Meew Meeww!

In the graphic novel Citizen Rex authors’ Mario and Gilbert Hernandez tells a story about discrimination and exploitation. While in traditional written word stories an author uses descriptions and can pace the story through word choice and prose, graphic novels have some limitations on this but are given the added benefit of having panels of pictures to help this process along. These panels also help tell the story like a truncated film or television show. The choice of using many panels for a scene or few is a choice that can affect how the reader interprets it. When there is a break between panels the reader is than left using their imagination on how to see this. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics explains this in detail and the significance of this on the story being told. When reading the Hernandez brother’s story these choices really affected the scene, such as, starting halfway down pg. 22 ending on pg. 23. It opens on Renata Skinks apartment, giving a wide shot of the building with a basic description of the name of the apartment complex and who lives there. In the next panel the inside of the apartment is shown with a woman, stating that this isn’t Renata but her daughter Sigi. Also, my attention was drawn to the shadow behind Sigi. While it is not person shaped and could still turn out to be nothing, I was left with the impression and feeling that it is a person. The closure is confirmed when in the next panel you see that it is, with the much more man shaped shadow, also it is more realistic because it is supposed to Sigi seeing the shadow and not just an impression of one. She then goes to look for the intruder whose shadow she saw in the mirror. While doing this she is confronted by Citizen Rex. The idea that the shadow is something else initially is also helped along by the sounds its makes, Meew meeww, leading one to think of a cat. This scene sets up two important characters and how their lives are connected even if they didn’t realize it themselves.