We Are All in the Gutters: Redefining Negative Space in Graphic Fiction

By: Kevin Schmidt

There’s a trend developing in the world of comic books, a trend that is slowly

changing the already complicated relationship between the artist and the reader in modern

comics. The relationship between the reader and the creators of any given comic book is

already a complex and multi-faceted one – comics storytelling often involves a great deal

of participation on the part of the audience receiving the text. However, more and more,

in mainstream adventure comic books, the relationship between the reader, the artist and

the text grows more complex. Creators are taking advantage of the unique narrative

structures in comics (also known as sequential art) in order to further entangle the reader

in the narrative – not as just an observer but as a participant. As a result, the texts

challenge the assumed passivity of the reader and empower the audience in new and

interesting ways.

First of all, most of the texts I’m going to point to as examples fall solidly into

”mainstream” comic books, by which I mean, superheroes or related speculative fiction

tales told in that style.

The core of my theory involves the manipulation of the negative space referred to

in the comic book industry as “gutters”. The gutters of a comic book are the “empty”

spaces, often white, that separate the panels where the “action” occurs and plays a large

role in the structure and pacing of the narrative.

Comics, like film, are made up of frames of information and images. In the case

of comics, those images include both pictorial representations and text. In the case of
film, the illusion of movement and the creation of continuity from frame to frame is

achieved by stringing together hundreds of frames and running them past the human eye

at twenty four frames per-second. The film is given “life” by the phenomenon of

“Persistence of Vision” which fills in the gaps between the frames, thus creating a

seamless moving image.

However, in comics, the creation of continuity between images is achieved

through the interplay between the artist and the reader. Instead of frames, the reader is

often presented with a number of panels of varying shapes and sizes which are often

arranged in some sort of grid-like structure. While the panels can contain any sort of

information, there is no persistence of vision effect that fills in the gaps between panels.

The burden of telling the story sequentially in comics falls almost equally to both the

artist and creator and to the reader.

First of all, it’s necessary to understand that in comics, time often equals space.

Page after page of panels can represent anything from the passing of years, to a flash of

microseconds. There is no set scale by which x number of panels equals x number of

minutes. The amount of time that passes, which obviously is important to the structure of

the narrative, is left up to the artist to represent through a variety of cues. Certainly, there

could be a caption with the time displayed, but such a timestamp, if placed in every panel

would get distracting very quickly. Time or the pace of time (which of course can be

variable within a narrative) is but one of the factors that is delineated and formulated by

the interplay of the artists’ skill and the readers’ involvement in the text.

The creator, for their part, can leave any number of hints, both visual and literary,

that indicate what happens in the gutters, but these symbols are up to the reader to decode
and apply so that the narrative makes sense and so that there is a sense of continuity

between the panels. Without the reader making decisions and judgments based on the

information provided by the authors, there is no narrative flow in the text.

The gutters of a comic are a negative space that in their emptiness are filled with

almost limitless content. It’s in these spaces that the reader decodes the myriad varieties

of clues and symbols in the text in order to create an effect similar to the persistence of

vision that turns a string of images into a moving picture on the screen.

Gutters however, are not inviolate. Sometimes an artist will have a figure or an

action breaking out of the panel structure for artistic effect. This is particularly common

in superhero and adventure comics where a character may loom taller than the panel that

contains them to give a sense of size or importance or perhaps they may break out the

panel to give an impression of speed or impact. A figure exploding out of a panel can

give an impression of the larger than life nature of a super-heroic figure as well as serve

as a convenient metaphor for their surpassing the limitations of the physical laws we

know here in the primary world.

However, while we are all aware of the negative space that boarders the panel on

its four sides, creating and shaping the flow and structures of the narrative, there’s

another symbolic gutter that is not as easy to detect or pin down: the gutter that exists

between the art and story as we see it on the page, and the reader. It is my contention that

there are current comics creators who are aware of this space and are encouraging if not

demanding, that the audience “read” and decode this negative space just as they would a

conventional gutter.
 In other forms of art and performance-based narrative, there exists the concept of

the “fourth wall” which is the imaginary wall between the performers, or the text, and the

audience. This hypothetical “gutter” between the comic book text and the reader is

another form of the fourth wall. It could be argued, however, that this manifestation of

the fourth wall is more permeable a barrier than some others (such as the one between a

movie and its audience); after all, we’ve already established that the reader has a critical

role in decoding the text and establishing a continuity of storytelling from panel to panel.

So, we’ve established that there’s not only a negative space that provides a

framework for the narrative on all the sides of the panel, but I’m now looking to establish

that there’s another space between the reader and the text that can just as easily be read as

another gutter. What does that mean, if anything, to narratives told in the comic book

format?

