"Here" is a 6-page comic story by Richard McGuire published in 1989, and expanded into a 304-page graphic novel in 2014. The concept of "Here" (in both versions) is to show the same location in space at different points in time, ranging from the primordial past to thousands of years in the future. "Here" has been recognized as a groundbreaking experiment with the formal properties of comics. The graphic novel was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Robert Zemeckis, released in 2024.
Overview
Original story
The sixth panel of the 1989 version of "Here".
The first panel of "Here" shows an unadorned corner of a room in a house. The 35 panels that follow all show the location in space depicted in the first panel at different points in time, ranging from the year 500,957,406,073 BC to the year 2033 AD. The panels are not ordered chronologically, and most of the panels are subdivided into multiple inset panels to show different points in time within the same panel.
Various people, animals, and furnishings are shown passing through the space, including several recurring characters, such as a woman shown cleaning the room in 1973, 1983, 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996. The reader also does "get to see the whole life of a character named William, born in 1957, dead in 2027."[1] The corner of the room itself is the most enduring presence in the story; panels show the house being constructed in 1902 and sheltering several generations of occupants before burning in a fire in 2029 and being demolished in 2030. The space is shown to be a barnyard in the 19th century before the house is built, and the site of open-air band concerts after the house has been razed.
Graphic novel
The graphic novel version expanded the concept to 304 pages in color, featuring 152 spreads, with "the corner of the eponymous room in the bound gutter of the open book."[2] It shows views of the same place from 3,000,500,000 B.C. to A.D. 22,175, "encompassing the lives of Native Americans and colonialists and moving from pre-human epochs to projected futures and species"[2] — though most of the action is in the 20th and 21st centuries when this view covers the living room of a house built in 1907.[3] The graphic novel establishes that the setting of the story eventually becomes part of the grounds of the Proprietary House, in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, primarily in a family home built on one of the land lots sold in 1904. A flashback sequence briefly depicts the political conflict between Benjamin Franklin and his son William.[3]
Concept and publication history
"Here"
McGuire discussed his vision of the story in a profile published in The Atlantic:
"If you stop to think about this, the 'now' becomes heightened," he says. “We are so rarely 'in the moment,' we spend most of our time thinking of the past or worrying about the future. The 'now' is the only thing that really exists."[4]
According to writer Lee Konstantinou, one influence on McGuire's concept of "Here" "was the Windows-based GUI popularized by Apple and then by Microsoft, which was in turn inspired by... Xerox PARC's groundbreaking Xerox Alto, the first computer to use a desktop metaphor to govern user interactions."[1]
The original six-page black-and-white story was published in Raw magazine volume 2, #1, in 1989. McGuire described the art style he used for it as "generic," saying, "It had to be as easy to read as an instruction manual, so the reader could follow what was happening very clearly when the interlaced time panels start being introduced."[4]
Here
In 2010,[citation needed] McGuire announced a graphic novel version of Here expanded to 300 pages, in full-color. As McGuire describes it,
"The book starts with the question, 'Why did I come in here again?' Which is what I was asking myself when I started this project. It took me a long time to figure out how exactly to make this book.... Going back into the project again was tricky. I felt it had to be similar to the original version but in a new way. I didn’t want to mimic that first approach, I never thought I would merely be adding pages to the original. This was to be a re-invention.... The book ends with a moment of recognition of the 'now.' The person finds the book they are looking for. Which is also my answer, I came back to this idea to make it into a book."[4]
The McGuire profile in The Atlantic explains how the story grew, in fits and starts, into the graphic novel:
"My parents were still living in the house where I grew up, which is kind of the center of Here," he says. Then a few years after they had both passed away, McGuire was awarded The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers fellowship at the New York Public Library, which gave him the time and resources to get focused on the project again.[4]
An Ebook edition of Here was released on the IOS platform in conjunction with the publication of the graphic novel. Here's non-linear structure made it particularly well-suited for adaptation into new media: the Ebook format deconstructs the traditional book experience, allowing readers to swipe through pages as in the book or explore the narrative more freely; the backgrounds and panels are liberated from their original layouts, enabling unique recombinations and fresh connections. The complete version features subtly timed animated GIFs, such as a curtain moving gently in a breeze, a petal falling, or a reader turning a page, offering unexpected, nuanced movement. To set it apart from film or video, the Ebook version omits sound effects and music to preserve a reading-focused experience.[4][5]
Reception
The 1989 original story has been recognized as a groundbreaking experiment with the formal properties of comics. Douglas Wolk wrote that its "influence has echoed through art comics for decades."[6] Its influence is particularly notable in the work of Chris Ware, who wrote a lengthy essay on it in the magazine Comic Art #8.[7] The original story was reprinted for the first time in that issue. It has been frequently anthologized since its original publication.
Writer Konstantinou's analysis of the 2014 version of the story came to the conclusion, "More so than the original Raw six-pager, the book version of Here dwells on the radical (because intrinsic) destructibility of life.... Though we get a glimpse of what might be some sort of utopian future, Here's human story ultimately stands against a stark background largely devoid of human presence. That is, a yawning cosmic indifference bookends the life of McGuire's little house."[1]
The opening segment of the 2022 British animated anthology television special The House was inspired by Here. As Marc James Roels said, he and Emma de Swaef's story segment came from the desire to tell "the story of the house before there was a house, the origin story, so to speak. I had been reading a graphic novel by Richard McGuire called Here, in which you see a corner of the world and how it changes through millennia. You see it as farmland, and when it was inhabited by Native Americans, and before that when there were dinosaurs. And then suddenly you're in the 1950s and someone's vacuuming the floor. And it kind of sparked off an idea, like what was there before the house?"[10]
Film adaptations
In 1991, a six-minute short film adaptation of the original six-page 1989 comic was produced at RIT's Department of Film and Video by students Timothy Masick and Bill Trainor for their senior thesis project.[11]
An immersive VR film based on the 2014 graphic novel version was conceived and created by British design and production company 59 Productions under the direction of Lysander Ashton with original music by Anna Meredith, which opened at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. The performances were filmed at Intel Studios in Los Angeles using volumetric capture technology.[12][13]
In 2014, in commemoration of the publication of the graphic novel, the Morgan Library & Museum (collaborating with the New York Public Library) launched the exhibition "From Here to Here: Richard McGuire Makes a Book," which tracked the process behind McGuire’s story and expansion of the story to a full-length work.[4] McGuire relished the synchronicity of "having the exhibition in a one-room gallery that is about a book that takes place in one room."[4]
