniques characteristic of film noir genre of the 40s and 50s, into a graphic novel. Film noir is characterized by low-key lighting, forming very dark blacks, very white whites, and little to no grays. Also, the use of low-key lighting forms very dark shadows. In a sense, the world of the film noir is literally and metaphorically aphotic. Pages 36 and 37 capture this world of lightlessness and mystery, and transform these techniques into drawings.

Even by briefly glancing at page 36, one notices the stark differences between the black and white spaces of each panel. There are no grays in any of the panels. Panel 4 is an excellent example of the use of dark shadows in noir. Quinn opens the door to his unlit apartment and the light shine in from behind him. He is just a shadow of his own self.

The idea of identity is very important in these two pages. Beginning with Quinn's shadow, we are unsure (like Quinn himself) who he is. Is he Paul of is he Quinn? For instance, in the seventh panel, Quinn removes his clothes. "He had never done this before, but it somehow seemed appropriate to be naked at this moment." In the following panel, we see Quinn in the nude surrounded by darkness. In this world of mystery, Quinn removes his clothes (objects associated with identity) and strips down to nothing. Yet in the next panel he writes his name, something that also gives a person identity.

However, on the following page the uncertainty of this dark world contradicts panel 36.9. The background is very black, which sharply contrasts with the white notebooks and Quinn's pale frame. His face bent over the notebook casts a dark shadow across his chest. The intensely black backgrounds of the nine panels surround Quinn. He is engulfed by darkness, so much so that even his hair and the shadow across his chest morph with the dark. Quinn's world is literally black. The notebook pages fill in as a voice over of Quinn's inner feelings (another characteristic of film noir). "Nothing is clear. For example: who are you? And if you think you know, why do you keep lying about it?" (37.5).

As Spiegelman describes in his Introduction, Neon Lit, is not only "comic adaptation of urban noir-inflected literature," but also (as seen on pages 36 &37) draws much of its inspiration from the film noir cinema.