Notes on this page
Chapter 3, Page 07
Summary
At the Nova Express offices, Sally Jupiter’s recollection of the Comedian breaks down into coughing and tears as she confirms that the paper may publish her account. In parallel, Laurie leaves her taxi, passes a locksmith at Dan Dreiberg’s door, and arrives seeking the relief of conversation; Dan’s startled “Laurie?” turns her visit into a significant reunion.
Panels
The page reshapes the nine-panel grid into six panels: three narrow interview panels on the left and three wider stages of Laurie’s journey on the right. Sally remains trapped in nearly identical close framing while Laurie moves from street to doorway to interior, so repetition conveys Sally’s painful stasis and changing scale conveys Laurie’s approach; the final close-up of Dan supplies a restrained page-ending reveal.
Environment
The Veidt “Nostalgia” billboard dominates panel 2 above a storefront named Treasure Island, embedding Laurie’s private distress within a commercial culture that packages longing for the past. The Gordian Knot Lock Company worker outside Dan’s home adds a wry classical joke—the legendary knot was solved through decisive violence—while making urban fear and domestic insecurity part of everyday life.
Color
The left column keeps Sally amid the office’s sickly greens and warm reds, with white smoke and tissues marking her bodily loss of control. Laurie’s sequence moves through commercial pinks and yellows into the darker violet shadows around Dan’s face; the billboard’s cool, idealized woman contrasts sharply with the distressed real women whose memories and relationships drive the page.
Symbols
Locks provide the page’s governing motif: Dan is having his door secured just as Laurie, emotionally shut out by Jon, arrives asking to be admitted. Against this stands Sally’s disclosure to Nova Express, an unlocking of testimony kept private for years; the page therefore makes physical access and emotional access visual counterparts, while the word “Nostalgia” casts a skeptical shadow over every return to the past.
Themes
The page dismantles nostalgia by placing its seductive advertisement beside two women confronting damaged relationships with powerful men. Sally’s sorrow complicates any simple account of victimhood, affection, and memory, while Laurie’s turn from the superhuman Jon toward the ordinary Dan begins shifting the novel’s emotional center from public heroic identities to private human need; the following page makes that need explicit when she breaks down.
Graphic Novel Technique
Comics allows Sally’s interview and Laurie’s movement to occupy the page simultaneously, inviting the eye to compare two disclosures without asserting that they occur at precisely the same instant. Repeated left-hand compositions function like a fixed camera, while the right-hand panels create an advancing montage; advertisements, dialogue, and architecture become parallel commentary through spatial juxtaposition, an unusually controlled form of mainstream superhero storytelling for the period.