ENGL362
They appear both inside and outside of the iconic outlines of both house and comic , as appropriate according to the content : “ Perhaps you feel lost ” is isolated in a neglected corner , coaxing the eye to wander ; ” Read around the book ” spills out from the text box border to encircle the outline of the comic icon . The boxes are scattered in a loose path from upper left to bottom right , and as they stutter to a halt , they herald the end of this narrative and introduce the long- awaited next .
In the act of turning the page , the narrative switches track to a genre piece set in a train station ( above right ). The art changes from a more iconic , simplistic , clear style to one that is more detailed , more heavily inked and monochromatic , to emulate the genre conventions of noir comics . This page functions as a second title and credit page to suggest that the reader and ‘ You ’ are now viewing the exact same thing . The title appears once again , now in a cloud of steam from a train - thick , sooty brush strokes mingled into the steam in the ‘ montage ’ word- image combination . The credits appear on this page : author , artist , and the partially obscured name of the translator : the fictional Ermes Manara . This is the first of many clues and hints of his lingering presence that will appear throughout the comic until his introduction in Issue # 6 , the name obscured just enough so that readers familiar with the novel may notice it , whilst those who do not will still find the obscured letters a point of intrigue .
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This detail corresponds with novel ’ s insistence that “ a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph ”, since there is no first paragraph of the comic page to obscure , and the panels are already complicated by other factors .“ The pages of the book are clouded like the windows of an old train .” This simile has also been adapted pictorially - the panels in which the narrative occur are presented as the windows of a train , with the rest of the train acting as gutters and as part of the page as a whole , a single image of three trains on tracks . Conflating panels with windows has the effect of placing a prohibitive , metaphorical layer of glass between reader and narrative , covertly keeping the narrative removed by yet another frustrating layer .