Narrative

Although subtly presented, the theme of narration is in fact the dominant theme of the graphic novel. The plotting of the graphic novel presents a series of tales and tales within tales reminiscent of Chaucher's Canterbury Tales. Within the primary narrative arc, five major stories and numerous minor stories are related. At one point in the narrative, Brant is telling a story of Petrefax telling a story of Hermas telling a story of Veltis telling a story. Much of the visual presentation is also concerned with narration, such that panels of the storytellers sitting at a table in the Worlds' End Inn are interspersed with panels depicting the story they are telling. Sometimes the pane frames of the story-within-a-story are visually distinct, such as the frames on pp. 77-79 and pane 6 on p. 133. In other instances the page background color changes for the story-within-a-story segments, such as the...