 Spiegelman suffers from a lazy eye , and thus lacks depth perception . He says his art style is " really a result of [ his ] deficiencies " . His is a style of labored simplicity , with dense visual motifs which often go unnoticed upon first viewing . He sees comics as " very condensed thought structures " , more akin to poetry than prose , which need careful , time @-@ consuming planning that their seeming simplicity <unk> 's work prominently displays his concern with form , and pushing the boundaries of what is and is not comics . Early in the underground comix era , Spiegelman proclaimed to Robert Crumb , " Time is an illusion that can be shattered in comics ! Showing the same scene from different angles freezes it in time by turning the page into a diagram — an orthographic projection ! " His comics experiment with time , space , recursion , and representation . He uses the word " decode " to express the action of reading comics and sees comics as functioning best when expressed as diagrams , icons , or symbols . 