It means that just as the other gutter spaces can be pierced for effect, so too can

the fourth wall between the reader and the text. This should come to no surprise to

anyone who has read mainstream comics for any length of time. For decades, Superman

has been prone to throwing the reader a knowing wink and sixties-era Marvel Comics had

extensive references to the Marvel offices and the writers and artists of the comics of the

time. In fact, recently Marvel’s Fantastic Four traveled to Heaven in search of God and

found that God was in fact the late comics legend and co-creator of the Fantastic Four:

Jack Kirby.

However, it also means that it would be possible to design a comic book text in

such a way that the reader is challenged to read the space between themselves and the

text just like they would any other gutter. The first example of this I’d like to explore is
Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III’s “Promethea”. Promethea tells the story of Sophie

Bangs, a young New York college student who becomes, through research and art, the

latest incarnation of the “Science-Heroine” Promenthea. One of the core themes of

Promethea is the interaction of artists and the imagination. In the case of Sophie, she

learns to channel the spirit and power of Promethea who is, in essence, a living story that

exists in the imagination. After Promethea becomes an established heroine, she

eventually sets off on a quest to rescue a dead friend in the afterlife. The story then

moves away from Earth and into the realms of magic and the imagination. The first

major brush with the fourth wall in Promethea comes when Sophie and her friend,

Barbara travel to the realm of Hod. There, they meet the idea of the god Hermes who

takes them on a stroll and begins discussing the nature of language and form. As the

conversation progresses, Hermes begins addressing the Point of View of the camera and

not the women walking with him – a fact Sophie and Barbara actually notice shortly after

Hermes and Sophie have the following exchange:

Hermes says: “What could be more appropriate than for a language-god to

manifest through the original pictographic form of language?”
Sophie says: “Uhh..so like what are you saying?”
Hermes responds with: “What am I saying? I’m saying some fictions might have a real
god hiding beneath the surface of the page. I’m saying some fictions might be alive…
That’s what I’m saying.”

However, Moore and Williams don’t really start to play with the narrative

conventions until towards the end of the series. In the story arc that culminates with

“The Radiant Heavenly City”, the Apocalypse has come, ushered in by Promethea

herself. As the end of the world as we know it comes closer, the borders between the

text, the creators and the reader begin to grow thin. Within the text itself, the author,
Moore and the penciler, Williams both are shown being swept up into the story of the end

of the world. There is even a scene from reader’s Point of View where the reader begins

to feel the effects being described in the book while reading the very scene where the

reader begins to feel the effects being described in the book. Perhaps even more topical

is a scene earlier in the book where Federal Agent Breughel, after a confrontation with

Promethea, realizes her nature as a two-dimensional entity on a piece of paper. As she

begins to do so, she is peeled off the page and falls upwards through the gutters which

liquefy with her passing. She is then in a three-dimensional world (rendered with

computer aided 3D art) standing on top of the panels she has just been removed from.

She is surrounded by 3D beings and perceives her life and the narrative as an endless

stream of comic book pages stretching towards the horizon in both directions. She has,

in essence, been transported to what we conceive of as the space between the reader and

the text. She then falls back into the text in a different location and when attempting to

describe her experience describes the face of the panel that we see as the “rooftop” of her

reality. While Breughel doesn’t actually interact with any representation of the reader,

she does transgress wholly through the fourth wall and out of the confines of “reality” as

perceived by the other characters. She becomes aware of what we consider to be a

negative space, a place that is normally invisible to her two-dimensional senses, as a

space outside of her reality and the narrative.

When Promethea ends, it ends with Sophie having abandoned the mantle of

Promethea and no clear replacement for her in sight. The final scene of the “traditional”

narrative is a collection of previous Prometheas discussing how there needs to be a new

Promethea. The final frames are illustrated from the Point of View. of someone sitting in
the circle of past Prometheas. The final issue, #32, is not part of the traditional narrative

except in that is serves as an answer of sorts to that call. Within the story, people become

Promethea by involving themselves through art with the idea of Promethea. The final

issue asks for a level of involvement and interaction between the reader and the text.

While reading a comic book is always a collaboration of sorts between the creators and

the audience, the final issue of Promethea adds several levels of complexity to that

process. In this issue, there are no gutters. In fact, while there is a story being told by

Promethea directly to the reader in the issue, there is no set way in which that story is

constructed. Each page is both an image of Promethea talking to the reader and

discussing the ideas of Promethea (as well as a series of insights into some concepts dealt

with previously in the text) and part of a grater whole that if assembled in a certain way

form a poster… or if assembled another way, form a different poster. And while the

story itself reads equally well both front-to-back and back-to-front, it also reads well in

several other fashions, including Alan Moore’s “advised” way of reading it (according to

Promethea contributor Jose Villarubia) which is:

”First read the Promethea dialog only in all the pages in the order that they are printed.
When the pages are upside-down, just rotate the page and read the dialog (monologue,
really), left page first and then right and left side of the page to the right and top to
bottom.
After you are done, go back to the start and read the additional captions on each page in
the same order you read the dialog...
Then, take off the staples, and be careful with the bits of glue that hold the pages
together. Tape all the pages in the correct order, two new giant pictures will appear and
read each one of the sides again, this time in a slightly different order from the first that
according to Alan will make even more sense... there are also paths of stars and ankhs
connecting the captions that define yet another sequencing.”

