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! 

Gay Comics #19 (1993)

Ten years later. My Guerrilla Theater partner and I were on our way to the studios of WRUW. We had been invited by a DJ and fan of our show to come in and be her on-air guests and to share some sketches we’d recorded for her new releases program.

The day of our visit also happened to be her birthday, and I had even brought a gift. I’d been to North Coast Nostalgia, that used to be next to the Cedar-Lee Theatre, and noticed the recent issue of Gay Comics was entirely created by Alison Bechdel.

One of the cool things about having our storefront theater in Tremont was that the weeklies would drop papers at our joint. We got short stacks of Scene, Free Times, Plain Press, Call & Post and the Gay People’s Chronicle, to make available for our audiences. 

I had been following Bechdel’s weekly strip, Dykes To Watch Out For in the Chronicle for some time by then. It was a very important education for me, not only in the lives and concerns (and humor) of non-heteronormative women, but women in general, also also women who were African American, Asian American, Latinx ... and even gay men!

Gay Comics #19 was an all-original book in which Bechdel told stories about herself (in keeping with Gay Comics’ stated mission) and her childhood, her coming out, laying the groundwork for her later, best-selling graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother?

"Coming Out Story"
Alison Bechdel (1993)
Click on for detail.

I picked up a copy of Gay #19 for our DJ friend, and showed it to my colleague as we made our way to the radio studios on the Case campus. He raised an eyebrow.

“You got her a gay comic,” he said, “because ... she’s gay?”

I hadn’t thought of that, and immediately felt self-conscious. I mean, it wasn’t like I was thinking, “Lesbian comic book?! I know a lesbian!!” This was an artist I really liked, and it was our friend’s birthday, and … well, shit.

Long story short, I gave the DJ the comic, and she was delighted. “I love Alison Bechdel!” she said, and I will assume she meant it. 

"I got out of college in 1981 and went into a gay and lesbian bookstore one day and found an issue of 'Gay Comix' ... It hadn't occurred to me at that point to put together my penchant for silly drawings with my personal life and my political interest in gay and lesbian issues, but there were these people who were doing it." - Alison Bechdel, 2007

Digging through my collection this week, I discovered that I had actually bought two copies of Gay #19, and kept one for myself. Smart boy.

Gay Comics ceased publication in 1998.

See also: The Bechdel-Wallace Test

Source:

“Life Drawing” by Emmert, Lynn, The Comics Journal No. 282, Fantagraphic Books (2007)

Gay Comix #4 (1983)

When I was a teenager, there was a period of time when I hung out at a comic book store. North Starr Comics was located in the storefront of a motel on Lorain Avenue in Fairview Park. There was a cast of regulars, at the age of fifteen I was one of the youngest. We would read comics, watch video of B-movies on the TV, talk shit, pull each others’ chains.

One Saturday in early 1984 the owner had scheduled a live auction, to get inventory he couldn’t move out of the place. It wasn’t a very large store. Most of what he was unloading were by lot, and I wasn’t a huge spender. But there was a lot of cajolery, mocking each other for their stupid purchases.

When he announced, “Next up, one copy of GAY COMIX!” that got a huge laugh, and I hollered, “Two cents!” It was a joke! Because, come on, who would want something called “Gay Comics”? Right? 

“I hear two cents!” said the owner, and I realized I had made a mistake. Because now I was the joke. No one else bid on it, and in spite of my desperate protestations, I won the comic. I refused to pay for it. I was informed it was free, and if it was discovered I had somehow left it behind there would be hell to pay.

So, I slipped it into my bag and hoped no one would mention it ever again. Later, I read it.

Gay Comix (later retitiled “Gay Comics”) was first published in 1980 by Kitchen Sink Press. It was created to be an anthology of short stories by gay artists on gay themes. Originally it leaned heavily on providing true stories of the LGBTQ+ experience. It had a mission to challenge the prevalent cartoonish imagery of gays and lesbians in the media, and in comics.

While it did feature nudity, there was an intentional de-emphasis on the depiction of sex or anything that might be construed as pornography.

Gay Comix #4, the issue that I had won, was published in late 1983. It was not only my first adventure into comics with LGBTQ themes, it was perhaps the first underground comic I had ever owned.

What does that mean? That it was my first experience with non-superhero, non-fantasy, real-life material, set down in black and white, in this case created by a wide variety of artists and writers, including a few artists of color. The subject matter is almost entirely binary, however, and leaned more into stories about gay men than lesbians.

One of the stories, Ready or Not, Here It Comes by editor Howard Cruse, was a view of the AIDS crisis, certainly my first exposure to the pandemic from a gay man’s point of view. Another, The Unicorn Tapestry by Roberta Gregory was the only piece in the issue about someone who is transgender.

I was raised to be homophobic. But I found this material to be fascinating. I was not repelled. There were coming out stories, tales of first love, some purely comic bits. Naturally, I was concerned that if anyone knew I was reading this they would “think I was gay.” I kept it to myself. Reading this book did not end my bigotry. It was the first crack in the wall.

And I still have that comic book.

To be continued.

Source: Wikipedia

American Splendor

Sitting on the stoop in front of Tommy's Restaurant,
now the location of Mac's Backs Paperbacks.
Harvey Lawrence Pekar (October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010) was born in Cleveland, to Polish immigrant parents. He graduated from Shaker Heights High in 1957 and after a stint in the U.S. Navy settled in Cleveland Heights eventually gaining regular employment as a file clerk at the V.A. Hospital. His legend, however, is as a writer, of jazz criticism and as the creator of his autobiographic comic book American Splendor.

In 1962 Pekar met Robert Crumb, who at that time was an illustrator for American Greetings. They had a mutual admiration for all things jazz, and Crumb introduced Harvey to "underground" comics. Pekar had abandoned superhero comic books as a teenager, but Crumb opened his mind to all of the different stories could be told through the medium. When he decided to reach out and attempt his own work, Pekar first contacted Crumb to be an illustrator.

He self-published American Splendor #1 in 1976. And the cover is correct, Crumb only did a two-pager.

For those familiar with his later work, which concentrates almost exclusively on his day-to-day life with wife Joyce Brabner and their child Danielle, the premiere issue is a little dizzying. Longer pieces like How I Spent My Summer Vacation: 1972 and Love Story (Summer 1946) tell the story of Harvey surrogates "Marv" and "Herbie" and their entirely unedited sexual exploits. One image might even be punishable as child pornography. Only one story (not including the cover) where Pekar explains how he roped Crumb into assisting him on this adventure depicts Harvey by name as himself.

Depictions of Black people and women (lots of naked tits) would also raise a few eyebrows ... but not if you were already familiar with the work of Crumb and his contemporaries. It was par for the course in the 1970s. Looking at his later work, I would almost guess that Harvey felt he was supposed to "go there" to be part of the underground comics scene, but I would hesitate to give any closer analysis than that, other to say it's a bold first issue, and it must have taken a heap of courage for someone like Pekar to take some many of his personal thoughts and shove them out there as if to say, "This is what I think, this is who I am, take it or leave it."

And that, after all, is what everyone who loves him loves about him.

The most poignant story is Remembering Be-Ins which takes place in the not-too-distant future. Two teenagers approach the balding, 70 year-old "Mr. Shapiro" and ask him what life was like way back in the far-out 1960s.

That's right. It says, Summer, 2010. Crazy.

Source:
American Splendor
cleveland.com