Notes on this page
Chapter 6, Page 22
Summary
Gerald Grice returns through the alley behind Modern Modes, calls for his dogs, and grows uneasy when they do not answer. Entering the shabby premises, he sees an unidentified silhouette beyond a window; the silent approach turns his apparent domestic control into vulnerability, preparing the following page’s violent revelation that Rorschach has been waiting for him.
Panels
Gibbons adheres strictly to the nine-panel grid, using repetition to manufacture suspense. Panels 1–3 hold nearly the same alley view as Grice advances toward us; panels 4–6 move him through successive thresholds; panels 7–9 darken the interior and narrow attention toward the window. This steady, almost mechanical progression makes his single “Hmp” feel dangerously complacent. The next page ruptures that restraint with a wide image of the dogs crashing through glass.
Environment
The closed dress shop, dented trash cans, discarded boxes, broken plaster, exposed pipes, and cluttered rooms place Grice in a neglected urban backspace rather than a conventional home. “Modern Modes” becomes bitterly ironic: behind the commercial façade lies decay, secrecy, and the private territory in which Grice has concealed his crimes.
Color
Muted olives, ochres, gray-blue, and dusty violet make Grice’s surroundings feel stale and airless. Across the bottom row, black expands until both rooms and bodies become silhouettes relieved by sickly pink light; the palette withdraws information just as the threat becomes perceptible. The following page’s saturated red therefore arrives as a violent release of pressure already accumulated here.
Symbols
Doors and windows dominate the page as boundaries that fail to protect Grice. He repeatedly passes through thresholds while the final panes divide the waiting figure into dark fragments, turning ordinary architecture into a visual trap; the motif also anticipates the window’s explosive destruction on the next page, when Rorschach’s concealed judgment becomes physical violence.
Themes
The page reverses the power relation established by Grice’s past abuse: the man who once controlled a hidden interior now enters it under unseen observation. Because the preceding page names him and recalls that Rorschach “opened” Malcolm Long’s eyes, readers understand more than Grice does. That dramatic irony aligns Rorschach’s investigation with punishment while leaving the morality of his vigilante judgment deeply troubling.
Graphic Novel Technique
The page makes absence narratively active: the dogs never appear, no attack occurs, and most panels contain almost no dialogue, yet the gutters invite us to infer mounting danger between small changes in position and light. A film would determine the exact duration of this approach; comics let the reader linger over the repeated compositions and notice the waiting silhouette early, sharing both Grice’s uncertainty and the superior knowledge of his unseen observer.