Caza’s intriguing little allegories about how living in the city was similar to living in prison keep getting weirder. Here, his discovery that his fancy new apartment is actually a prison cell is juxtaposed against the television interview with the warden/mayor of the city-as-prison.

What’s most interesting to me about this story (aside from the main character having a conversation with a neighboring prisoner via the toilet) is how much the television screens as commentary resembles work that was later done by both Howard Chaykin and Frank Miller – even down to the implied 16 panel grid, in Miller’s case.

The denouement of the story is built on the casual mention that there are no showers in the apartment cells, but there are group showers. This leads the main character to discovering that the showers are actually ovens in a fairly over the top Holocaust reference. It’s built up organically, but any comparison of city living to the Holocaust can’t help but be heavy-handed. 

(Heavy Metal issue #33, December 1979 – Page 11 Suburban Scenes by Caza)