The Common Place

Abstract

This essay analyzes Kevin Huizenga’s comicsand shows how they signal our awareness to the conscious act of supposing in the construction of meaning in our everyday lives. Purposely withholding explanation, and making the reader do the work of parsing the visual assumptions of the surface to understand the basic action depicted in the frame, Walkin’ models the processes we use when we try to make sense of what we see. Those processes are each small narratives of meaning, but they are occurring so quickly in our minds that their strangeness is hardly ever noticed. This comic continuously reminds the reader of the strangeness of the common, a strangeness that should give them pause. By making readers attend to the intersections of lines on the surface of the page, Huizenga’s comics suggest the possibilities of more metaphysical intersections.