…About Honey and Darling’s fate… Now she’s nothing but questions… Oh, Mark, who built this wall? What happened to the people who built it? Why would they flee the island?? By the third panel, Mark is shrugging his shoulders as if to say, “How the hell should I know, lady? What? do I look like Wikipedia??”
No entries on the internets about lost Hawaiian civilizations… But it’s early and there is no doubt more to reveal. I feel a history lesson coming on. I’m thinking that the spider in the third Panel is random, much like it was in the cave system…
Since diamond tipped saw blades are needed to cut the lava rock used to build the structures, perhaps the ancient islanders never returned from an ill-fated voyage to the closest diamond source in Canada.
The art historical and theatrical term for the spider-on-tree-in-the-corner element is coulisse. This framing or overlapping devise was a favorite compositional feature in the art of the Renaissance and Baroque periods (e.g. Fall of Icarus by Bruegel the Elder; Discovery of Body of St Mark, Tintoretto; Rape of Europa, Rubens), though the motif did not have to be strictly diagonal . The coulisse element was placed off to the side, starting in the foreground, and helped provide a staging for contrasting light, scale, or even compositional recession or “flow” (“coulisse” comes from the French “couler”, “to flow”). In landscapes, diagonal objects were common. It was still a popular feature into the 19th century (e.g. The Oxbow, Thomas Cole) and shows up even in modern comic strips, like this one. So there you have it: Allen is carrying on a tradition that spans over 600 years.