SD U-T: 9/11 report gets a comic-book version

9/11 report gets a comic-book version
By David Gaddis Smith
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

August 6, 2006

'The 9/11 Commission Report” sold more more than a million copies.

Now a team who collaborated on “Richie Rich” and “Casper the Friendly Ghost” hope their book-length comic based on the report will also be a bestseller.

“The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation,” by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, has a Sept. 11 publishing date, although amazon.com says the title will be released on Aug. 22.

During a recent panel discussion at San Diego Comic-Con International, Jacobson said the book remains faithful to what the 10 commission members wrote about the Sept. 11, 2001, plane hijackings by Islamic terrorists.

He said he only used quotes that were in “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.”

The graphic adaptation “makes it easier to understand what these people found,” said Jacobson, 76, former editor in chief of Harvey Comics.

“I thought it was very important that more Americans have a copy of this report and be able to understand it,” said Roger Burlage, a former Harvey Comics CEO who helped provide initial financing for Jacobson and Colón's work.

It is being published by Hill and Wang, the nonfiction wing of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Former Washington Sen. Slade Gorton, one of the 10 commission members, had nothing but praise for the illustrated adaptation during his appearance at the Comic-Con.

“Is there something in this that is misleading because it left out something that was actually vitally important, or is there something that is misleading because it is inaccurate? The answer to both of those questions is no.”

Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, a former New Jersey governor, and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Indiana congressman, wrote a foreword for the book.

Although the graphic adaptation uses comic-book wording like the words “Whooom!” and “R-rrumble,” Jacobson said, “I never felt it was a comic book.”

He said, “What we do is graphic journalism.”

Jacobson, the creator of the “Richie Rich” series, said the illustrated approach to 9/11 allows readers to see events in a way the report could not.

“What immediately hit me was the idea of the timeline,” he said.

“You can do a timeline of four lines of each of these flights which was going on at the same time,” he said.

What happened in the four planes – two hit New York's World Trade Center, one hit the Pentagon and one crashed into a Pennsylvania field – run concurrently on panels on the same page.

“It became astonishing because the first two planes had already crashed into the towers when the fourth plane was just taking off,” Jacobson said.

Hill and Wang publisher Thomas LeBien said other illustrations also should help out readers.

He described a sequence in the nonfiction comic about some of the hijackers who lived in Hamburg, Germany: “As they became radicalized in their beliefs, they went from wearing modern dress to wearing traditional dress to going back to wearing modern dress when asked to avoid detection.”

The book's artist, Colón, who drew “Richie Rich” and “Casper” for 25 years before moving to DC Comics, was not able to come to San Diego for the convention.

Colón, 75, lives in New York, while Jacobson and Burlage live in the Los Angeles area.

Calvin Reid, a senior editor for Publishers Weekly, said Colón drew “an extraordinary image of the Pentagon that really is arresting.” He added, “The book is full of absolutely brilliant images. . . . He has done an amazing job.”

Colón told The Washington Post he got the idea for the graphic adaptation when he found out the report was in the public domain. He said the adaptation should help attract a new audience for an important subject, telling the paper, “There are going to be a whole bunch of kids, teenagers and adults that will not read the report.”

Jacobson is a big fan of the original 568-page report, in addition to his and Colon's 144-page adaptation of it. He said he was surprised to see many stories come out that “The 9/11 Commission Report” already dealt with. “There are so many things that are in the report that have been presented to us in the last two or three years as new news,” he said. “It all came from the report.”

The graphic book is expected to cost $30 in hardcover and $16.95 in paperback.

Burlage and LeBien said former Disney CEO Michael Eisner has expressed interest in making a film based on the adaptation.

LeBien said the book would have a print run of about 100,000 copies.

He also said Colón and Jacobson are working on a second graphic nonfiction book on the U.S. war on terror since Sept. 11.

David Gaddis Smith is foreign editor of the Union-Tribune.