Photographs in Boxes, part five

Honey's eyes glow with a fiercely sinister malevolent force that it almost hurts to look at.
After hearing Kali's side of the story back in the early days of year zero, and Mark's side of the story at the end of year zero, we finally get to see what is probably the nearest to the truth we're likely to get. (There's a question of whether Kali would be harsher about Mark when reminiscing, or if she's choosing to remember it as less violent than it was due to her own depression at this point as well as giving the dead man the benefit of the doubt. I like this grey area that you can achieve through personal reminiscences: whether that's Mary's intention in the script or not, I don't know. Last year the scripts veered between 'this is Halifax's memory of events/imagination of how events went' and also erred on the side of assuming everything his long-arse narrative was about was the empirical truth.)

It's hard to know where to draw the line when illustrating something like spousal abuse. Do you go all out and show it in knocked-down dragged-out detail? Treat it like a bombastic fight scene? I'm not even sure quite what I ended up going for. To my mind, it's entirely possible panel two is a slight over-exaggeration for emotional reflective effect: he might not have knocked her off her feet like that - panel three suggests not - but emotionally she's completely floored by it. The unwritten sound effect of palm hitting face - that rings all the louder for its non-appearance, I think - is the sound of all the trust and safety and emotional security she's placed in this man disappearing in a split-second. The sound of one hand clapping.


DAVID'S DVD EASTER EGGS:

Questionable Content sucks, but not as much as Ctrl-Alt-Del.