Notes on this page
Chapter 5, Page 01
Summary
In the rain, an initially unidentified man—revealed on the following page as Moloch—walks from a littered street into his apartment building and cautiously approaches a room. The journey from public pavement to glowing window turns ordinary homecoming into suspense: by the final panel, he has heard someone inside and calls out in alarm.
Panels
Gibbons uses an exact nine-panel grid as a tightening cinematic approach: three close views of footsteps, three wider views that carry Moloch across the street and through the entrance, then three architectural views that climb toward his window. Warm/cool/warm repetitions give the page a formal symmetry, while the final off-panel voices halt the largely silent montage; the page turn then reveals Moloch armed and frightened.
Environment
The discarded New York Gazette carries the headline “Russians Invade Afghanistan,” placing private fear against the chapter’s widening Cold War crisis; nearby litter and the Gunga Diner sign make the neighborhood feel worn, commercial, and exposed. Moloch’s modest building and warmly lit windows promise shelter, but the sequence steadily converts that apparent refuge into a trap.
Color
John Higgins alternates hot oranges, reds, and yellows with cold blue-grays, purples, and institutional greens. The pattern does more than describe changing locations: it makes Moloch’s route flicker between apparent warmth and nocturnal menace, while the orange final window becomes a bright target surrounded by red masonry rather than a reassuring domestic light.
Symbols
Rain puddles repeatedly turn solid objects into unstable reflections: the diner sign, falling drops, and passing shoes are fragmented or doubled on the pavement. This emphasis on inversion announces Chapter V’s “fearful symmetry,” in which images, situations, and moral positions mirror one another; the expanding circular ripples also suggest disturbances spreading outward from an unseen cause.
Themes
The page joins geopolitical anxiety to intimate vulnerability: a newspaper announces international aggression while one aging former criminal discovers that his own home may already have been invaded. Moloch’s fearful entrance also reverses the usual power fantasy of superhero comics; costumed history has left him not commanding the scene but anticipating violence, isolated within a decaying city.
Graphic Novel Technique
Comics lets the reader see the whole nine-panel design at once even as each image advances Moloch step by step, so suspense and symmetry operate simultaneously. The gutters omit the mundane connective movement, turning a short walk into measured beats, while the shift from silent images to speech balloons makes sound feel invasive. This rigorous visual patterning is unusually sophisticated for mainstream superhero comics of the period.