Page 72 of Morrison and Quietely’s graphic novel We3 portrays the moment when characters 1 and 2 kill the hunter and his dog for injuring 3. This sequence of events in We3 is significant on a few levels. On one hand, this scene illustrates the reasoning this team of animal assassins has developed throughout the course of their training. After the hunter shoots 3, 2 and 1 leap into action as a team committed to exacting revenge on the hunter for his violent act against 3. The third of the four panes on this page illustrates 1 and 2’s synchronous timing in avenging 3’s injury in that 2 is depicted as cleanly slicing through the hunter’s dog’s head while 1 is in the midst of a ferocious lunge onto the hunter. This quick reaction by 1 and 2 shows their reasoning skills because they are recognizing a threat to their team and taking the proper precautions to eradicate said threat.
While the scene on page 72 illustrates the ability to reason to be inherent in the team of animal assassins, it also shows the raw animal instinct of the team. This animal instinct is depicted in the fourth of the four panes on the page through the pane being solid blood red. The artist’s choice to make the fourth pane solid blood red after the previous three panes depicted 1 and 2’s act of killing the hunter and his dog signifies the instinctual, almost tunnel vision drive of animals to protect themselves at any cost. The red pane is the blindness animals have insofar as being able to interpret their emotions. 1 and 2 are red with fear that is manifested as an angry, violent act toward the human acting aggressive toward them.
Aside from illustrating a paradox of reasoning and intent behind the way 1 and 2 handles 3’s injury, there is a third way to interpret the action taking place on page 72. Throughout the action on page 72, the hunter’s truck’s lights are always shining on the front of the team and on the backs of the hunter and his dog. The light shining on the team’s front while also shining on the hunter and dog’s backs signifies the path of revenge of technology on humanity for its attempt to alter nature’s parameters. The team must move toward the light of technology to eradicate the threats against them, just as they must use the technology attached to their persons to eradicate the military’s threatening presence. The hunter emerges from the technology that is the truck and attempts to control the technology that is the team We3. The team advances toward the hunter, dog, and truck with the light in their eyes. The hunter’s son, in pane 2, also has the truck’s light in his eyes. Coincidentally, the hunter’s son lives through the ordeal like We3. The truck and its light shining on the team from behind the hunter represents man’s control over technology because the hunter is in front of technology in a position of leadership, and his technology is shining on the team. He is also between the team and his truck, which represents man’s progress toward technological advancement. We3’s killing of the hunter and his dog while moving toward the technological light prophesizes later events in the narrative of We3. These actions and circumstances foreshadow technology defeating humanity at the story’s end because the only thing left alive at the end of this scene is the technology that is We3 and the technology that is the hunter’s truck. Although 1 and 2 abandon their technological advancements at the end of the story, these same advancements allow 1 and 2 to survive the threat of eradication just as they do in the scene on page 72.