Time Wares on...

Rather than doing a broad post I wanted to focus on pages 195-197. What interested me about these pages is the way in which Ware uses time. Panel 195.5 is a small panel containing a digital clock. This is the first of a series of clock panels. Not only does Ware use the clock to illustrate the slow passage of time, but there are a number of panels showing Jimmy lying on the bed not doing anything, indicating his boredom and the overall sense of time standing still. On page 197, nothing much really happens to advance the story. We see Jimmy sitting on the bed in 197.1, and then his reflection in the mirror in two identical panels (furthering the sense of repetition without progress) followed by 197.4, which is identical to panel 197.1. The entire page seems to be frozen; even the largest panel on the page, panel 197.9, showing the apartment building, gives an eerie sense of stasis. The panel, like most of the panels in the work, is composed in dark muted colors except for the bright yellow deer crossing sign. The deer crossing sign furthers the idea of stasis because it is a frozen image; a deer suspended in mid-jump. The deer is representative of Jimmy in this sequence as far as Jimmy is frozen in time and space in his father’s apartment; a place in which he clearly does not want to be, given that on page 195 he calls the airline and tries to change his flight. This sense of stasis follows throughout this graphic novel. Jimmy himself appears suspended in a child-like state, bound and dependant on his mother and socially stunted, unable to function in even the most basic social situation.