Cartooning trick in Nate Beeler's Haiti cartoon

Nate's cartoon today, Helping Hand in Haiti, represents an interesting thing one can do with comic art. Nate made one large drawing, but then put the idea of time into the drawing by adding in the rectangle on the one side. our familiarity with the mechanics of comics means this functions as a brake on the reader's eye, so that the illusion of the passage of time is created even in one continuous drawing.