Here

Here

Art and Story by Richard McGuire

I haven't posted an entry in months and now I'm returning with a review that breaks the format of my fledgling blog. In my defense, the purpose of this project is to highlight innovation in comics, I chose to focus my attention on “Small Press” because I feel those creators are making greater gains in exploring the frontier of our imaginations. Further, Here did originally appear in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly's comics anthology magazine, Raw, in 1989. So, I think it's still fair to say Here was small press before being released in this current, and greatly expanded, work published by Pantheon Books in December of 2014.

Not long after Here's release I took a promotion with my company and moved into a new house, conveniently just a few blocks from comic artist Brian Koschak. After I had settled into my new space, I invited Koschak over for a visit. He handed me a copy of Here, along with a couple of other books to borrow. Like most things that are loaned to me, the book sat on the mantle over my fireplace for months before Brian finally asked if I going to actually read it or allow it to continue collecting dust. So, this morning I sat in the living room and began reading Here, mere feet from where I was sitting three years before, watching a movie with my former boss after a night of drinking. At this point you may ask, what does that have to do with anything?

Here is the story of a place. Sometimes that place is occupied by people who have tamed it and made it their living room, other times it is overrun by nature. On one page a dinosaur may stand in the same place children will sit watching television sixty-five million years later and on the next page the same man may occupy multiple spaces in the same living room, years apart, reading a book. Imagine setting a camera in one place and taking a pictures at random intervals of time to see how it changes over the years. From this timeless vantage point we are afforded the opportunity to witness the intimate lives of multiple creatures occupying the space at different points in history. It challenges our micro perspective that is locked in the present by allowing us to see what came before and what may come in the future.

So, back to my living room. I should at this time explain that I have known the previous three tenants who lived in this house before me. As I read Here I found myself wondering, did any of them sit in this spot and read on a Sunday morning? Are there patterns in my behavior that are echoes of theirs due to the layout of the house? In what ways did we occupy this space similarly and in what ways differently? Who were the people who lived here before my knowledge? Who will live here after me? When was the house built and by who? Beyond my house, I found myself asking the same questions about other places I have lived or family homes we have purchased or sold and how those places now exist outside my memory.

These questions, these thoughts, are part of a universal thread that binds all of us together. Nearly every comic I have read has a targeted demographic, but this book has the power to be picked up and understood by anyone; Here transcends the barriers of comic book social stigma to become not only a great comic, but an impressive piece of literature. The best stories we will ever read are those that challenge us to reevaluate our perception of the world, Here achieved that for me.