Notes on this page
Chapter 9, Page 17
Summary
On the balcony of Jon’s Martian palace, Laurie presses him to say whether their conversation can alter the future. Jon describes an approaching catastrophe whose details remain obscured, shifting the scene from philosophical disagreement toward the concrete possibility of mass death and his uncertain return to Earth.
Panels
Three broad horizontal panels replace the usual nine-panel rhythm, repeating nearly the same long shot while the viewpoint moves subtly closer and Olympus Mons grows increasingly dominant. That visual stasis slows reading and makes the conversation feel suspended outside ordinary time. Coming after page 16’s intimate close-up, the page turn abruptly miniaturizes the couple; page 18 continues the repeated framing, extending one debate across an austere visual continuum.
Environment
The almost empty Martian landscape makes environment into argument: Laurie and Jon are tiny against an immense plain and the distant rise of Olympus Mons. The palace’s needle-like architecture frames them with severe artificial symmetry, emphasizing how far Jon’s monumental refuge—and his perspective—stands from ordinary human life.
Color
John Higgins builds the page from warm salmon, coral, and pale yellow bands, set against the palace’s violet-black spikes. Jon’s cool blue body and Laurie’s yellow-and-black costume remain sharply legible but physically minute within that warmth: the palette is beautiful rather than threatening, creating an uneasy contrast between the serenity of Mars and Jon’s prediction of terrestrial horror.
Symbols
Circularity is stated and enacted: Laurie complains that the discussion goes “round in circles,” while Jon’s foreknowledge traps events within an apparently closed causal loop. The paired spires and repeated horizon create an image of rigid order, yet the blurred future Jon describes introduces a disturbance that even his near-godlike vision cannot fully control.
Themes
The page gives determinism an emotional cost. Jon experiences the future as something already witnessed, while Laurie hears his account as a warning that should provoke choice and intervention; her frightened questions collide with his detached grammar of inevitability. His admission of “static” is therefore crucial: uncertainty enters his apparently complete knowledge, opening both the possibility of agency and the threat of catastrophe.
Graphic Novel Technique
Comics can hold three near-identical moments before the reader at once, making tiny changes in scale, gesture, cloud bands, and dialogue carry unusual weight. The page asks us to scan backward as well as forward, comparing panels rather than merely following action. Such controlled repetition turns a static conversation into visual thinking—a particularly sophisticated use of sequential design within 1980s mainstream superhero comics.