From the very first page of "Pterror Over Paris," I was struck by how beautifully the gutter spaces between panels echoed the scenery within those panels in a way that moved your eye easily from panel to panel through the story. On the first page, the gutter follows the shape of the gated walkway of the first panel and acts as part of the ceiling in the second panel. Tardi's use of gutter space connects the two panels seamlessly. He continues to use this method to enhance his art throughout the story. He uses it again on page 13 to mimic the dome on top of a building and divides a panel into two triangles on page 30 to show two halves to a phone conversation. He also chooses to create an arched gutter space that resembles the dome of a structure on page 51, at the start of "The Demon of the Eiffel Tower."
We had touched on his usage of gutter space a little bit in class, and I had found it very pleasing when I noticed it while I was reading Tardi's work. He knows when to use a gutter to enhance the reader's view and perception of certain scenes. He knows how to frame them in the best way possible, while keeping his enhancement subtle so as not to detract from the story with crazy panel shapes. His unique usage of the gutter space between his panels allows the story to flow while giving it's delivery his own personal twist that I personally really liked and appreciated.
I think this is an interesting interpretation of panel space, especially because it adds an additional component to our usual method of reading panels. Scott McCloud expounds almost exclusively on the temporality of the gutter- it functions as a charged moment of time between slices of action and the audience is complicit in the act of panel-to-panel closure through what they imagine happened in the gutter. But Tardi's use, as you point out, adds an architectural or spatial element that I don't think any other comic artist we have seen thus far has done, at least as completely as Tardi does it. There was perhaps one or two examples in Tintin: I remember a panel where Tintin grabs a doorknob protruding from the right panel border and in the next panel, the doorknob is on the left border, suggesting that the gutter was also a door. But Tradi's use in much more sophisticated and I think the effect it achieves is one of literally building the narrative into the setting. It is as though the panels are set into the larger architecture of Paris the way a window is built into a wall. It nicely reinforces the nationalistic quality of Tardi's work and means that the temporality of the gutter also has an echo or resonance of the spatial setting of the story.
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