Here (graphic novel)

"Here" by Richard McGuire
Pantheon Books, 2014

While at school, I was introduced to alternative comics and the then-emerging concept of the “graphic novel.” I’d been into superhero comic books since I was ten, I was even a hanger-on in a specific comic book store (dramatized in The Negative Zone) but in the late 1980s I was beginning to be exposed to works by artists like Harvey Pekar and also Art Spiegelman.

Before the publication of Spiegelman’s award-winning novel Maus, this telling of his father’s experiences during the Holocaust were serialized in Raw, a more-or-less-annual anthology of works from comics artists around the globe, a magazine that was edited by Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly.

Raw vol. 2 issue 1 (1989) included Here, a six-page story by Richard McGuire. Using simple black and white line drawings, McGuire depicts one American living room from one vantage point, the reader witnessing relatively banal events from the present, the past (both recent and distant) and even into the future.

"Here" by Richard McGuire
RAW vol. 2 issue 1, 1989

Perhaps you have played such a game of imagination – what used to be here? Right here? Before there was a house, or Europeans or even people? When this space was occupied by ice, or members of the Iroquois, or those bougie folks I bought this house from over thirty years ago?

McGuire eventually – twenty-five years later, in fact – expanded upon this work into a full-length graphic novel. Also called Here (2014) the images are now in color and the moments more expansive, but only just. There are no grand narratives to follow, no clearly defined characters, no real story, except for the place itself. What it was, what it is, what it will be.

Last year, TriStar Pictures released a film adaptation of Here, directed by Robert Zemeckis, with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, his stars from Forrest Gump. A box office and critical failure, audiences were in part put off by the grand narrative that had been created for it; namely, that aging white Baby Boomers feel disappointed and that if we live long enough, we get old and die. These are not the themes of McGuire’s short story, nor his book.

"Here" directed by
Robert Zemeckis (2024)

Part of McGuire’s conceit (which Zemeckis, always the technically crafty storyteller, faithfully emulates on screen) is the use of panels that either divide the viewed space – again, always the same corner of the same living room, viewed from the same angle – or more often frames that are like windows peering from the established time (labeled in the upper left corner as 1953 say, or 1989, 2014, 2111) and into other eras.

The original short story (1989) included a small panel of a cat in 1999 (the future) walking placidly through the room. This same cat makes an appearance in the novel (2014) and she is still in 1999 (the past). She was always going to cross that room, she always has crossed that room. That’s time.

One performance which has more successfully drafted a grand narrative onto a single, static space is the Olivier Award-winning musical Standing a the Sky’s Edge in which three generations of Sheffielders occupy the same flat in the same housing estate at three different points in history. In one scene, all three timeframes play out simultaneously, dialogue overlapping, the characters from the different years unaware of each other (though the audience certainly is) as they share the space, even unwittingly sharing a single bottle of Henderson’s Relish.

Recently my aunt found a cache of home movies in her basement, from the 1950s and early 1960s, and my cousins had them transferred to video files. These films capture those moments one might expect; vacations, Christmas mornings, they even include my mother’s college commencement. And birthdays. So many birthdays. I could (and who knows, I still may) make a supercut of my Aunt Dede coming through the door to the dining room, bearing a large frosted cake festooned with burning little candles, to be placed before a delighted child.

 

Through the door, with a cake, placed before a child. Through the door, with a cake, placed before a child. In 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961 ... The only thing that changes are the hairstyles.

Several of my plays have taken place over the course of many generations, On the Dark Side of Twilight or The Great Globe Itself. Recently, I have been creating a new piece inspired by recent revelations in my family tree, and I have been inspired to create something which also attempts to present windows through time to tell the story. More on that, hopefully, soon.

UPDATE: BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. Help support our production by dropping a donation on our GoFundMe campaign! 

Dobama '96 Trading Cards

Twenty-five years ago I was working as the public relations director at Dobama Theatre. This was an accident. That summer I had been tapped to create the Night Kitchen, a series of late night theater programs for “the kids.” It wasn’t a salaried position, so when the recently-hired p.r. director suddenly quit, the artistic director looked to me and asked if I wanted a job.

I have been into marketing my entire life. When I was a kid I made greeting cards, and designed boxes of cereal. During the Guerrilla years I was responsible for contacting the media and read up to learn how to properly create a press release, where to find contact information for the papers and stations, who to call and when and what to say and how to say it.

My first big assignment was the holiday ask. You know how every non-profit contacts you around this time of year to hit you up for the annual fund. It’s a time of giving, it’s all the last month you can get those tax-deductible donations in.

"City of Terror" Trading Cards
Mark Beyer
(Raw #2 1980)

This year, my first in this new position, I had a brilliant idea -- brilliant in that I stole it from Françoise Mouly, Art Spiegeman and the crew at RAW Magazine. An alternative comics anthology from the 1980s, in one edition they included “City of Terror” baseball-type trading cards, complete with bubble gum. Each copy of the magazine included only one card, artist Mark Beyer had only created eight different cards but they were numbered as high as #76 to give the impression there were many more.

I proposed we include Dobama Trading Cards with the annual fund request. I would design a sheet of nine cards (“Collect all 60! Trade with your friends!”) each would feature one production photo from the theater’s history on the front, with data about that production on the back, even including a small note about what was featured on the next card, a card which did not actually exist.

Clever me, I even made one of the cards an ad for our upcoming show in the Night Kitchen, the improvised Realistic World.

This was my first big mailing job, and the most intricate use of Photoshop I had attempted to date (that’s PhotoShop 2.0) Our technology was very basic in those days, we only had PCs in the office, so I was designing this on my Mac at home, then driving to the Kinko’s in University Circle to use their laser printers. When I messed something up I would have to go home to edit it, then drive back out to Kinko’s to see if I had gotten it right. 

These things weren't even in color. It was a nightmare. I had a nervous breakdown. Joyce was extremely supportive. She also had to press me to complete the job on time because it was only the single most important mailing of the year. And we did, we got it out. 

I never proposed anything as irresponsibly clever for the rest of my tenure.