Disconnected components in Yahgulanaas' "Red: A Haida Manga"

Question

In Red: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, each page is connected to other pages by black marks. I was told that pages connected this way can be read after one another, allowing for multiple stories to be told from a single collection of pages. This is illustrated below:

Let's describe each page as a tuple (row #, column #).

It appears that pages (1,1), (1,2), (2,1), and (2,2) have a black mark that connects them, but is disconnected from most of the rest of the larger black mark that connects most of the pages. A similar disconnected black mark occurs near the top right of the pages as well.

It occurred to me that if I interpret the left and right sides of the panel as potentially connected, and same with top-bottom. But even this would reduce the three connected components into two connected components.

Are these disconnected components intended to be interpreted as isolated stories that can be told with subsets of 3-4 pages? Or is there some other intended meaning here?

Answer 1

I found this copy of the full mural:

It seems it's supposed to be read left to right, top to bottom, with the black marks just showing where to cut if you bought two copies and wanted to make your own version of the mural as this review says:

a spread at the end reveals all the pages can be assembled into a mural; the layouts join to create a larger motif. Yahgulanaas’s end note encourages you to buy two copies and recreate the mural – so if you’re not squeamish about cutting books, a four-metre-wide masterpiece is in your reach