Reading 2

Blood in the Gutter

I really enjoyed this reading. I talked about the gutter- the dividing line between two panels in a comic, and how our mind is what fills those gaps.

There are moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur types of gutters. The idea of non-sequitur reminded me of the mini assignment we had to make a story about of the comic which had random images: cigarette, man on couch, dog bighting leg, etc.. That comic may have been non-sequitur.

The most often used of these are action-to-action, subject-to-subject and scene-to scene. I thought it was rather interesting that the proportion of usage of these types of gutter/transitions are almost identical in pretty much all comics. It is further interesting that in Japanese comics, the aspect-to-aspect type is actually used rather often while in western comics it is pretty much not used at all. In Western culture, the goal is to get to the destination, while in Eastern culture, its about experiencing being there. Its really interesting how different cultures could cause comics to be portrayed differently.