Reception
The 1989 original story has been recognized as a groundbreaking experiment with the formal properties of comics. Douglas Wolk wrote that its "influence has echoed through art comics for decades." [6] Its influence is particularly notable in the work of Chris Ware, who wrote a lengthy essay on it in the magazine Comic Art #8. [7] The original story was reprinted for the first time in that issue. It has been frequently anthologized since its original publication.
Writer Konstantinou's analysis of the 2014 version of the story came to the conclusion, "More so than the original Raw six-pager, the book version of Here dwells on the radical (because intrinsic) destructibility of life.... Though we get a glimpse of what might be some sort of utopian future, Here's human story ultimately stands against a stark background largely devoid of human presence. That is, a yawning cosmic indifference bookends the life of McGuire's little house." [1]
The French edition of the graphic novel, titled Ici and published by Éditions Gallimard, was given the Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Album in 2016. Here was given a 2nd-place award at the 2017 Gaiman Awards. [8] The Portuguese-language edition, titled Aqui and published by Cia. das Letras, was given the Silver Prêmio Grampo in Brazil in 2018. [9]
The opening segment of the 2022 British animated anthology television special The House was inspired by Here. As animator Marc James Roels relates, his and Emma de Swaef's story segment came from the desire to tell "the story of the house before there was a house.... I had been reading a graphic novel by Richard McGuire called Here, in which you see a corner of the world and how it changes through millennia. You see it as farmland, and when it was inhabited by Native Americans, and before that when there were dinosaurs. And then suddenly you're in the 1950s and someone's vacuuming the floor. And it kind of sparked off an idea, like what was there before the house?" [10]
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis. An adaptation of the 1986 novel by Winston Groom, the screenplay of the film is written by Eric Roth. It stars Tom Hanks in the title role, alongside Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, and Sally Field in lead roles. The film follows the life of an Alabama man named Forrest Gump (Hanks) and his experiences in the 20th-century United States.
A graphic novel is a long-form work of sequential art. The term graphic novel is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics scholars and industry professionals. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term comic book, which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks.
Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American filmmaker known for directing and producing a range of successful and influential movies, often blending cutting-edge visual effects with storytelling. He has received several accolades including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for five British Academy Film Awards and a Daytime Emmy Award.
Acme Novelty Library is a comic book series created by Chicago cartoonist Chris Ware. Its first issue appeared in 1993. Published from 1994 by Fantagraphics Books and later self-published, it is considered a significant work in alternative comics, selling over 20,000 copies per issue.
Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), Building Stories (2012) and Rusty Brown (2019). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style.
Daniel Gillespie Clowes is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in Eightball, a solo anthology comic book series. An Eightball issue typically contained several short pieces and a chapter of a longer narrative that was later collected and published as a graphic novel, such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (1993), Ghost World (1997), David Boring (2000) and Patience (2016). Clowes's illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, Vogue, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. With filmmaker Terry Zwigoff, Clowes adapted Ghost World into a 2001 film and another Eightball story into the 2006 film, Art School Confidential. Clowes's comics, graphic novels, and films have received numerous awards, including a Pen Award for Outstanding Work in Graphic Literature, over a dozen Harvey and Eisner Awards, and an Academy Award nomination.
Michael Robert Gale is an American screenwriter, comic book writer, film producer and director. He is best known for co-writing the science fiction comedy film Back to the Future with his writing partner Robert Zemeckis. Gale co-produced all three films of the franchise and later served as associate producer of the animated TV series. Actor Michael J. Fox has referred to Gale as the "gatekeeper of the [Back to the Future] franchise".
A script is a document describing the narrative and dialogue of a comic book in detail. It is the comic book equivalent of a television program teleplay or a film screenplay.
Bloodstar is an American fantasy comic book published in 1976. Possibly the first graphic novel to call itself a “graphic novel” in print, it was based on a short story by Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, and illustrated by fantasy artist Richard Corben. The book was published by The Morning Star Press in a limited signed and numbered edition.
