Sid Jacobson (1) (1929–2022)

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

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

Important, though occasionally repetitive and hard to follow.

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review through Goodreads. Trigger warning for violence, including torture.)

The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program - otherwise known as "The Torture Report" - is the result of a three-and-a-half-year bipartisan Senate investigation into the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA in the wake of 9/11. Weighing show more in at 6,000 pages, the entirety of the report has yet to be released; rather, in December 9, 2014, the SSCI released a 525-page version containing key findings and an executive summary of the full report.

Among the committee's twenty key findings:

* The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.

* The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.

* The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.

* The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice (DOJ), impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program.

* The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program.

* The CIA's operation and management of the program complicated, and in some cases impeded, the national security missions of other Executive Branch agencies.

* The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.

* CIA detainees were subjected to coercive interrogation techniques that had not been approved by the Department of Justice or had not been authorized by CIA Headquarters.

* The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention. The CIA's claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced interrogation techniques were inaccurate.

* The CIA rarely reprimanded or held personnel accountable for serious or significant violations, inappropriate activities, and systematic and individual management failures.

* The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program was inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006 due to unauthorized press disclosures, reduced cooperation from other nations, and legal and oversight concerns.

* The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program damaged the United States' standing in the world, and resulted in other significant monetary and non-monetary costs.

I really love the idea of a graphic novel adaptation of The Torture Report; it has the potential to make a horrifying and complex topic more engaging and accessible, for readers both young and old. The "summary" version of the report is still pretty hefty, and I can't see many casual readers setting aside the time to digest it all. Plus the visual element lends an extra emotional punch. Or that's the hope, anyway.

While Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón give it their best, the result is disjointed and uneven. The pages are so heavy on text that this feels more like an illustrated book - a book that just so happens to have some pictures - than a graphic novel. The narrative flow isn't always obvious, and on more than a few occasions I would up lost and confused. I found it best to ignore the illustrations until reaching the end of a page, since they often led me astray.



Additionally, the text becomes redundant about a third of the way through the book. I suspect that the same is also true of the report itself (take, for example, the twenty key points), but still. There's also a fair amount of jumping back and forth in time and between (sub-)topics.

Finally, I found it rather odd that the authors took such great pains to avoid any glimpse of a penis; after all, one aspect of EITs was humiliation through forced nudity, and shading certain things out detracts from the shock readers might otherwise feel. That was my impression, anyway.

Bottom line: This is the sort of book I'd recommend more because of its subject matter and overall importance rather than its elegant execution.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2017/10/06/the-torture-report-a-graphic-adaptation-by-... show less

It's only appropriate that the next book after Guerrilla would be a biography of famous guerrilla warrior Che Guevara. But because I'm slacking this summer, it's a comic book.

So what's to say? Obviously, this book is just the highlights; a series of semi-connected interludes that cast Che in the best possible light. But it also acknowledges his brutal work as a revolutionary executioner, and the failure of his battles after Cuba. The book ends with a brief essay on the meaning of Che's image show more in an age of commercial reproduction. The end result is a story of a man who wanted to end injustice in the world, and who used violence to achieve this noble goal with decidedly mixed results. It's like Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe with Socialist Realist art. show less