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The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation [Hardcover]

Sid Jacobson (Illustrator), Ernie Colon (Illustrator)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)


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Book Description

August 31, 2006
The 9/11 Report for Every American
 
On December 5, 2005, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report card on the government’s fulfillment of the recommendations issued in July 2004: one A, twelve Bs, nine Cs, twelve Ds, three Fs, and four incompletes. Here is stunning evidence that Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, with more than sixty years of experience in the comic-book industry between them, were right: far, far too few Americans have read, grasped, and demanded action on the Commission’s investigation into the events of that tragic day and the lessons America must learn.

Using every skill and storytelling method Jacobson and Colón have learned over the decades, they have produced the most accessible version of the 9/11 Report. Jacobson’s text frequently follows word for word the original report, faithfully captures its investigative thoroughness, and covers its entire scope, even including the Commission’s final report card. Colón’s stunning artwork powerfully conveys the facts, insights, and urgency of the original. Published on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, an event that has left no aspect of American foreign or domestic policy untouched, The 9/11 Report puts at every American’s fingertips the most defining event of the century.


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Book Description
The 9/11 Report for Every American

On December 5, 2005, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report card on the government’s fulfillment of the recommendations issued in July 2004: one A, twelve Bs, nine Cs, twelve Ds, three Fs, and four incompletes. Here is stunning evidence that Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, with more than sixty years of experience in the comic-book industry between them, were right: far, far too few Americans have read, grasped, and demanded action on the Commission's investigation into the events of that tragic day and the lessons America must learn.

Using every skill and storytelling method Jacobson and Colón have learned over the decades, they have produced the most accessible version of the 9/11 Report. Jacobson’s text frequently follows word for word the original report, faithfully captures its investigative thoroughness, and covers its entire scope, even including the Commission's final report card. Colón's stunning artwork powerfully conveys the facts, insights, and urgency of the original. Published on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, an event that has left no aspect of American foreign or domestic policy untouched, The 9/11 Report puts at every American's fingertips the most defining event of the century.



"Never before have I seen a nonfiction book as beautifully and compellingly written and illustrated as The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation. I cannot recommend it too highly. It will surely set the standard for all future works of contemporary history, graphic or otherwise, and should be required reading in every home, school and library." --Stan Lee

A Statement on The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón
The cave paintings in Altamira, Spain, tell stories. Mostly they tell tales of the hunt. Drawn during the Paleolithic Stone Age, they still amaze us with their lucidity and directness. As an artist, and as an editor and writer in the graphic medium, we each pay homage to those delineators and interpreters of experience. They offered accounts of what happened and provided a way of remembering, honoring, and learning. When retold by the fire's flickering light, these stories must have lent the drawings a compelling, virtual movement. There is something eerie, but deeply gratifying, in knowing that a direct line runs from our contemporary comic art to these earliest efforts to record and convey what happened. Storyteller, audience, drawings depicting continuity of event: it all sounds familiar. In a culture that has become the most visually oriented in the history of humankind, comics retain the original concept of storytelling and remain a potent force of information. Read more




Excerpts from The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation







Timeline of Terror

American Airline Flight 11 (AA 11)
Boston to Los Angeles
• 7:59: Takeoff
• 8:14: Last routine radio communication; likely takeover
• 8:19: Flight attendant notifies AA of hijacking
• 8:21: Transponder is turned off
• 8:23: AA attempts to contact the cockpit
• 8:25: Boston Center aware of hijacking
• 8:38: Boston Center notifies NEADS of hikacking
• 8:46: NEADS scrambles Otis fighter jets in search of AA 11
• 8:46:40: AA 11 crashes into 1 WTC (North Tower)
• 8:53: Otis fighter jets airborne
• 9:16: AA headquarters aware that Flight 11 has crashed into WTC
• 9:21: Boston Center advises NEADS that AA 11 is airborne heading for Washington
• 9:24: NEADS scrambles Langley fighter jets in search of AA 11

United Airline Flight 175 (UA 11)
Boston to Los Angeles
• 8:14: Takeoff
• 8:42: Last routine radio communication
• 8:42-8:46: Likely takeover
• 8:47: Transponder code changes
• 8:52: Flight attendant notifies UA of hijacking
• 8:54: UA attempts to contact the cockpit
• 8:55: New York Center suspects hijacking
• 9:03:11: Flight 175 crashes into 2 WTC (South Tower)
• 9:15: New York Center advises NEADS that UA 175 was the second aircraft crashed into WTC
• 9:20: UA Headquarters aware that Flight 175 had crashed into WTC

