"The Gutter"

In between the panels of a comic there is a blank space. This empty area is what is referred to as "the gutter". The artist places the gutter as a means to open the reader's mind to what they imagine has happened. McCloud mentions that the sample images do not show anyone being killed. The reader only sees a man with an axe, and in the next panel a scream. McCloud writes that the effect of this type of sequence forces the reader to participate. From Understanding Comics: "I may have drawn an axe being raised in this example, but I'm not the one who liet it drop or decided how hard the blow, or who screamed, or why" (68). This is also where closure may come into play. You see the parts and create what you perceive to be the whole that would occupy that blank space.

What is the significance of closure in Understanding Comics?

real life and fantasy

Though separated from what they produce, people nevertheless produce every detail of their world with ever-increasing power. They thus also find themselves increasingly separated from that world. The closer their life comes to being their own creation, the more they are excluded from that life.

A common fad sweeping the nation, Second Life, a video game that ranks with social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter seems to be an appropriate spectacle for someone producing a world and perfecting it to the point of becoming a recluse.Second Life is used by young adults as well as adults who wish to create some sort of "fantasy world" where they can meet new people, talk with them through self-made avatars that may or may not look like the user, most of the time in homes they build online but could never afford in real life. The significance of this spectacle in terms of the aphorism mentioned above is that some people work so hard to create these worlds and accumulate followers and friends, but most of the time they are cooped up in a dark basement with only a computer screen acting as a light source.