COM 150: Comics on 9/11

Can a comic book do justice to a serious -- very serious -- government report on the 9/11 tragedy? Well, the electronic magazine Slate.com is excerpting The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colóna this week. Follow the link, read it and decide for yourself.

Questions to think about as you read it:

1. An NBC News reporter took exception to the comic book treatment of the tragedy, conventions like writing "POW!" in big letters to indicate an explosion, for example, and said it was insensitive. I'm not sure I agree, but it is an issue worth debating. Is the comic book format intrinsically sensationalized, insensitive and incapable of dealing with serious issues?

2. Isn't it kind of ironic for TV guys to complain about another visual medium for being too visual? Is the TV format intrinsically sensationalized and insensitive, too?

3. Are newspapers intrinsically ... etc., etc., etc. ... can you see where I'm headed with this?

4. Can we ever write up events in the media without being sensationalized and insensitive? The old police reporter in me says no. The old police reporter in me also says we need to lean over backwards to be sensitive to the victims of any crime, though. So in the end, I don't have a good answer to the question(s). I just think it's important to ask them.

LATER: The "Public Eye" blog put up by CBS News has a pretty good post on the issue today, with some of its own commentary and a link to an excellent story in USA Today. Here's the quote from USA Today:

Neither author nor illustrator calls the work a comic book, even if it uses a comic-book format, including sound effects: R-RUMBLE when the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses, or BLAMM! when American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon.

It pictures scenes aboard the doomed planes and towers. But, [artist Sid] Jacobson says, "it's not a dramatization," unlike the movies World Trade Center and United 93. "It's the story of an investigation. ... It's graphic journalism."

Like the original 9/11 Report, the graphic version is less about one day in September 2001 than about what led up to it and the inner workings of government agencies, often at cross-purposes. When the report, by a bipartisan commission, was released two years ago, it was published in three paperback editions. It was praised for its criticism of government failures and nominated for a National Book Award.

And here's what CBS has to say about it:

Some people will never take this sort of effort very seriously and that’s fine because those are the people who have probably read the original 9/11 report. But if this graphic version reaches those who won’t pick up a seemingly dense, 500-plus page book and helps them understand the content, isn’t that worth it? As long as it provides an accurate version of the report, and the [9/11] commissioners seem to think it does, then more power to this “comic” effort.

Follow the links, and see the originals on the CBS Newswebsite and USA Today. Go to the Google News search engine, too, and see what other people have to say about it. Then make up your own mind.