American Airline Flight 7 (AA 77)
Washington, DC to Los Angeles
• 8:20: Takeoff
• 8:51: Last routine radio communication
• 8:51-8:54: Likely takeover
• 8:54: Flight 77 makes unauthorized turn to south
• 8:56: Transponder is turned off
• 9:05: AA headquarters aware that Flight 77 is hijacked
• 9:25: Herndon Command Center orders nationwide ground stop
• 9:32: Dulles tower observes radar of fast-moving aircraft (later identified as AA 77)
• 9:34: FAA advises NEADS that AA 77 is missing
• 9:37:46: AA 77 crashes into the Pentagon
• 10:30: AA headquarters confirms Flight AA crash into Pentagon

United Airline Flight 93 (UA 93)
Newark to San Francisco
• 8:42: Takeoff
• 9:24: Flight 93 receives warning from UA about possible cockpit intrusion
• 9:27: Last routine radio communication
• 9:28: Likely takeover
• 9:34: Herndon Command Center advises FAA headquarters that UA 93 is hijacked
• 9:36: Flight attendant notifies UA of hijacking; UA attempts to contact the cockpit
• 9:41: Transponder is turned off
• 9:57: Passenger revolt begins
• 10:03:11: Flight 93 crashes in field in Shanksville, PA
• 10:07: Cleveland Center advises NEADS of UA 93 hijacking
• 10:15: UA headquarters aware that Flight 93 has crashed in PA; Washington Center advises NEADS that Flight 93 has crashed in PA


From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–At only 15 percent the size of The 9/11 Report: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (St. Martin's, 2004) and more than four times the price, is this adaptation worth purchasing? The answer is an unequivocal yes. Jacobson and Colón intend this adaptation to bring to the commission's report readers who would not or could not digest its nearly 800 pages, and they have the blessing, acknowledged in this book's foreword, of the commission's chair and vice-chair to do so. Neither lurid nor simplistic, it presents the essence of the commission's work in a manner that, especially in the opening section, is able to surpass aspects of any text-only publication: the four stories of the doomed flights are given on the same foldout pages so that readers can truly grasp the significance of how simultaneous events can and did overwhelm our national information and defense systems. The analysis that follows in the subsequent 11 chapters cuts cleanly to the kernels of important history, politics, economics, and procedural issues that both created and exacerbated the effects of the day's events. Colón's full-color artwork provides personality for the named players–U.S. presidents and Al-Qaeda operatives alike–as well as the airline passengers, office workers, fire fighters, and bureaucrats essential to the report. This graphic novel has the power and accessibility to become a high school text; in the meantime, no library should be without it.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Hill and Wang; 1st edition (August 31, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0809057387
  • ISBN-13: 978-0809057382
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #755,646 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

69 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (69 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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37 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique View of a Historic Document, September 3, 2006
This review is from: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (Hardcover)
Comics have come a long way, even since the sixties when intellectuals started taking Batman, Superman, and Spiderman seriously. _Maus_ by Art Spiegelman, for instance, was the serious story of Spiegelman's father in the Holocaust, and Spiegelman's problematic relationship with him; it was a quietly magnificent history and memoir, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. _From Hell_ by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell was an examination of Jack the Ripper's story that was as dense as a novel, and with lots of reference notes to boot. If you have been watching comics climb in respectability, they have just mounted upon another rung. It is hard to class _The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation_ (Hill and Wang) by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón as a comic book, for it certainly is deadly serious rather than comic, and it isn't a "graphic novel", the category by which the genre goes now. It is the famous _Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States_ but told in the comic book form. The original prose work, widely praised and even nominated for a National Book Award, was a bestseller when it came out in July 2004. It had 600 pages, while the current one has 133.

Yet this is a condensation of the report, not a dumbing-down of it. Most of the words in it (in the san-serif capitals traditional to comics) come directly from the original report, which is in the public domain. There are some pages that could not have been done better in any format. The book starts with a timeline, four rows extending for twelve pages, counting off the hours of that morning for each of the four flights. The atrocities within each plane and each flight's violent end are drawn, and all readers following the streams will try to remember what was going on at the same time in their own lives that day, and when they started hearing about the crashes. Following one timeline is another, similar one for each plane, showing the "Awareness, Notification, and Response" of flight controllers, the FAA, NORAD, and the air defense sector of the region. Along with maps, these timelines make the flow of the events of the morning comprehensible. The style of the drawings is obviously that of the comic books in which both authors are experienced. These are not young guys promoting a new version of their art. Jacobson, 76, created the "Richie Rich" series and was the editor of Harvey Comics. Colón, 75, drew Richie, and also Casper the Friendly Ghost, before moving on to the more superhero-themed DC Comics. The book sticks to the original report, although it includes imagined pictures of events that happened within the airplanes and within the towers for which there is no documentation. Necessarily, the book does show that people working within agencies of the government were acting at cross purposes at times during the day, just as the FBI, CIA, and military intelligence had failed in the preceding months to share information rather than hoarding it. The confusion of first responders because of the inadequate communications between them is another illustrated failing. One part of the story violates the comic book rule of showing rather than telling; a caption showing a burning and crumbling tower says, "As time grew short and desperate, civilians leaped from the North Tower upper floors." The artists could not bring themselves to draw such an occurrence.

