Here

Here explores how the passing of time appears to a casual observer of the same spot over billions of years. The graphic novel executes this by operating on two different levels: depicting wide-sweeping changes and exploring more specific, personal changes. Some pages in Here depict the corner of the room before the house—or even the human species—existed. Pages 150 and 151 show a view of a desolate landscape in the year 1,000,000 BCE, followed by pages 152 and 153 showing the year 3,000,000,000 BCE. By showing these extreme pre-historic ages, the novel demonstrates the vastness of geologic time, making the moments it depicts in the house appear brief and insignificant by comparison. Even though the majority of the graphic novel occurs in the corner of one room, those moments are essentially a snapshot. By depicting such a vast timescale, the novel challenges perceptions of time that depend on human experiences, emphasizing that the place was there before people and will be there after people as well. Here also depicts the many years of its narratives in non-linear order, creating a sense of fluidity in time. By using frames to show many years on one page, it creates the sense that all these moments happen at once, unobserved by the people in them but real to the space.