As any geek, nerd, or “Dungeons and Dragons” buff will tell you, comic books and the writers and illustrators who labor endlessly to produce them have been increasingly successful in pulling comix, graphic novels and short narrative sequential art out of the collector’s basement and toward the literary mainstream.
Time magazine rightly proclaimed Alan Moore’s (“V for Vendetta”) groundbreaking 1986 Cold War tome “Watchmen” one of the top 100 greatest English language novels (graphic or otherwise) of the modern age. The Gen X literati at McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern produced a phenomenal collection of exciting sequential art in the spring of 2004 that proved, page after stunning page, that these dramatic narratives are not just for kids.
The guest editor of that collection, Chris Ware, was the first comic artist to be invited to exhibit in the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art biennial exhibition in 2002, and his landmark graphic novel “Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth” silenced anyone who refused to use the L-word (the English major L-word, not the series on Showtime) when talking about illustrated fiction.
Jason Lutes’ “Berlin: City of Stone,” Craig Thompson’s “Blankets” and Dan Clowes’ “Ghost World” rank among the myriad recent works that show the leaps and bounds artists and writers have made in integrating images and prose to create unified texts that carry the weight and complexity of human emotion, that tell important stories to perfection.
This is, sadly, not the case with “The 9/11 Commission Report, A Graphic Adaptation,” by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. Though everyone who worked on this comic (medium, not tone) version deserves credit for working to democratize a text that is as important as it is dense, the effort ultimately falls flat.
The Commission on Terrorist Acts upon the United States was established primarily to answer the question, “how could this have ever happened in our back yard?” and the answers produced in their final report were staggering. Among other things, the commission criticized the intelligence community for a distinct lack of imagination. The same can be said of this adaptation.
The illustrations are drab and composed without much consideration for their individual significance, and they are arranged on the page with a layout approximating a pasteup of some high school newspaper. And then there’s the writing. Frames depicting explosions in the USS Cole and Pentagon attacks include the onomatopoeic words BLAM! And BLAMM!, respectively, in capital red block letters the Dynamic Duo would have been proud to create while smiting the Joker.
One frame spells out the commission’s conclusion that a security screener should have resolved an incident where one of the hijackers set off the metal detector and then boldly adds, like something out of a bad cop drama, “But he didn’t!” You don’t say.
Granted, this nonfiction policy report is not ripe for the inclusion of the cinematic storyboard or artful repetition of themes that make “Watchman” a modern classic. But turning one of the most dramatic events in the history of this country, and one that has brought about a new era for the entire world, into a dime store pulp condescends to the reader more than it makes much needed information more accessible. The failed integration of graphics and information make this book little more informative than a half hour spent a few times a week reading major headlines or watching the national news.
It could be that this 9/11 report is meant as an instructional text for those who won’t remember for the rest of their lives what happened on that terrible day and who won’t be working with an understanding of these events afforded by even passing knowledge of recent years’ news. But school children and the future writers of last-minute research papers are likely to get much less out of this book than they would from a well-produced academic text with slick information graphics and detailed maps.
To the credit of Jacobson, who was the executive editor at Marvel Comics after stints as managing editor and editor in chief at Harvey Comics, where he created Richie Rich, and Colon, who worked at Marvel and oversaw such titles as the Green Lantern and the Flash, this adaptation does cover a lot of ground in its 130 pages. The 13 chapters review with clear competence the intelligence failures, bureaucratic bungling and rise of foreign extremism that cost thousands of lives, and give a succinct overview of the commission’s ultimate recommendations for action.
Jacobson, Colon and their publishers at Hill and Wang have written that the report card given by the commission to the government in December 2005 concerning progress made based on those recommendations – which is red with Cs, Ds and Fs in the graphic postscript to this adaptation – proves that most Americans have not read the original text, making this book all the more prescient. But those in charge of shaping policy should have already slogged their way through the original text and be on a clear path to effecting substantive policy change. God help us if they need a comic book to find our way.
Sean Cronin is a Denver-based freelance writer.
—————————————-
The 9/11 Report
A Graphic Adaptation
By Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon
Hill and Wang, 144 pages, $16.95, paperback
