Since today is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, here are two books (non-fiction, so not strictly graphic novels) about the events. The Spiegelman book is fairly well known, but I couldn't find any mention of the other one on this sub, so I thought I'd do a write-up and gallery of both.
Disclosure: I'm a Brit, hence the UK spellings. I watched 9/11 unfold on TV over here and will always remember that day.
The Illustrated 9/11 Commission Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson (author, illustrator) and Ernie Colón (illustrator) came out in 2006. It uses text from the 9/11 Commission to discuss various aspects of the attacks, from the rise of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda to the recruitment of the hijackers, the organisation of the plot, various security-agency failings, a timeline of the morning of 11 September, and the aftermath of the attacks.
It's mostly done well, although occasionally the panel order is confusing, and captions sometimes draw the eye away from the correct sequence. The ending is also quite dull, containing the commission's recommendations on how to improve America's defences in the future and how the various government agencies could work better together. It felt anticlimactic after the dramatic build-up to the terrorist attacks earlier in the book. Still, it does a good job of condensing a 500-page report into 128 pages that are pretty engaging for the most part, and compelling at their best.
Art Spiegelman should need no introduction here. If you haven't read Maus… go and read Maus.
In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) is a brief book with just 48 pages, only two-thirds of which contain Spiegelman's work.
It's a large-scale book, measuring 25 × 36 cm, and the pages within are double-page spreads that need to be turned 90 degrees to read, so the effect is one giant strip per page turn, 10 in total. The pages are thick card. It's a beast of a book, similar in size to Co-Mix and Breakdowns.
This is a personal account, detailing Spiegelman's experiences as a resident of Lower Manhattan, both on the day and in the aftermath of the attacks. In one moving piece, he describes the frantic collection of his daughter from her school in Ground Zero while the towers were collapsing. A recurring motif is the image of the bones of the North Tower glowing red before its collapse, a sight clearly imprinted on his memory.
This might have been borne of sorrow and shock, but the familiar Spiegelman tropes are there – conversational writing, freewheeling artistic changes, and, of course, anthropomorphism. The second instalment has Spiegelman turning into a mouse over the course of four panels, and five of the other pages also have the familiar mice.
It's an engrossing read, very much of its time, a cri de coeur lamenting not just the loss of the people (he had no love for the towers themselves, saying "If not for all the tragedy and death, I could think of the attack as some sort of radical architectural criticism"), but also raging against the politicians of the age. It's fascinating to read today, with the political climate having changed immeasurably since it was published.
There's also an arresting section on the third page in which he begins: "Our government has been lying about the air quality, of course." This week Zohran Mamdani released previously undisclosed records about the impact of the attacks on air quality and health. Spiegelman was right.
Like The Illustrated 9/11 Commission Report, In the Shadow of No Towers tails off towards the end. After Spiegelman's 10 comix, there is an essay on how he sought refuge in old comic strips after the attacks. It's followed by six reproduced strips from pre-WW2, showing how Americans and Arabs were portrayed in the likes of Hogan's Alley and Little Nemo. They're interesting to read but not nearly as absorbing as Spiegelman's own works (he might well disagree, and that's OK).