Will I love Here?

This is the most profoundly absorbing experimental art-comic the world has ever produced.

It’s a fun book to sit with someone else and page through, backward or forward, or just ambling around, discovering things. The very simple conceit is that it’s a book that spans millions of years in time, but all happens in exactly one single space. It grew out of a six-page short story that blew people’s minds in the 80’s comics anthology Raw.

I remember hearing that the author had decided, two decades later, to expand it to book form, and wondered if that was really… show more.

This book is a great introduction to the “not-Marvel-or-DC” branch of graphic novels. Using nonlinear, overlapping panels, Here tells the story of a single point in space throughout the history of time. It flips from a midcentury living room to a primordial swamp, to a 23rd-century history exhibit, and everywhere in between. 

Of course, the real story of any space is the lives of the people and animals that inhabit it. Through the fragments of conversation and clips of action in Here, you’ll start thinking about the fleeting beauty and heartbreak that exist, existed, and will continue to exist… show more.

This book has forever altered my sense of place and enhanced my understanding of time. The entire book focuses its gaze on a specific limited space (the corner of a room) then jumps through time showing the layers of moments that have occurred in that exact location, moving far into the past and future. The concept of this book has haunted me ever since I first read it and it still amazes me that Richard McGuire was able to beautifully capture it all so clearly.