Panels and gutters are the very core of comics. Consistent and near-continuous usage of panels and gutters across a single work makes a comic, distinct from illustration or picture book

Panels

Units that frame a storytelling instance: a moment, a shot, an emotion, a thought, a symbol. Panels are usually square or rectangular, but can take on any shape. They can have borders or none.

Gutters

The spaces between and around panels. Though gutters often appear as negative space, they are not actually empty. Instead, they contain meaning and implicit information. Scott McCloud describes gutters as a kind of pause: it allows rest for your eyes and enables your mind to ‘fill in the blanks’. Gutters are sites for inference, for the reader to imagine emotion, action and meaning in between. This phenomenon of imagination on the reader’s part is called ‘closure’.

Panels and gutters contain image and text, or they may become image and text themselves.

Panels and gutters are flexible elements that can be arranged in different ways. Different arrangements affect how time and space are perceived on the page/screen. There are endless ways a comics creator can configure panels and gutters – even one inch can make a difference!