# What Matters in the Gutter: Exploring Identity from Prose to Panels in US Comics

Imane Ghebache

► To cite this version:

Imane Ghebache. What Matters in the Gutter: Exploring Identity from Prose to Panels in US Comics. What Matters in the Humanities, HERMES Summer School, Jun 2025, Montpellier (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier), France. hal-05141792

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Submitted on 8 Oct 2025

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# What Matters in the Gutter Exploring Identity from Prose to Panels in US Comics

This talk explores how the comic medium, specifically the *gutter*, or the space between panels, reveals previously unseen aspects of identity, voice, and psychological fragmentation. Focusing on Chuck Palahniuk's *Fight Club 2*, the presentational argues that the shift from prose to comics is not simply a change in format but a profound transformation in narrative structure and the representation of identity.

## Introduction: Reading Between the Lines and the Panels

The presentation begins by asking a central literary question: what happens between the lines of a story? In novels, this question is typically metaphorical; in comics, it becomes literal. The gutter, that is, the physical space separating panels, becomes a narrative tool that demands the reader's interpretive participation. I propose that these gaps are not empty but rich with meaning, serving as spaces where identity is fragmented, withheld, or reshaped.

## Research Question and Context

The guiding question of the research is:

How does Palahniuk's use of the gutter in *Fight Club 2* reveal hidden dimensions of identity, voice, and fragmentation that remain invisible in prose?

To contextualize this, this presentation outlines the evolution from *Fight Club* (1996), a prose novel, to *Fight Club 2* (2015), a comic sequel. While the original novel presents a nameless narrator who creates the alter ego Tyler Durden to cope with modern malaise, the comic follows the same character, now called Sebastian, who is medicated, married, and still haunted by Tyler's reemergence. This shift in medium is seen as a formal rupture that opens up new possibilities for exploring identity.

## Part 1: Comics Theory, Understanding the Gutter

The presentation draws on Scott McCloud's *Understanding Comics*, highlighting the gutter as a site of *closure*: the reader's mental leap to connect disjointed images into a coherent narrative. McCloud describes the gutter as "the space between the panels... where human imagination takes two separate images and transforms them into a single idea." Closure, then, is an active, imaginative process where meaning is made by the reader, not simply delivered by the author.

The talk reviews McCloud's six types of panel transitions, from moment-to-moment to scene-to-scene, and demonstrates how these transitions demand varying levels of engagement from the reader. The presentation emphasizes that this co-creative process fosters an intimacy between reader and text, one that is especially powerful in the context of fragmented or unstable identities.
## Part 2: Psychological Fragmentation, Tyler in the Gutter

In *Fight Club 2*, Tyler Durden transcends his role as a character and becomes a disruptive presence that occupies the gutter. He:

* Breaks panel boundaries (e.g., p. 45),

* Moves across panels as if slipping through mental and narrative cracks

* Reemerges without explanation, suggesting he waits in the white space between scenes.

The presentation analyzes scenes where Tyler's body invades other panels and where Sebastian's medication is scattered across frames, visually reinforcing mental instability. This visual strategy draws readers into Sebastian's psychological disorientation, as they too must piece together a fractured narrative without clear cause-and-effect logic.

Referencing Charles Hatfield, I note that comics thrive on “the tension between unity and fragmentation.” *Fight Club 2* leverages this tension to depict identity not as a stable construct but as a disjointed sequence of moments.

## Part 3: Visualizing Shapeshifting Identity

The talk continues by examining how *Fight Club 2* uses panel layout and transitions to visualize a fluid, unstable sense of self. One example features Sebastian holding his child while seeing Tyler reflected in a mirror (p. 133), a literal split between fatherhood and alter ego.

Speech bubbles, especially blue ones, frequently appear without a clearly identified speaker, often when Tyler and Sebastian are in conflict. These floating words cross panel boundaries and enter the margins, emphasizing the absence of a stable voice or point of origin.

In the presentation, I relate this to Hillary Chute's concept that comics “insist on the co-presence of fragmentation and presence.” In this case, Tyler's existence is affirmed through his visual and spatial disruptions, making his presence both felt and questioned.

## Part 4: Alienation Rendered Visually

Alienation is not only a theme but a visual device in *Fight Club 2*. Marla, Sebastian's wife, is frequently depicted in separate visual planes. Her speech is often redacted, covered by onomatopoeic censoring, or placed in fragmented bubbles (e.g., pp. 51, 64, 188). These strategies do not just depict her marginalization. They enact it formally on the page.

Sebastian, too, is boxed into narrow panels and surrounded by wide gutters (e.g., p. 29), creating a sense of spatial and psychological isolation. The presentation argues that comics
here do not offer narrative flow, but rather deliberate disconnection, mirroring the lived
experience of mental and relational breakdown.

Part 5: Comics as Counter-Archive

Drawing on Michael Lackey's theory of biofiction, the presentation argues that *Fight Club 2* operates as a counter-archive, a site where unstable, marginal, and fractured voices can be given form. The comic rejects the idea of a stable identity and instead presents characters like Sebastian and Tyler as performative and unstable consciousnesses.

In this sense, comics become a space where identity is not narrated but constructed through
absence, fragmentation, and reader engagement. The form itself demands that meaning be
drawn from what is missing as much as what is present.

Conclusion: Identity Performed Through Form

In closing, I reaffirm the central claim: shifting from prose to comics transforms the
narrative's treatment of identity. The gutter becomes the unconscious, a space of dissociation,
rupture, and metamorphosis.

*Fight Club 2* does not merely continue a story. It transforms it, allowing comics to reveal what prose left unseen: the instability of identity, the necessity of reader participation, and the performative nature of selfhood. The talk concludes that in comics, identity is not told, it is performed through form, and that performance takes place most powerfully in the gutter.

Bibliography

Hatfield, Charles. *Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature*. University Press of Mississippi, 2005.

Lackey, Michael. *Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists*. Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

McCloud, Scott. *Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art*. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.

Palahniuk, Chuck, Cameron Stewart, Dave Stewart, and Nate Piekos. *Fight Club 2: The Tranquility Gambit*. Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 2016.

—. *Fight Club*. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.

Postema, Barbara. *Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments*. Rochester, NY: RIT Press, 2013.

Taylor, Diana. *The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas*. Duke University Press, 2003.