September 11 is such familiar territory that, despite the best efforts of authors, publishers and film-makers, it is hard to say anything new.
In this anniversary season, books and documentaries fly past us barely noticed. The occasional Hollywood effort, such as Paul Greengrass’s United 93 and Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center last month, arouses some interest, as may a novel such as Jay McInerney’s The Good Life. But for the most part, we are sated.
Yet the latest book, The Illustrated 9/11 Commission Report, a special edition of which is published free with The Times tomorrow, is a genuine original: a comic book — although “comic book” is emphatically not what you are supposed to call it, according to the author and illustrator, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón. “Call it a graphic novel, if you will,” says Colón.
The slim volume’s 140 pages are colourfully replete with comic-strip panels depicting the events of the day and the history that led up to it in action-cartoon style. Planes crash into buildings with a BLAMM! and the twin towers fall to a R-RRUMBLE! If the style feels familiar to comic-book readers, there’s a good reason. Jacobson, now 76, was executive editor at Marvel and created the cartoon hero Richie Rich.
Colón, 75, was an illustrator and editor at Marvel and DC comics and worked on such characters such as Wonder Woman and Spiderman.
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The obvious peril for them was that this style of treatment of such an appalling real event could look flippant — tragedy as mere entertainment. But Colón is defensive about his style, describing the BLAM! and WHOOSH! captions as “simply sound effects”.
In fact, the book is a faithful abridged account of the report of the official US Government commission into the 9/11 attacks. That tome, the outcome of an 18-month investigation and drawn from all available sources, is the most authoritative account of the attacks.
The idea for the cartoon (another word that the authors don’t like) version was to take the report to a wider audience, and it is testimony to how faithful their work is to the original that the authors won the imprimatur of the 9/11 Commission, becoming the only such project to receive its blessing.
Like the commission’s report, the illustrated version steers clear of controversy — it has nothing about the decision to go to war in Iraq — and the studied neutrality can look a little bland: Tony Blair is barely recognisable, for example. But one caricature seems to have survived intact: Whenever he pops up, Dick Cheney looks reassuringly evil.
© Sid Jacobsen and Ernie Colón, The Illustrated 9/11 Commission Report is published by Viking tomorrow at £15.99