I like how the attack is shown in little boxes set against a backdrop (pp 50-1). Each animal’s attack is depicted in the little boxes.
Eyes
The human eyes either show fear or are gouged out. The glasses that are shot out suggests man can’t hide. However, the dog’s eye is like a red mirror. What’s up with that? The cat’s eyes at the bottom of p 50 show the cat’s mood as he closes in on the kill.
Irony
The rabbit’s foot certainly didn’t bring the men any luck! It’s interesting it’s placed right next to the man’s blown off boot. The WE3 rip the humans into parts, much like the humans added artificial parts and medicine to the WE3.
Symbolism
No foot on the pedal = loss of control by man?
missing teeth = inability to speak well maybe?
Attacks
Although the rabbit isn’t depicted, it appears that he attacks based on the open mouth in the top frame of page 50. Another indicator of rabbit attack (poison) could be the dialated pupil in the bottom panel on page 51. The cat seems to be the most unpredictable and have the nastiest attack of the WE3.
Thoughts
Insofar as the story, this scene is important because it truly attributes human qualities to the animals who, ironically, just want to go home to be pets. At the same time, the animals learn an important lesson about betrayal and fight back as a team. It’s interesting that the nastiest and most unpredictable of the WE3 is named Tinker, whereas there is Pirate the bunny and Bandit the dog who are comparatively mellow. Tinker has anger issues – clearly! I’m curious as to why we see so little of Pirate. The transfiguration of the cat claw through the human hand is so biblical I’m not sure what to make of it.
Design
It’s interesting that the cat and dog are proportionally huge compared to when they are in the lab or, on these pages, attacking something presumably much larger than themselves. The same hue of green is seen on page 51 – top and bottom – suggesting perhaps teamwork? It’s also interesting that some boxes I expected to be large, are large – that is, the size of the box corresponds to the weighted importance to the story. I like that this was done in landscape over two pages. I think some of the effect would be lost if it had been done in portrait landscape. I am curious as to why the cat attacks are set against a warm to neutral background, whereas the dogs is set against cool to neutral backgrounds. The black that frames the attacks is interesting in that the human soldiers are in black, much like a shadow. Is this intentional? If so, what does it mean? Does it reflect the secretive nature of WE3, why they are trying to be covert?