Of course, as in the original report, there are obvious targets for blame, though the commission admitted it was writing "with the benefit and the handicap of hindsight". With its historic view, Clinton does not get let off the hook, although among the difficulties he had in taking action is listed his preoccupation with his impeachment. The commission's view of how well the current government has done in implementing its recommendations is the last page of the report, and it looks like it gets a D. The phrase "constructive criticism" was coined for an effort such as the commission's, and the comic book version can only help get the word out. "Respectful" is not a word usually associated with the comics, but the authors here have shown respect to the report and to the nation that was under attack that day. They have made a useful and unique book to help us understand the events before, during, and after 9/11.
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17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An Engaging Book for a Difficult Subject, September 4, 2006
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This review is from: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (Hardcover)
I wasn't one of the millions who read the historic 9/11 commission report issued several years ago--or even purchased one. I had no desire to plow through over 500 pages of information and I wonder how many people read the entire document. When I learned about this graphic novel treatment and that it accurately reflected the full report, I ordered a copy.

I'll admit that I don't read many graphic novels but I read every frame and every page of this document. It is a sobering account of the state of preparedness of the United States for a terrorist attack. According to the national chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 commission, this book is reflective of the tone and spirit of the original report.

Authors Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon have served the broad public with this well-done book. I recommend it for readers of all ages.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Quite an important achievement. Will help you understand the 9/11 Report more clearly than the text alone., September 7, 2006
I am a real fan of serious graphic novels and the use of the form to add power to the communication through words. If you have read, or tried to read, the official 9/11 Report you probably struggled in trying to organize and visualize all the detail conveyed in the words. I thought the report was very well written, but it is still hundreds of pages long and has a great amount of information that is easy to let slip into a cloud.

The authors of this graphic adaptation have long experience in telling stories in comic books and are masters of the form of the graphic novel. As they read the official report they soon realized that they could use their skills to make the information more accessible to more people. Thomas Kean, the former chairman of the 9/11 commissions said of this project "when I first heard about it, I was very concerned. But when I looked at it, it was absolutely accurate." Chair Kean and Vice-Chair Hamilton thought enough of this work to provide the foreword in this book.

I have to say that when I first heard about this book, I had no idea what it was. Would it be an abridged version of the report with photos? When I saw what it was and read it I was most impressed by the amount of information it conveys and how the pictures aid understanding, clarify timelines and activities, and add to the emotional impact of the report.

This is not a dumbed down version of the report, nor does it change the meaning of the report, nor does it editorialize on what it says. This means that the strengths and weaknesses of the report are the strengths and weaknesses of this book. Where you agree with the report (or disagree), you will agree (or disagree) with this graphic adaptation. I think this is a terrific achievement and increases the value of the book. Certainly, the official version has more material than could be presented here (but there is a LOT here - just some of it conveyed in pictures) and must be consulted if you want to debate or criticize the report. Because the authors (artists?) of this book keep the same organization as in the official report, it is easy to compare the two.

Honestly, this is an important part of American history and the official report is important to know. If you have found the official report a challenge, read this version. Get your kids to read it. Have a family discussion about it with everyone reading from this graphic adaptation. We will all be better off when everyone is aware of what really happened that day and what led up to it. Getting pieces of the story or speculation from TV and blogs really are not enough. I showed this book to some college students and they were quite enthusiastic about it and expressed a strong desire to read it because of its presentation format. While I would wish that reading a few hundred pages of text would not be too daunting for such students, the reality in our visual age is that this book will likely be read by more people than the official text (regardless of the number purchased of the official version - remember purchased does not equal read).

I saw a quote from the great Stan Lee and feel that it deserves to be quoted, "Never before have I seen a nonfiction book as beautifully and compellingly written and illustrated as "The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation". I cannot recommend it too highly. It will surely set the standard for all future works of contemporary history, graphic or otherwise, and should be required reading in every home, school, and library." Well, is that strong enough for you?

Thanks to the authors for doing this, for the chairs of the commission for looking it over to make sure it is right, and to Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux for publishing this beautifully executed work.
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