I have been re-reading the words and re-examining the images in Swallow Me Whole, by Nate Powell. Although I do like the art and the juxtaposition of images and text in Skim, for a book about teenagers, comparatively, Swallow Me Whole is such a complex, layered creature. Insect wars, talking taxidermy, madness and medication, elderly dementia. Although there are breaks — black pages or a page with only a character floating on the page sleeping, head on a pillow, feathers drifting down – most of the pages are full of images, scratched out, some images contained in boxes, others frameless. He didn`t seem to make any rules for himself — some words are in speech bubbles, others are just written on the page, some in caps, others lowercase. No page is the same but it all comes together as a story.
