In different ways it's a study of contrast. The center "earth" part of the comic works as a sphere and is shaded as such, with contrasting backgrounds.
And our visual journey is in contrast to the text narrative. The balloons rise into space then come back down, changed. And we head from the darkness of space to the ground and then are dropped into the white space of this newsletter at the end, breaking the confines of the edges of the comic and the narration boxes. Just like the balloons, open and free.
Another way of seeing it is that visually, we drill down through the Earth. We come out the other side upside-down.
And at the center of the comic is an example of the wildlife in the narration, sitting on the little globe we made, like the Cosmic Turtle, the mythical animal who carries the Earth on its back. he has no judgment or motive and is in complete contrast to our narrator, who has a secret to lord over us.
All of this is true, and its also true that this comic is a haphazard collection of the pictures I had on my phone, taken in the desert where I had the first inkling to write this balloon poem. I came across that turtle on a hike and I had no plan to make a webcomic about him when I took the pictures. The self-portrait at the top is stolen from one of my old webcomics and the other images were randomly pulled out and tested for fit, including the image of my son. I sanded them down and cut their edges until they fit each other, until they were seamless and worked together to tell a story that wasn't clear to me until I was done.
All of these things are true. Even though it's haphazard, so much of it works with precision. Sometimes it's hard to believe words and images that were tossed into a blender fit together so well and have so much to say. Maybe I'm just reading into it, but the final result can give you an impression that it was all carefully collected and painstakingly curated, to convey a single message right from the start.
But believing that is kind of like believing a turtle can hold up the world. Because your next rational thought is "What holds up the turtle?"
And the answer is obviously another turtle.
As a matter of fact It's turtles all the way down.