9/11 gets a graphic retelling

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By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — It looks like a comic book and reads like a comic book, but the subject matter is deadly serious: what went wrong before, during and after 9/11.
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (Hill and Wang, $16.95 paperback, $30 hardcover), based on the government commission report that became a best seller in 2004, arrives Tuesday.

Last week, its writer, Sid Jacobson, and illustrator, Ernie Colón, both veterans of the comic book industry, visited what had been the World Trade Center, now a massive construction site ringed by hundreds of tourists.

Jacobson, who lives in Los Angeles, hadn't been there since the attack nearly five years ago.

"It's painful," he says, and he remembers eating at Windows on the World, the restaurant that was on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower. He had resisted going back to Ground Zero but agreed to be photographed there, although "it's difficult. It's not a place you say 'cheese.' "

Colón, a New Yorker, last visited the site a few months after 9/11: "I had to leave after a minute. I couldn't stand it." This time, he just stared at what he called "the anthill of activity" by construction crews. "But it's still just an empty shell. And there's no memorial yet. That's disturbing."

Their backgrounds in comics — Jacobson, 76, created Richie Rich and was executive editor of Marvel and Harvey Comics, and Colo´n, 75, drew Casper and Wonder Woman —may seem like odd preparation for dealing with real-life tragedy, terrorism and national security.

But, as Colón puts it, "we're in the business of clarification."


http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2006-08-21-9-11-report-book_x.htm

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1. Interesting...nt