we are all screaming "Madeline is Adam's WIFE?!" right now so naturally i would like to give my two cents about this as well, which is that Madeline is part of the Vegas arc, not the prequel. Voilà my evidence:
here is a scene we can be sure happens in the present day, because we know Adam was planning on moving to Vegas with his buddy Hetman. Also he looks notably older. In this scene we can see him wearing a wedding band.
so that's pretty conclusive evidence, case closed, but i do want to take this opportunity to analyse the style of the new book!!
Anaïs mentions this in an ask from March, and the thing that jumped out to me was this panel
the bottle is blurry. everything in the first book was sharp and crisp, and here we have young Adam holding a bottle of moonshine that's blurry at the edges. perhaps blurry like a memory?
compare to this panel, which has the same crispness that we are used to. we can anchor this to the present day just solely based on the fact that Adam is visibly much older in this than the previous panel, which in turns supports both theories: that Madeline is part of the Vegas arc, and that the blur is used to indicate a flashback. then there's this moment:
Samuel we know has to be part of the prequel, on account of the. being dead. and if you look at the edge of the table, the outer post of the chair, the pages on the book, and the edges/folds of the blanket in some places, you can see that distinctive blur.
looking at these side by side we see that the Samuel scene does indeed have blur (on the book and pen) that the Madeline one lacks. the Samuel scene also seems to have scratchier lines used to render the suspenders and tie. looking at all these images together, we can also see that the flashback panels tend to be more desaturated, with a more neutral color palette, perhaps reminiscent of an old photograph.
that's all for now! if you need me, you can find me counting down the days until Rivages Lointains - Adam comes out!! (and perhaps comes out though the chances of that are extraordinarily slim)
also
is it fucking anyone else up that Jules started wearing short sleeves and glasses and no tie to distance himself from Adam and now Adam is on this side of the ocean also wearing short sleeves and glasses and no tie. evil soulmates bound by fate they will never escape each other.
@point-two-two making EXCELLENT analysis, as ALWAYS ✨😘
Picking up my every clues......
