Here, Richard McGuire, 2015 

This is the first graphic novel I’ve read, and the second graphic treatment I’ve read this year, the prior one being Song of Myself by Whitman.  Fascinating book by McGuire in which he chose a geographic site, the eponymous ‘here’, and dialed back in time to 3 billion years, BCE and forward to 10,175 examining the same place during that period, sometimes conflating several different years on a single set of facing pages.  Themes emerge over both geologic—climate change, continental drift, extinction, the growth and disappearance of forest— and human-scale time—-loss, familial affection and alienation, decoration and games, accidents and disasters.  Random years (e.g. 1203 and 1307) appear for no apparent reason and major historical events (e.g. the American Revolution) are hardly noticed.  The book starts with no advance instructions about how to read it or what it’s about, but that didn’t detract from the pleasure in its clever, erudite, and creative approach to the human condition on this planet, Earth.  The graphic novel is a form which merits further exploration, especially in the hands of someone as talented and thought-provoking as McGuire.