Here by Richard McGuire is a graphic novel published on December 4, 2014, by Pantheon Books. The graphic novel focuses on the same corner of a room over billions of years. It depicts the area long before the house is built and long after it falls. By using different visual styles, overlapping panels, and non-chronological narration, McGuire creates a narrative that comments on the nature of time and life. Here is considered a transformative work in the graphic novel genre, helping to propel it to a more literary level, much like Alan Moore’s Watchmen did in 1987. McGuire began as a musician and street artist before moving into the realm of graphic novels. Here began as a six-page comic before he expanded it into a full graphic novel in color. In 2016, Here was awarded the Fauve d-Or, the highest award for graphic novels in France. Here features very little dialogue, relying primarily on visual narration to explore such themes as Objects and Images as Containers of Memory, The Fluidity of Time and The Interconnectedness of Human Experiences.

This guide is based on the Pantheon 2014 hardcover edition.

Content Warning: This guide includes scenes and suggestions of sexual violence and abuse.

Plot Summary

Here is a graphic novel that follows the same corner of a room over a span of billions of years. Each page or panel depicts a year, and the graphic novel does not limit itself to chronological time, often jumping through time from page to page. Panels are often layered over each other, showing the same spot in the room at different times. The graphic novel begins by showing the empty room in 1957, 1942, and 2007, before a woman in a pink dress walks into the room in 1957. She knows that she is in the room looking for something but cannot remember what it is.

In 1989, four people sit on the couch under the window of the room, and one of them, a woman, tells a joke about a doctor: A man calls his doctor for test results, and the doctor tells the man that he has good news and bad news; the good news is that the man has 24 hours to live, but the bad news is that the doctor should have told him the day before. They all laugh until one of the men, elderly, begins to cough before falling over in his chair. After this, pages show scenes of the land the house is built on, ranging from 8,000 BCE to 1783 CE. On the pages that show the 1700s, a colonial house is built in the background.

Two parents organize their children on the couch in 1959. The mother tells the four young children to sit properly and fix their clothes. On subsequent pages, another family of five children poses for their picture in the same spot in panels dated 1962, 1964, 1969, 1979, and 1983. As they grow older, their expressions change from happiness to indifference until, as adults, only one smiles.

Panels showing Christmas trees in the corner of the room in different years are layered over pages showing a dark night in 1995. Panels show mothers holding their children in various years in the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1964, a woman plays the piano as panels show girls dancing in 1932, 1993, and 2014. In 1959, a wife asks her husband if he has his keys, wallet, and watch. On one page, a dog barks at the door in 1986, while a panel across the page from 1954 depicts a man complaining about his dog barking at the mailman. There are other scenes showing children playing musical chairs in 1993 and an elderly couple in 1988 explaining the story of how they met.

In 1986, the doorbell rings, and the woman in the room invites in three members from the Archeological Society. They recently visited the colonial house across the street and want to discuss the possibility that Indigenous artifacts may exist in the ground beneath this house. While the woman gets lemonade and the man explores the backyard, the other two members, a boy and girl, discuss the boy’s shirt, which reads, “Future Transitional Fossil” (110). When the man and woman return with the lemonade, the woman asks the trio what they think they will find. They tell her they hope it is a burial site.

In 1775, a couple walks toward the colonial house. The man is William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin and the Royal Governor of New Jersey. William tells his companion that he is nervous about Benjamin coming to visit with William’s son, whom he has not seen in a long time. His companion tells him to relax and begs him not to argue politics with Benjamin, who William believes is becoming a terrorist. Some children yell at William from behind a tree. Later, Benjamin and his grandson approach the house in a carriage, and William’s son, Little Billy, asks his grandfather not to argue politics. Benjamin promises, but later that night, an argument breaks out between William and Benjamin.

In 1983, a baseball crashes through the window of the room, and a mirror falls in 1949. Panels scattered across the subsequent pages show objects falling and breaking as well as insults being hurled, all in different years. Soon, pages show the area in prehistoric times, before the room is built. Scattered over these scenes are inset panels spanning into the 20th and 21st centuries and beyond, each depicting someone dealing with loss. People lose their earrings, keys, and even their hearing and sight.

In 1609, an Indigenous man and woman sit in the forest while the man tells a story about a large, dangerous beast of the forest. The beast hunts and eats people and cannot be killed. The man says that before the beast eats, it wants to have sex, and he then forces himself on top of the woman, while she calls for help and pleads for him to stop.

In 1998, a girl reading on the couch opens the window to yell at a bird to stop tweeting, but it flies in and chases her. In 1870, a man and woman set up a picnic on the lawn outside the colonial house, and the man begins painting, ignoring the woman’s request that he paint her. A woman sets up a projector in 1973, and panels over this scene show two young boys playing with a drum in 1959. Later, the projector shows a home video of one of the boys playing the drum to an audience scattered around the room.

A girl looking out the window in 1984 asks about the story behind the colonial house, and another girl in the room says it has something to do with Benjamin Franklin. A game of Twister begins in 1971, and panels from 1966 and 2015 show the game being played again in the same exact spot. A man in 1990 has a recurring nightmare in which his children are drowning. In 2007, another man talks of a dream in which he lives in a mansion and finds his father in bed with a naked woman. When he asks the woman her name, she tells him that everyone here has the same name.

A man breaks ground on an empty plot across the street from the colonial house in 1907, and as the year progresses, the room is built. A man in blue overalls and a red shirt works to complete the house, working on the frame and installing hardwood floors. In 2005, a man is on the phone explaining that his father fell and broke his hip. His injured father cannot walk up and down stairs for a while and will have to stay on the pullout couch in the room. In the year 2213 CE, an artificial tour guide gives a talk on what a house of the 20th century looked like. The room is no longer standing, and the tour participants are standing on a boardwalk above a body of water where the house used to be. Her projections show the room at different moments, and she explains to her group the meaning behind such artifacts as a watch. Back in 2005, the son of the injured man explains that his medicine is on the table beside the injured man’s bed. The father jokes with his son that he cannot hear him before warning him that one day he will be old too.

In panels lining the top of pages, a shark swims by in 2126, balloons float to the ceiling in 1978, a paper airplane flies in 1908, and a fly buzzes by in 2006. In 1624, Dutch colonists and Indigenous men exchange gifts while a group in 1964 plays charades. In 22,175, vibrant foliage covers the area, and hummingbirds float by flowers. Couples embrace and kiss in 1940 and 1952, and in 2313, the area is desolate, with men testing radiation levels.

“Love is Here to Stay” by Nat King Cole plays on the record player in 1960. On the final few pages, panels show many of the characters walking through the space. William Franklin and his wife walk together in 1775, an Indigenous man walks through in 1620, and the man with blue overalls and a red shirt works in 1907. Children play Ring-Around-the-Rosie in 1889. On the final pages, Here returns to 1957, and the woman in the pink dress finally remembers why she came into the room. She picks up a book from the table.