Thought

(From Ex Machina #6 by Vaughan and Harris.)

Mayor Hundred can't envision old New York's cause for alarm over the issue of gay marriage: "So?" This full page takes place before that response and bizarrely repeats the same image in each panel, albeit with digital modifications: zooms, crops, the third panel's de-centering. Since Harris is not drawing discernible facial shifts and bodily tics, we're not reading Hundred for any new signs of thought beyond what he's already given us: locked hands, narrowed eyes, slightly furrowed brow. Nothing changes on his face during the sequence; zero physical closure is required. The modifications in the other panels corroborate our perceptions of iconography: yup, he's biting his lip he's so deep in thought. The duplication is for drama: to simulate the attention on Hundred and the tension he's causing. (We have to flip the page to get his answer.) But the sequence also gives us the illusion that time is passing and that Hundred is taking this time to formulate a response, to wonder why he has to deal with smallmindedness, etc. Mental closure could take us ages.

The wheels are turning. The wheels are not turning. (Apologies to Samuel Beckett.)

Balloons, Part 2

(From Ex Machina #11 by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris. Click to enlarge.) Tony Harris models his panels on photographs and traces over. Each panel comes to life in discretely unfrozen chunks; the panel thaws at different speeds. This is of course not unique to Tony Harris comics. I'm not concerned here with stylistic word balloons like in my previous post, so much as the activation of particular segments in a panel when one reads and enunciates the dialogue. Ex Machina is a "book about conversations," according to Harris, so often two speakers in the same panel will be speaking simultaneously, each mouthing words on pause. Above, it might be easy to see Mayor Hundred's hands move along with the beginning of his interjection, "You know what, I'm going to stop you there." But are Commissioner Angotti's hands up in defense or resignation, up during her speech or the Mayor's?

The panel is unstuck in time, much like Captain America, much like Lost, much like that Billy Pilgrim novel people have by now forgotten.