Pages 8 and 21

Another nine-panel grid. Each page contains Bernie the news vendor, Bernie the comics reader, and a driver (on page 8, the delivery man, on page 21, Joey the taxi driver). The narrative voice of the pirate comic echoes the thoughts of Bernie the newsvendor, establishing a symmetry between real and imagined worlds. When Joey enters, another poster becomes prominent. This links to the triangle from the truck, the triangle on the murder-scene poster, and echoes the triangle of the vagina dentata from the shark, as well as the vague triangle suggested by the woman's spread legs in the porno magazine (concealing, I might add, her roughly triangular pubic region). Panels 8.9 and 21.7 are thematically connected by the image of the comic, thus providing a transition to the next page. The visual bridge is even more obvious from the last panel on page 21 (21.9) to the first panel of the next page (22.1): both Joey and Detective Fine bend over papers held in their hands, while Bernie and the other detective hang posters. Note Bernie the comics reader and his cigarette in 21.9; they're effectively mimicked by the telephone with its glowing red light in 22.1.