Sid Jacobson (1) (1929–2022)

I have always been interested in the life and death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, so when I spotted this in our GN collected I took it home and expected a good story. And I wasn't disappointed -- not with the story, anyway. Although Jacobson keeps stopping the action and backing up to fill in historical facts, Che's life was just so convoluted that recreating it had to take many twists and false starts. One has to have an understanding of why he felt the way he did, and of the histories of the show more many countries in which he tried to foment revolution, or else one is hopelessly lost. Che was a true idealist, and though he doesn't come off as an unsullied hero, he is also far from villainous.

My beef, though, was with the illustrations. Ernie Colon left me so very confused from frame to frame; his style is too changeable for my taste. His depictions of Che were inconsistent -- so much so that at times I confused Che with both Raul and Fidel Castro!

However, I feel overall that I know much more about the man and his passions than I did before, and that was the point. show less

WHOOOM! and BLAMM!

In The 9/11 Report—a Graphic Adaptation, that’s the sound, the onomatopoeia, of terrorism as United Airlines Flight 175 strikes the South Tower of the World Trade Center and American Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon.

Authors Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon have condensed the nearly 600-page Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States into a 130-page comic book.

I use the term “comic book” loosely, for there is nothing funny show more nor super-heroic in these pages. This is a sober, respectful examination through color, line and shading of the unimaginable acts of terror which reached our shores five years ago. It’s even far less appropriate to call it a “graphic novel.” It’s a literal illustration of the Commission’s prescription to prevent similar attacks in the future. The publisher, Hill and Wang, plans to follow The 9/11 Report with illustrated biographies of Malcolm X and Ronald Reagan.

Readers move through this book on a journey of pain, frustration, incredulity and anger as the Commission details the permeability of our airline security in 2001, the chaotic and ill-equipped response to the attacks, and how Osama bin Laden announced his intent, through a well-publicized fatwa, in February 1998 which called for the murder of Americans as “the individual duty for every Muslim.”

The report, simplified into pictures and palatable text, charts the rise of al Qaeda and bin Laden, traces the roots of modern terrorism back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s and illustrates how the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center should have been a blinking red light (along with the bombings of the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam).

The dots were all there, but remained unconnected.

The report concludes: “The commission believes the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failure: in imagination, in policy, in capabilities and in management.”

Jacobson, the creator of Richie Rich at Harvey Comics, and Colon, who has worked for Marvel and DC Comics, give the 9/11 tragedy to us in a more digestible form than the Commission’s doorstop volume (which, I suppose, is this generation’s Warren Commission Report on the Kennedy assassination—something we know we should read, but never do). The result is gripping, informative and heartbreaking.

One significant advantage Jacobson and Colon’s book has over the dry bulk of the Final Report is its ability to show a timeline for the morning of September 11. For a dozen pages, four separate narrative strips run horizontally across the page so we can see where each plane was in relation to the other. Is it painful to see—even in pastel color-wash—flight attendants and pilots being stabbed and passenger planes turned into “large guided missiles, loaded with up to 11,400 gallons of jet fuel”? Yes, excruciatingly painful; but in the inky hands of the illustrators, it’s also a work of instructive art. It’s art that hurts, but perhaps one day will help us heal.

But first, the Commission warns, we must steel ourselves: “The lesson of 9/11 for civilians and first responders can be stated simply: in the new age of terrorism, they are the primary targets. The losses of that day demonstrated the gravity of the threat and the need to prepare ourselves. We must plan for the next attack. This is perhaps the best way to honor the memories of those we lost that day.” show less

This book first begins with the lives of Anne Frank’s parents that led into the years after World War II. I think the original Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl offers more emotion for readers young or old, whereas this graphic novel lacks the great emotion that comes with Anne's first-person account/narrative. The information is presented in more of a straight-forward impersonal style. I found the maps and diagrams enclosed in this book interesting, and I appreciated the detailed show more diagrams and images of the annex where Anne and her family hid for 2 years. The “snapshots” shown throughout the book were interesting and provided an abundance of background information, such as: life in Germany during World War I, info on the German economic crisis and the rise of the Nazi party, the Wannsee Conference, and the concentration camps. I think the artwork could have been better, however. The art is a realistic approach which is appropriate and disturbing at times, but something about the art could have been more refined or offered more movement. This book also includes a Chronology near the back and suggestions for further reading. I feel that this version of teaching young readers about Anne's sad story and the atrocities that occurred is best for children or people who prefer learning more visually. I think my favorite part of this book was the information given about Anne's father Otto, with real quotes from him. The book gives life to him by describing the type of man he was and the level of respect he drew from those around him. The book reveals how he personally responded to a great many of the letters he received from readers after the first publication of Anne's diary. It was so nice to read about his hopes that Anne's book will have an effect on peoples lives and promote unity and peace, because it has had a profound effect on millions and fortunately doesn't seem to be fading away anytime soon. show less

The idea of taking the 9/11 Report and presenting it in a graphic form was excellently accomplished by Sid Jacobson. The 9/11 Commission puts their stamp of approval on this presentation which not only details the events of that fateful day, it gives us background information, the history of terrorism, the repercussions and the Commissions recommendations. I was thorough engrossed in this book and applaud both it’s well executed drawings and straight-forward, concise writing.

This format show more allows this report to be more accessible to the general public and this manner of presenting such varied and overwhelming material helps to answer many questions that both children and adults ask about the events of that day. Of course, no true understanding of such a senseless, horrific act can ever be simply explained, but this book would make a valuable tool for any student of history.

Most people will always remember the heart-breaking images of that day and the horrible confusion that we all felt. This book doesn’t solve, sooth, or take away any of those feelings, but I do believe that I have an overall greater understanding of what America and the world faced that day. show less