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth is a Batman graphic novel written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean. The story follows the vigilante Batman, who is called upon to quell a maddening riot taking place in the infamous Arkham Asylum, a psychiatric hospital housing the most dangerous supervillains in Gotham City. Inside, Batman confronts many of his enduring rogues gallery, such as the Joker, Two-Face, and Killer Croc. As Batman ventures deeper, he discovers the origin of how the asylum was established, the history of its founder Amadeus Arkham, and the supernatural and psychological mystery that has been haunting the mansion.
Ed the Happy Clown is a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. Its title character is a large-headed, childlike children's clown who undergoes one horrifying affliction after another. The story is a dark, humorous mix of genres and features scatological humour, sex, body horror, extreme graphic violence, and blasphemous religious imagery. Central to the plot are a man who cannot stop defecating; the head of a miniature, other-dimensional Ronald Reagan attached to the head of Ed's penis; and a female vampire who seeks revenge on her adulterous lover who had murdered her to escape his sins.
A motion comic is a form of animation combining elements of print comic books and animation. Individual panels are expanded into a full shot while sound effects, voice acting, and animation are added to the original artwork. Text boxes, speech bubbles and the onomatopoeia are typically removed to feature more of the original artwork being animated. Motion comics are often released as short serials covering a story arc of a long running series or animating a single release of a graphic novel. Single release issues of a story arc are converted into ten- to twenty-minute-long episodes depending on content.
The Narrative Corpse is a chain story, or comic jam, created by 69 all-star cartoonists in the early-to-mid 1990s. A graphic novel compilation of the result was published in 1995.
Comics has developed specialized terminology. Several attempts have been made to formalize and define the terminology of comics by authors such as Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, R. C. Harvey and Dylan Horrocks. Much of the terminology in English is under dispute, so this page will list and describe the most common terms used in comics.
Building Stories is a 2012 graphic novel by American cartoonist Chris Ware. The unconventional work is made up of fourteen printed works—cloth-bound books, newspapers, broadsheets and flip books—packaged in a boxed set. The work took a decade to complete, and was published by Pantheon Books. The intricate, multilayered stories pivot around an unnamed female protagonist with a missing lower leg. It mainly focuses on her time in a three-story brownstone apartment building in Chicago, but also follows her later in her life as a mother. The parts of the work can be read in any order.
Richard McGuire is an American graphic novelist, artist, and musician. His illustrations have been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Le Monde, and his work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library & Museum. His comic "Here" is among the most lauded comics from recent decades, with an updated graphic novel version published by Pantheon Books in December 2014. A film adaptation of Here, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, was released in 2024.
E. M. Carroll, previously credited as Emily Carroll, is a comics author from Ontario, Canada. Carroll started making comics in 2010, and their horror webcomic His Face All Red went viral around Halloween of 2010. Since then, Carroll has published two books of their own work, created comics for various comics anthologies, and provided illustrations for other works. Carroll has won several awards, including an Ignatz and two Eisners.
Alien: The Illustrated Story, or simply Alien, is an American sixty-four page graphic novel adaptation of the 1979 science fiction film Alien published by Heavy Metal magazine in 1979. It was scripted by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Walt Simonson. It is the first comic from the Alien franchise and one of few of the franchise's comic publications which is not associated with the long-lasting Aliens line from Dark Horse Comics. The book was a major critical and commercial success and was the first comic to ever be listed on the New York Times Bestsellers list.
Here is a 2024 American drama film produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth, based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire. Echoing the source material, the film is told in a nonlinear fashion: the story covers the events of a single spot of land and its inhabitants, spanning from the distant past to the 21st century. During the film, the screen is often subdivided into multiple panes, presenting events from different time periods simultaneously. The film stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, and Kelly Reilly, with digital de-aging being used on much of the cast to have them portray their characters over the course of the different time periods.
Bill Kartalopoulos is a New York-based comics critic, educator, curator and editor. From 2014 to 2019 he was the Series Editor for the Best American Comics series of annual comics anthologies published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He was a co-founder of the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival and has also directed programming for the Small Press Expo and the MoCCA Festival. He teaches courses about comics at Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts.
