Bad Feelings
The story's antagonist, Marcus, tries to make amends for his attempted murder of the cardboard man. The cardboard man is not so quick to buy this story. "All of a sudden I don't like the smell of this room," he says in reference to the surprising presence of his attempted murderer. Marcus seems sincere enough to the son, but the cardboard man's metaphorical assessment of the situation uses the imagery of smelling a rat in the form of an insincere Marcus trying to ingratiate himself in the good graces of the household.
Marcus
A combination of visual and textual imagery intensifies the character of Marcus. One panel provides a glimpse of his bedroom wall adorned with posters for bands named Maggott, Dark Ness, and Skǖl. The images on these posters range from a strange creature sporting horns to a bandmember sporting goth skull-like makeup. In the panel right next to this one is a goofy picture of Marcus wearing a crown on which he has scrawled the word "king" and drawn an arrow pointing to his picture identifying himself as "me." This imagery works to foreshadow the dualistic nature of Marcus as, it will turn out, the kind of kid he wants to be and the kind of kid he actually is deep down inside.
Poor
The story revolves all around a dad with no money desperate to buy his son a birthday present. He winds up buying a cardboard box with all the money he has left in the world: the 78 cents in his pocket. "That's the only present that could possibly be worse than a pair of socks." The comparison to socks works effectively as imagery underlining the pathos of the situation. It is equally effective at conveying the unpleasantness of the character making the comparison, Marcus.
House of Males
The story is a tale of a father and boy living in the absence of the death of the wife and mother. The woman who lives next door offers to care for the son while the father goes off only to be confronted with a kitchen mess. She compares the living conditions to living like animals. She asks the boy, "How do you get this much gunk on a burner" with the visual accompaniment showing the gunky stovetop accessory. The imagery here underlines the domestic problems faced by the father and son as they try living without a female partner and it also foreshadows how the father and son are drawn closer to domestic partnership with their neighbor.
