Here

Summary:

“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.  (Summary and cover courtesy of goodreads.com)

Review:

While an interesting concept, I have to say I was underwhelmed by this book.  There are so many rave reviews I was expecting more, but found the execution somewhat blah.  Looking at the artwork at times was interesting, but in the context of a fairly long book, the repetition of the concept became old.  I think this would have been better executed in an art exhibit rather than a 300-page book.

The other thing that I found frustrating was that there seemed to be some inconsistencies in the years.  While some of the characters “recurred” we never had any context, which made it hard to connect.  There could have been some really interesting stories told in parallel.  All in all, I wasn’t particularly impressed, but I’m sure it will appeal to some others.

Rating: 2 stars!

Who should read it? Folks particularly intrigued by the concept or art, but otherwise I’d skip.