One thing that immediately stuck out to me while reading Anti-Gone were Spyda and Lynxa’s eyes, or well the absence of them until the second half of the book. At first their glasses did not seem out of place while they were outside on the boat, but once they went indoors to shop or pick up their drugs they kept the glasses on. Lynxa briefly took them off in the clothing store but she put them back on until the movie. The movie theater is the only time in the story when both characters remove their glasses.
Maybe they only took the glasses off because the movie theater was dark, but I don’t think anything is just a coincidence in this book. I noticed that Lynxa did not put her glasses back on when she left the theater but Spyda did. The glasses may be a tool for the characters see an augmented reality. Or maybe the glasses help them see reality because Spyda and Lynxa take multiple drugs before they remove their sunglasses, which altered what they saw and felt. Either way I think the sunglasses are more than what they seem to be.
That’s a really cool observation! Perception obviously plays a big role in this comic, so it’s interesting to see some physical manifestation of that.
I agree that eyes were a big part of the story. The moment when Spyda and Lynxia take off their sunglasses in the movie theater was so silly and dramatic that it immediately drew my attention to the fact that we had rarely seen them without their sunglasses before. As well as the eyes of Spyda and Lynxia, eyes also stood out to me at two other points in the book. The first is the Salesman/Spy character, who has very cartoony eyes. Oftentimes, these eyes are all that is drawn of him. They represent his whole character in these instances. It is ironic then, that the character with the most classically cartoonish eyes is revealed to be the most normal character in the book.
The other moment that brought my attention to the purpose of eyes in the story were the giant black blotches that floated above Lynxia after she took the Near-Death drug. They looked like eyes to me, slowly looking down on Lynxia throughout her ordeal. I have no idea what they represented, or even if they were indeed eyes, but they stood out to me nonetheless.
I was actually going to write my blog post about this but I chose a different topic, so I’m glad you brought it up. The moment in the book where we see Spyda and Lnyxa take off their glasses simultaneously stood out the most to me not only because we rarely (if ever) see their eyes, but also because of how much everyone else’s eyes in the book are emphasized. I believe that once they take off their glasses, they are entering into a new reality than what they perceived themselves to be in. However, reality seems to be extremely distorted in this comic, as we are never really sure whose reality is being presented, thus we’re left confused about how this reality contributes to the overall plot. But yet, it still seems that because they take their glasses off during the time they take the drugs, there is an emphasis being put on their perceived reality before, and perhaps their heightened and slightly more distorted perception of reality afterwards.
I thought this might have been significant, too! Something about the moments when Lynxa takes off her glasses – probably the focus they receive – makes them come off as being very important, and I do think it seems equally important that she leaves the theater and ends the story with her glasses off. Overall, she seems more sad and dark than Spyda, so I think that may have something to do with it.