Jorgenson E, et al. (2005) Ethnicity and human genetic linkage maps. American Journal of Human Genetics 76:276-290, Figure 2

What's wrong with this one?

There's always a lot of wasted space in QQ plots, but these are particularly bad: the figure takes two full pages, and that gray background! I've never seen so much wasted spaced and ink.

What should have been done?

My understanding of this figure is that the authors are comparing three groups of numbers. They do so in a way that is not very natural. I'd prefer dotplots showing the values in the three groups, side-by-side, with a white background, and using one-quarter of the page.