Under Construction @ Keele 2017 Under Construction @ Keele Vol. III (3) | Page 60

guttering – a phrase that, while useful, is often undermined by the wide variety of
methods used to delineate images. That MALM does not have a thin gutter denoted
by black lines in no way diminishes its claim to comics status, nor does it undermine
the applicability of gutter theory to the manual.
The gutter is a place where meaning is made and in which time can be
understood to pass. The idea is that the gutter is the place where imagination takes
over from instruction, where the reader becomes the creator. Most works leave little
in terms of narrative in the gutter – a feature that is more temporally oriented than
anything else – and this is broadly the same within MALM. This said, a major
difference exists within MALM: namely, the creation of the furniture. In-between the
frames in most comics, the reader is rarely required to do anything physical other
than perhaps briefly pause for consideration or to move his or her eyes across the
page. In MALM, there is a very specific paratextual activity in-between some gutters,
an activity which underpins and highlights the different mode of reading. How, then,
does our understanding of the guttering change to reflect this?
This primary guttering style (blank space with no borders between images) is
low in meaning-making qualities, quite possibly purposefully so, and places the
content of the images ahead of any framing device. It also synthesises with the blank
background to create an image where the object appears to be suspended in space.
Scott McCloud demonstrates (with faces rather than backgrounds, but the principles
still apply) that the depth of detail in an image is inversely proportional to our ability
to place ourselves within it. 8 Hergé’s Tintin is an excellent example, with rich and
textured backgrounds juxtaposed with a face (Tintin’s) so simply drawn that
identification with it is simple. MALM uses this principle in reverse. The complexly
figured images placed on a blank canvas allow the reader to see the object within
the text as identical to the one being assembled on his or her floor. It takes no great
leap of the imagination to appreciate that placing the images in a beautifully curated
home might depreciate customer satisfaction with the paratextual object as well as
confusing someone trying to recreate the object in a differently configured space.
This is meaning being created by non-comics elements and is perhaps the point at
which it becomes hardest to consider MALM purely as a comic. To fully understand
MALM (the text) and to tease out the intricacies of its design, it is obvious that one
8
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: HarperCollins, 1993)