Here we have a book where one of the key themes is interaction with art and with

fiction where the final chapter is in fact a piece of art that doesn’t just encourage the
involvement and the complicity of the reader in order to create a continuity of story and

narrative, but in fact requires it to a certain extent. The reader is encouraged to get

involved with the basic mechanics of the story and completely obliterate the space of the

gutters. What room is there for arbitrary negative space between panels or between the

reader and the text when the “text” is just as easily a piece of collage art, as it is a poster,

as it is a flip book, as it is an installation piece? The reader is left in a situation where

what happens next in the story is literally up to them – all this in a story where the last

question asked is who will be the next person to bear the mantle of Promethea. The final

chapter of Promethea is in fact a call for the involvement of the reader in the text,

removing the space between audience, text, author and narrative in a very literal sense.

Another example that uses similar techniques can be found in Grant Morrison and

Ryan Sook’s recent “Zatanna” miniseries. The series takes place against the backdrop of

major chaos and upheaval in the fictional world of superheroes where the magician,

Zatanna resides. Prior to the publication of the limited series, Zatanna had been revealed

to have tampered with the mind and memories of several villains. She had also been

revealed to have tampered with the mind of at least one of her super-heroic colleagues in

an effort to keep her actions a secret. Morrison’s “Zatanna” series has her, in the light of

these revelations, seeking out the lost books of her father as well as trying to recover

from the guilt over her actions. Her search eventually brings her into conflict with one

of her father’s old enemies. As the battle escalates and intensifies, the combatants begin

to first manipulate the raw forces of magic, followed quickly by fighting with linguistic

structures (attempting to entrap each others in living language) and finally their battle

ends up taking them outside the normal bounds of reality, or as Zatanna describes it:
 “I saw time from a really weird angle that made it all look static and fractured,
and then… It was like he had the whole swamp in his hands. Tearing it to pieces.”

At this point, her enemy, the rival magician Zor, is larger than the panels can

contain. As Zatanna mentions ripping, he’s standing in the gutter-space ripping a panel

in half. Meanwhile another character involved in the fight becomes aware of “the many

thousand hands that hold it [the universe]”. Zatanna, attempting to get ahead of Zor leaps

from a panel in “A blind jump through spaces, vectors, geometry problems I couldn’t

solve” into another panel to grab Zor. At this point, neither character is bound by the

structures of the panels and are moving freely through the dimensions of the normal

gutters as we perceive them. However, Zatanna in her desperation gets an idea, “If I

could just reach out through all of this weird machinery, this scaffolding stuff that is

holding all of our lives together…” and proceeds to reach up. In a striking scene, the

desperate Zatanna reaches out to whoever is out there to help her. Her hand pressed

against the page like someone on the other side of a pane of glass. She’s aware of the

many eyes watching her and the hands holding her universe… in other words she reaches

out to the audience. In a series that focused on a quest for forgiveness and absolution of

guilt, she reached out to the final arbiters of such things: the reader.

And the next scene, showing Zatanna in a space that is described as “a place

where people like us can interact with people like you” gives the reader no illusions that

she has somehow entered into a liminal space between the text and the reader. It is

through that blind appeal for forgiveness to the reader (although the mechanisms of that

appeal are left vague, just as the action between the panels is left to the reader to

construct) that she transgresses into this space where other agents, perhaps representing
the creators, remove her nemesis from the story and allow her to make peace with her

father.

Through the direct appeal of the character to the audience for help and to some

extent, forgiveness, Morrison and Sook force the audience to acknowledge the space, the

“fifth gutter” between themselves and the text. Furthermore, by placing some of the

action in that supposedly negative space (just as Moore and Williams did with Agent

Bruehguel) they invite the reader to begin to read and decode that space just like any

other comic book gutter. Also, by structuring this in the form of a plea to the audience,

the creators create a situation where at least the illusion of the audience’s participation in

the text can be created. This, to an extent, makes the reader more aware of the comic

book reading skills that normally remain an invisible process to most readers and

encourages them to begin using some of those same skills that allow the audience to

navigate the traditional gutters, on the gutter separating them from the text.

Promethea (by inviting the reader to invoke her into their lives) and Zatanna (by

asking the reader to intercede in her life) both force the reader to critically re-evaluate

their relationship to the text and their role as seemingly passive participants in

constructing these narratives. What these two examples (and the others like them)

accomplish is to invite the reader to explore new forms of empowerment and agency in

regards to their relationships with the text.

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