Here
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £12.99
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
Here is Richard McGuire's unique graphic novel based on the legendary 1989 comic strip of the same name.
Richard McGuire's groundbreaking comic strip Here was published under Art Spiegelman's editorship at RAW in 1989.
Built in six pages of interlocking panels, dated by year, it collapsed time and space to tell the story of the corner of a room - and its inhabitants - between the years 500,957,406,073 BC and 2033 AD.
The strip remains one of the most influential and widely discussed contributions to the medium, and it has now been developed, expanded and reimagined by the artist into this full-length, full-colour graphic novel - a must for any fan of the genre.
'From now on, McGuire will be known as the author of the novel Here, because it's a work of literature and art unlike any seen or read before. A book like this comes along once a decade, if not a century' Chris Ware, Guardian
'Promises to leapfrog immediately to the front ranks of the graphic-novel genre' New York Times
Richard McGuire is a regular contributor to the New Yorker magazine. He has written and illustrated both children's books and experimental comics. His work has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney's, Le Monde and Libération. He has written and directed two omnibus feature films, designed and manufactured his own line of toys, and is also the founder and bass player of the band Liquid Liquid.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Expanding on an influential piece that first appeared in Raw in 1989, McGuire, best known for his illustrated children's books, explores a single patch of land (apparently in Perth Amboy, N.J.) over the course of millions of years. As in the earlier version, McGuire's perspective is fixed in what is (for most of the book) the corner of a family room, even as the narrative skips across centuries. At the beginning and end, dinosaurs and futuristic animals (respectively) stalk pages unadorned by people. But throughout most of the book, the reader sees human families dance, die, celebrate, fracture, and just live. A Native American couple makes out in the woods, people in 1980s garb pose for a portrait, a 24th-century team waves Geiger counters, a 1999 cat pads across the frame, and so on. The flat, hard lines produce art that looks like an approximation of Edward Hopper's clean bright paintings, created on an outdated computer program. McGuire threads miniplots and knowing references through his hopscotch narrative, building up a head of steam that's almost overwhelmingly poignant. His masterful sense of time and the power of the mundane makes this feel like the graphic novel equivalent of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.
