The 9/11 Report

So, I'm listening to NPR yesterday and caught part of an interview with Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. They were talking about their "graphic adaptation" of The 9/11 Report. What struck me was that this was the first I'd heard about it. This was an international news outlet talking about what is, in effect, a comic book and I hadn't heard anything about it in my usual comic book specific news sources. So, I went back and checked: nothing at Comics Continuum, The Pulse, Silver Bullet, ICv2, Comic Book Resources... Newsarama had one small link to a USA Today article about it, but that was posted yesterday afternoon. Mark Evanier also posted a brief notice about it on his blog shortly after the NPR report aired.

My first question is: why has the comics community largely ignored this? Any comics project that receives national attention -- especially about a subject as well-known as 9/11 -- should be common knowledge for every comic retailer, certainly, if not every comic reader. "Civil War" has made some national news and retailers have plenty of anecdotal reports about people walking in off the street to see what it's about. The same will likely happen with The 9/11 Report. Folks who try to share their hobby with others need to pick this up so they can talk reasonably intelligently with others who might not otherwise read comics.

A few years back, my sister-in-law asked me abut Maus. She's Jewish and had heard from a friend how powerful a story it was about the Holocaust. She knew that I read comic books and asked what I thought and whether she could borrow it. She didn't know I had it, or even if I had read it, but Maus was her only real gateway to comics. Knowing what a powerful story that was, I had purchased it several years earlier so that, in the event something like this came up, I would be able to respond to it. Now, she's never really pursued comics outside of Maus since that time, BUT I think she has more respect for the medium on the whole and me in particular. I'm not just some 34-year-old kid reading funny books in the basement; I'm someone whose entertainment preference of choice can be every bit as powerful as anything else, and someone who's tastes have matured quite a bit in the past twenty years.

Now, go out and track down some information on The 9/11 Report. It's being partially serialized over at Slate so you don't even have to buy the whole thing to get an idea of what it's about.

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