On Maus' vs. Persepolis' - panels

The action-to-action panel progressions in Art Spiegelman's Maus would not allow a comprehesible story line without the narrative. One reason is the dialogue heavy content of the memoir forces the reader follow the narrative along with the panel images, about equally as much, in order to fully understand the what they mean. For instance, the action of conversation on page 89 of volume one is about Vladek and his father speaking to each other over the dining room table. But, without the narrative textboxes and dialogue bubbles of the characters speaking, the panel sequences only appear a though three different people are shifting in their seats from different angles within the same room, or scene.

This observation is interesting to me because it place importance on the graphic memoirists' creation choices about picture progression as well as narrative progression. They can work together as a coherent team of elements in the memoir to show what the artist's intentions were. It seems as though any graphic memoir that has a lot of dialogue will be mostly dependent on the narrative for reader comprehension.