Frame 1: This frame is larger than the next few and takes up the top of the page. This gives a sense of space that is not reflected when the drama becomes more complex and it hints at the dangers of his fathers past. 

 

Art Speigelman drew each image in the size we see in the text, as he wanted to capture the crowded, busy settings and the crush of the Jewish people in the camps. 

 

This first 2 pages of introduction have more space. They start with a wide front yard and more white space. The space suggests freedom, as do the children who play freely on the streets. 

 

Frame 2 shows a medium-close up of Art as a child skating. Behind him is black shading, suggesting this story is heading in a negative direction. A small insert in a framed circle gives and extreme close up on the action of Art's skate breaking. 

 

This frame contains the 2 distinct voices of Art as a narrator. One voice is in the present tense, the words "ow" while the other, the voice over is speaking in past tense. This alternating tense and narrative voice continues throughout the story, showing this is more than Vladik's (Art's father) memoir, it is the story as Art experienced it. 

 

Frame 3 shows Art's friends deserting him. This frame begins to show the complex cross-hatchings that will feature later in the novel. Cross hatching is often used to show anger, fear and worry in graphic novels, the angriness of the lines movement conveying the characters inner feelings. 

 

Frame 5 shows Art approaching the house where his father works out the front. Behind the father is a dark blackness, through which the reader senses the pain the father feels and which we will learn as he tells his story. His words echo this as he states a few frames after that friends will be truly revealed "..if you lock them in a room with no food for a week". At this point the story of the holocaust is foreshadowed.