The Displaced #3: Don’t Forget the Groceries

The terrifying existential rabbit hole gets deeper in The Displaced #3. Friction is building within the group of survivors. And Harold, the old man who’s been through this several times before, has more bad news for them. Oblivion felt inevitable at the end of the last issue. It feels more inevitable now.

The town of Oshawa is one month gone in The Displaced #3. The survivors are still at Paige’s family’s cabin. Until now they’ve subsisted on scammed food bank boxes. Tavis and a few others aren’t satisfied with that situation, though, and take to robbing grocery stores. Conflict is building within the group. While this “foraging” is going on, Harold is still spending time with Emmett, the young man he earlier said was “like him.” Harold warns Emmett that while he will be able to remember what’s happened to Oshawa and the people around him, he can’t keep them from vanishing on his own. Harold cautions him that if the others find out Emmett is different, they will leave him. It’s not long after that when Paige’s aunt and uncle arrive to find their cabin full of strangers.

The Displaced #3 adds a touch of nihilism to the series’ consideration of existence. The first two issues, as bleak as they were, offered a kind of lifeline in the form of Harold. His ability to remember past events and his effort to warn and help new victims offered a kind of hope. This issue takes that hope, crumples it into a ball, and tosses it in the garbage. Harold, and apparently Emmett, don’t lose their memories of everything that’s vanished. Unfortunately Harold and Emmett alone can’t keep a person from disappearing. It’s almost as if their observation and interaction doesn’t count. And now Harold is deteriorating and all the memories he had are going with him. The truth is that eventually everyone passes into obscurity. Harold in this issue is effectively that concept made manifest. But it’s hard to not to find the idea depressing when distilled down to something so simple.

Even bleaker is the scene between Gabby and Emmett when she expresses her theory that in the end, the survivors will be reunited with everyone who has gone missing. It’s unclear from the dialogue whether Gabby truly believes this or is trying to talk herself into it (and maybe convincing Emmett would help her do that). But the exchange comes off as someone who knows that they’re dying and is trying desperately to convince themself that there is something beyond this existence.

The Displaced #3 sets up a potential conflict within the group over Tavis’ strategy to more aggressively steal what they need to survive. It’s easy to see how, despite the stakes, a larger group could continually fracture until everyone in it was eventually alone and then gone. Harold suggests that everyone he’s tried to help has vanished eventually, and perhaps conflicts like this are a big reason why.

Casalanguida’s art is relatively spare with detail when it comes to things like characters’ expressions. He doesn’t liberally use lines or add excessive shading. He communicates characters’ emotions through body language. It’s effective both in reinforcing and at times putting the lie to what characters are saying via dialogue. Consider Gabby who is in most of The Displaced #3. Her key scene is when she expresses her theory about the vanished town and its inhabitants being somewhere else waiting to be reunited with the rest of them.

Brisson’s dialogue is somewhat cut and dry here while Casalanguida carries the emotion in the art. Even when Gabby is turned toward Emmett her posture is more rounded and her head tilted toward the ground. Despite her previous work securing food and the confrontation with Tavis shortly after, Gabby ultimately comes across more as a defeated character because of how she appears in this exchange. Casalanguida’s art is the difference between Gabby being a strong character with hope and conviction, and one who is grasping at straws.

Coloring doesn’t add much to the issue. There are a few establishing panels where color choices help set a mood. But that’s largely the result of liberal fields of black with what amount to a few color highlights for definition. For the most part, the coloring doesn’t feel reactive to any kind of light source, and it leaves much of the issue feeling flat.

Otsmane-Elhaou’s lettering carries a surprising amount of the emotion in The Displaced #3. He adds layers to all of Brisson’s dialogue via changes in font size, capital letters, lower case, color, and shape of dialogue bubbles. Turning back to Gabby, an early scene sees her talking about her husband. Her dialogue starts off in normal capitalized font within a typical dialogue bubble. As Gabby’s monologue goes on, the dialogue bubble goes from uniform to squiggly to scribbly. And the font size shrinks and goes to a mix of capital and lowercase letters. The changes all correspond to emotional beats in the dialogue as Gabby breaks down over the course of the page. The scene would not be what it is without the lettering choices.