Harvey Pekar's single page contribution is little more than an offhand comment, yet it's the perfect opening to this book. His simple statement hits the nail on the head, and as usual, Pekar's everyman voice comes through strongly. Tony Millionaire's portrait of Pekar is perhaps the greatest illustration of the curmudgeonly writer to date, capturing his cynical intensity perfectly.
What an image by the patron of the comics industry! The red blood literally pouring from the television set onto the graywash floor is literally the only color in this anthology (besides Frank Cho's cover above) and is without a doubt the most powerful single image of any in the four anthologies.
Joe "Beans" Hasting's panel of a television literally screaming at him is an image I really liked. It felt like that at times, particularly as the weeks wore on and the round the clock coverage continued.
Dean Haspiel's contribution follows the same formula, but features much stronger illustrations than the majority of the others, and is also more immediate due to Dino's proximity to the world trade center.
One of the few artists to deviate from the norm, Tom Hart's four-pager is a multi-layered political commentary on the implications of the attacks, and looking back after five years, it's interesting how accurate some of his predictions turned out to be. Hart also conveys his emotional reaction using a clever split-panel technique which features his familiar narrator in one half while a nameless character wanders around post-9/11 Manhattan in the other.
9-11 Artists Respond Volume 2 (224 pages, full color)
This single panel from Guy Davis and James Denning's excellent four-page story, "Walk" jumped off the page at me for some reason. The figures reaching for each other set against a cloud of dust as the buildings collapse just seemed to capture the fear and desperation better than most of the other contributors in this section.
This contribution from Phil Jiminez is definitely taken from a photograph. I remember, for several days after 9/11, my wife and I would walk from Lincoln Center to the Upper West Side to see a friend, and we would pass two or three fire stations along the way. Each of them had shrines like this with bouquets, wreaths, pictures, candles, etc. It was really heartbreaking, and Jiminez's drawing captures that sense of loss well.
I'm not sure why, but I just love this image from Paul Pope.
A lot of writers and artists contributed superhero stories, all of which reflected on the nature of fictional heroes vs. those in real life, but this one by Alan Davis, Robin Riggs, Mike Collins and Mark Farmer seemed to do it best. The story, written by Dan Jurgens, is about a young boy named Alex who draws a comic in which the DC heroes all pitch in not only to save all the victims of the terrorist act just before the planes hit, but also to rebuild the Towers "ten times taller" than before. The technique I love is the way the artists work together to change the drawing styles from an adult's to a child's.
There are undoubtedly other highlights in this collection. Brian K. Vaughan's story about feeling like drawing cartoons is meaningless in the face of such a tragedy certainly struck an honest chord. Neil Gaiman and Chris Bachalo contribute a Death story which is pretty good, using a metaphor of a ferris wheel in an abandoned theme park for life. Peter Gross and Darick Robertson imagine New York City a thousand years in the future through a mother and her young daughter visiting the World Trade Center memorial, which bears a striking resemblance to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson also contribute a short Astro City tale.
9-11 Artists Respond - Volume One (192 pages, full color)
Rather than wallowing in the horrors, or trying to make profound statements about the meaning of the tragedy, David Chelsea's true story about Philip Petit, the French daredevil who tightrope walked between the two Towers back in 1974, is fascinating and a clever tribute to the legacy of the towers. The two-page strip is drawn and colored in a style imitating McCay's Little Nemo, and is one of the most memorable contributions in the book.
Like his many Vertigo covers over the years, Dave McKean's painting of the Towers as mourning totems is haunting. The image, entitled "Reason" shows two stone figures covering their ears, no longer willing to listen to reason.
Roger Langridge's Fred the Clown strip shows a tasteful and heartfelt lack of a punchline, executed in the artst's familiar silent, vaudeville cartoon-style.
Frank Miller's poem about the power of faith is chilling in its simplicity, a reaction against the fundamentalism that lead to the attacks in the first place. Miler's stark black and white images deliver the harshness of its blunt message perfectly.
R. Sikoryak has an uncanny ability to perfectly imitate the drawing style of just about any prominent comic strip artist (such as Cathy artist Cathy Guisewite above). In his two-page newspaper broadsheet contribution, Sikoryak parodies several different strips with various fragments of conversations overheard in New York in the days after the attacks. The result is a clever combination of storytelling style with candid, honest reactions from everyday New Yorkers.
Little known children's book artist, Kellie Strom, contributes one of the most beautifully illustrated pieces in the entire anthology, a two-page dream sequence of a girl floating through the ruins of a building.
Another artist unknown to most comics fans, Steve Guaraccia, contributes a simple yet powerful variation on Rene Magritte's famous painting. As far as I can tell from Googling him, this is Guaraccia's only work in comics.
Al Davison's "Ground Zero" illustrates a dream he claims to have had on Sept. 9, 2001, in which several children are wandering around some ruins. Their tears flow into the barren earth to create this beautiful tree above. Not only is it one of the single most striking images in the entire book, it's fascinating that Davison had this premonition so close to the actual tragedy.
Though I haven't included them here, there are several other contributions worth checking out. Dean Motter's "Before the Fall" recounts several poignant memories about the lower-Manattan neighborhood where he used to live and take his dog on walks. Jim Mahfood's "Arab Americans" is a personal series of character profiles based on people he knew growing up. Mahfood himself is half Arab, and grew up in a mostly Arab community in St. Louis. Will Eisner contributes a moving essay about the souls of buildings, a theme he has explored throughout much of his life's work. Bob Harris and Greg Ruth's two-pager, "Which One is Real?" explores many of the confusing dichotomies and mixed messages we're fed by the major media outlets, and how difficult it is to make sense out of it all. Finally, the book ends with a six-page story by Lost Girls creators Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. The story takes a philiosphical look at how information is conveyed, through language, visual experience, and energy within the universe. It's certainly an interesting and thought-provoking ending.
1) Heroes (64 pages, full color)
Frank Miller's drawing of Captain America not only brought back fond memories of his classic Dark Knight style, it also captured the iconic status of the character perhaps more than any other single image I've ever seen.
This chilling image by Frank Quitely is an homage to the famous painting, "Christina's World" by Andrew Wyeth.
Igor Kordey and Chris Chuckrey's speculative drawing about the passenger revolt on Flight 93 is at once inspiring and terrifying.
Of the many images of firefighters in this collection, this one by Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer is the most memorable for its sheer attitude. Dorkin's firefighters aren't overcome with grief or rushing fearlessly into burning buildings. They're staring helplessly, and they're pissed off about it.
"The Song of the Lost" may just be the single most beautiful thing Neil Gaiman has ever written (click on the image to read it). Along with Jae Lee and Jose Villarrubia's haunting painting, this is by far the highlight of the anthology.
One other highlight worth noting is Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's contribution, which falls somewhere between a poem and a short essay, equating the tragedy to Picasso's famous "Guernica" painting.
COMING SOON: I'll take a similar look at the highlights from DC's two volume 9-11: Artists Respond anthologies.
