I'm also in the I-just-noticed-the-rats team!
BTW I also didn't notice the water under the heater until
now!I love all the small details on these pics! Notice how grandma has an old phone with spiderwebs over it. Seems that no one calls her, not even her favorite grandson...
Also the soft glow along the screen of her flat TV, or the difference in her clothes, or the sense of decay on the first image (cracked walls, dead plants/flowers, riped curtains, water leaking under the heater... even the rug is folded, waiting to make grandma trip.). So much attention to detail!
@JoB , I thought it was Minna's way to show the damage the cat was doing, but I like your version better!
Page 4: Here we see Minna breaking the traditional separation between panels and background. The first panel has no boundaries, and the steam from their mugs flows away from the page. It's a nice touch.
We also learn a bit about the "rash illness", that seems to spread around the Mediterranean, mostly on the African side. I remember thinking that it sounded a bit bad, possibly implying that refugees could be bringing it with them.
I'm not sure that it was a fat joke,
@Jitter . Minna could be again playing with the perception-reality topic, because there was (and still is) some discussion among designers over the icons we use to represent children, preganant women, elder persons, etc... It's related with the way these are pictured (many elders are not curved over a walking stick) or the implications of context/cultural differences. (why the bathroom sign has a woman with a skirt? How that works in, for example, an arab country where men also use open, long clothes?). So either Goran couldn't read the "pregnant woman" logo, or Minna, through him, would be joking with this kind of perception issue. At least is how I read it.
Here, in the fourth panel, we also see the first use of Minna's amazing ability to make cross-sections. It's nicely done, showing the thick double glassing and the triple wall, and makes me wonder if she had any connections with someone from architecture and/or engineering. Or maybe she's just very observant and tried to study the topic.
Page 5: The first appearance of the umbrella!
And the first disapearance of the umbrella!
So many details here too! On the first panel Aksel is already gone, and Goran and Ingrid appear with less definition and colour. Then the way the lines that represent rain become more inclined in the fourth panel, showing the strenght of the wind that breaks the umbrella. Very well done.
And that look of surprise on Gunnaar's face when Aksel orders "one grandmother"? So nice! At this last panel we see, again, the absence of boundaries, which, in hindsight, can be understood as a composition with the previous page, showing how Minna was already thinking in a book format.
As others pointed there's a strong resemblance in the colour scheme with ARTD. I supposed she felt safe using it in the beginning.
Page 6: This one has some alternance on distance, showing us the "ugly" boat, and the real grandma house that we already talked about. It keeps the "panel that has no boundaries and becomes background" scheme and introduces Minna's amazing ability to draw water, that we would enjoy many more times.
Page 7: The most interesting part to me is the difference between speech bubbles, with the irregular ones used to imply the slight distortion of the phone call. And the lovely cat!
And the joke with the boat ugliness.
And of course we have Aksel's wave, that made me jump to the next page to see if he had survived...
