Bell, Everything is Flammable

7 – last panel: warns us that the image might sometimes be metaphorical rather than literal
-so what kind of trust do we bring to the pictures?
8 – diary/memoir? In any case, page very constructed: bookended by mult-colored panels of her
on the subway; which sandwhich the grayish, anxiety panels in the middle  23 (we have to
note the similarity btw first and last panels, vines, anxiety)
14 – she and mother share money woes, gardening
-but she is lucky, she has Tony; who is helping mom? Part of the narrative is exploring how is
around her when Gabrielle is not around
16 – connectivity a theme: difficulty talking on phone; desire to escape wifi/internet connection;
and now difficulty of tracking down her mom on the phone
-she visualizes her anxieties; and in fact, her anxieties are often simply that she is visualizing
some scenario
-thus the form of comics allows her to both “realistically” render her daily life, but also throw in
image of her anxieties that are equally a portrayal of the self
19 – guilt about wanting to witness mother’s trauma to provide material for her narrative
-like in Maus?
33 – trauma, animals
-passing on of trauma? Gab thinks she’s helping mother with her trauma, but ends up
traumatizing the dog

43 – “Ghost Cats”: opens in present tense

-nice images, but: “They remind me…”: trauma trigger
45 – again animals juxtaposed with trauma, this time when she was abused by her stepfather
55 – mother traumatized by the violence of the stepfather; she sees it in people (men) who are
violent to animals
-although meanwhile we’ve seen the violence that animals are capable of: not much idealization
of them here

59 – visual effect of Bill hitting on her

60 – feminist bonding? Gab insists on insisting, will not care if she’s labeled “difficult”
63 – panel 2: why the shift in style? Again about something between Bill and herself, is she
flirting to get the price reduced? Note similarity to panel on p. 59
-thus the “shame attacks”  73 – “I should not flirt with him”

90 – advertising, according to J Berger, is envying your future self

-but now she envies her younger, 35-year old self

113 – nonlinear nature of trauma

114 – and then of Gab’s trauma at realizing she wasn’t wanted! Also nonlinear, happens later

129 – Tony, like her mother, has housing crisis due to fire
-Tony was already a surrogate mother