Comic Book Journalism

Is The Medium The Message?

originally published November 7, 2007

Even in the convulsive world of new media, the likelihood of a comic book on national security issues being on bestseller lists and earning a Pulitzer Prize nomination seems improbable. But that has been the case with The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (Farrar, Strous and Giroux, 2006) by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, comic industry veterans now long past traditional retirement age.

Jacobson, who’s coming to UGA this week to talk about this merger of form and content - which he interchangeably dubs graphic history, graphic non-fiction or graphic journalism - says he began his career in journalism before going into comics. “As a writer, I didn’t find it difficult to distill the 600-page report to 144 pages,” he says by phone from his home in Los Angeles.

“I’ve been amazed at the response,” he says. “Our book has become a landmark of acceptance of this kind of work. It’s the start of something that’s been neglected.”

Jacobson is quick to acknowledge that the idea for a comic-format version of the 9/11 report was Colón’s. “My philosophy is when you do an adaptation of a book, use every word possible from the book,” he says. “Ernie drew [Vice President Dick] Cheney with a sneer on his face and had to re-draw him so we didn’t put emotion into it. The situation was already emotional. We just tried to bring out the emotion in it.”

After some 40 years at Harvey and Marvel Comics, Jacobson knows the power of the medium. “The timeline of the four planes was the best usage of what graphics can present,” he observes, referring to a single page in the book that synchronizes the movements of the four hijacked airliners onto one timeline. “It’s huge when someone is speaking in a cartoon balloon; it becomes much more alive than just reading it.”

Reaction to the graphic version of the 9/11 report has been mixed since it came out about a year ago. UGA Regents Professor and national security expert Loch Johnson says, “The drawings are superb and I like the format; moreover the text is faithful to the 9/11 report. I would have preferred, though, to see the material treated ironically, so that it would become a critique about the weaknesses of the Kean Commission’s findings and recommendations, rather than simply a comic-book summary. One would hope that, for the facts, a citizen would read the actual 9/11 report, then turn to graphic journalism for some hard-hitting and visually inviting analysis.”

Athens cartoonist Robert Brown, who teaches cartooning at the Lyndon House Arts Center, says he thinks people respond to the format and visuals. “Journalism comics are beginning to come out,” Brown says. “There are new ones recently on Sarajevo and Iraq. They are similar to docudramas on television, based on fact, but using dramatic license. They could easily become ‘yellow journalism’ again.” Brown says he recognizes that Jacobson and Colón made conscious editorial decisions: “Being factual prevented it from being attacked by the right.”

Brown also acknowledges the growing audience for graphic-oriented books. “At bookstores these days, graphic novels went from two bays to a row and a half now. It’s a novelty that you have to step over teenage girls browsing that section now,” he says. But the new respectability of comics is worrisome too, Brown says. “Comics are becoming more legitimized in academia. That’s interesting, but what I like about comics is that they aren’t always polite or even literate.”

Bizarro Comics’ Devlin Thompson says the Jacobson-Colón 9/11 Report has sold better in mass-market bookstores than in comic shops like his downtown emporium. “Striving for neutrality held it back,” Thompson says of the book, “as opposed to first-person journalism.”

He also notes that the book is part of a trend: “We’re at the tipping point between comics as periodicals and books with spines. We’re either right there or close to it. I suspect we’ll see a lot more of these graphic books in the near future. There will be a lot of bandwagon-jumpers after its success. I’m glad they [Jacobson and Colón] got a payout they deserve. It was overdue.”

Jacobson says he’s pleased with the mainstream media attention to the book, but that “the least response we’ve had was from the comic book industry. The industry is making its money from superhero comics and from films.”

Success with this project has opened a new phase of Jacobson’s career.  “I’ve been swamped with ideas for graphic books,” he says.  “I’m already working on a graphic journalism book on the ‘war on terror’ using newspaper articles to show how it happened.  The U.S. Department of Defense has asked us to do a book on how to help recent veterans re-adjust to America.  I’m dealing with subjects I care about.”

John W. English

Sid Jacobson will speak in room 214 of the UGA Student Learning Center on Friday, Nov. 9 at 3 p.m. His talk, titled “More than Superman: The History of Comics from Yellow Journalism to the 9/11 Report,” is free and open to the public.