Image-driven narratives typically rely on a character’s expression to relay anger, dismay, joy, surprise and shock, and they might even rely on the character’s pejorative look. However, grimaces and displayed reactions do not necessarily convey perceptions, prejudices, virtues, intellectuality, uncensored feelings, and moral and ethical leanings.
By avoiding facial expressions—actually faces altogether—the typical clichés and stereotypes are bypassed in these tri-panel comics to allow for the exploration of those defining forces moving the character.
Combining this while switch-hitting between the absurd and the exaggerated and between the polemic and the ironic, we might find at bat not the mimic but the truth-seeking cynic, who challenges and even irritates us by kicking some dirt. And with a dash of curiosity and the reader’s cultural and experiential connectors at play, discovery and effect will be on hand.