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Title: 9-11: September 11, 2001 (Stories to Remember, Volume 2) by Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee, Jill Thompson, Kieron Dwyer, Steven T. Seagle, Duncan Rouleau, Aaron Sowd ISBN: 1-56389-878-0 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.88 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The writers and artists at DC respond to September 11th
Comment: "9-11: September 11, 2001: The World's Finest Comic Book Writers and Artists Tell Stories to Remember" collects original stories and illustrations from many of the top writers and artists from DC Comics, including Wildstorm, VERTIGO, and "MAD" magazine. But in addition to the likes of and Dan Jurgens, Neal Adams, Jim Lee, Neil Gaiman, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopze, Sergio Aragones, and Joe Kubert, you will also find contributions by Will Eisner, Stan Lee, Richard Corben, and Michael Moorcock. Unfortunately, the book's subtitle echoes badly, because even thought DC had a comic book entitled "World's Finest," which featured Superman and Batman team-ups for the most part, using that phrase to describe your own writers and artists on the same cover where Superman is impressed by those who were heroes on September 11th misses the obvious reason not to toot your own horn.
The volume is divided into section entitled Nightmare, Heroes, Recollections, Unity, and Dreams, which provide a rough thematic organization to the stories. There are stories dealing with what actually happened, such as James Denning and Guy Davis' "Walk," Josh Krach, Scott McDaniel James Pascoe's "The Job." and Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti's "Silver Linings in a Big Dust Cloud"), as well as stories that address the line between comic books and the real world created by 9-11 (e.g., "Unreal," "For Art's Sake" and "If Only"), while a few actually work DC superheroes into the story (e.g., "This, Too, Shall Pass" and Gaiman's "Endless" story, "The Wheel"). Unlike the Marvel universe, where Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers all work out of New York City, the DC superheroes inhabit an alternative, so there was not the need to have Superman, Batman, and the others deal with the destruction of the World Trade Center the way their competition had to. There are also a couple of stories that serve as reminders that there were dogs that were involved in the rescue efforts as well.
One of the other major differences between this and the first volume, which featured work by the talents at Chaos! Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and Image Comics, is that some of these stories are a bit more political. Neal Adams does a splash page supporting the Red Cross that shows Superman holding an American flag with scorch marks and Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeves in front of the rescue workers at Ground Zero with the caption: "First Things First. Then We Come For You." Stan Lee and Marie Severin tell "A hitherto undiscovered Aesop's fable" entitled "The Sleeping Giant" whose moral is "Never awaken a sleeping giant!" There are several stories that make an argument for tolerance and objectivity, such as Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, and Prentis Rollins' "Wednesday Afternoon" and Geoff Johns, David S. Goyer, Humberto Romas and Sandra Hope's "A Burning Hate," while Ben Raab, Roger Robinson and Dennis Janke's "A Tale of Two Americans" makes a point about true patriotism. The final word goes to Joe Kubert, who points out "I've lived long enough to see the worst turn into something better."
Yeah, there are some misfires in this collection. "The Firsts Division" and "Spirit" both involve famous dead people, and while the latter is slightly better, neither really works. Paul Levitz and Jim Lee's "The American Dream" has some good points but could have found a better way to get them across than a lecture. But this just makes the simple elegance of Tim Sale's three-paneled page (from an idea by Chuck Kim), where a boy wearing a Superman t-shirt ducks into a telephone booth and changes into a FDNY t-shirt all the more effective. There are enough efforts within these 224 pages to find a few you will really like, and can forget about those you do not.
Rating: 4
Summary: some people need to take it for what the book was for
Comment: I am using these two volumes to do my senior thesis and have read the other reviews and am convinced that some reviewers need to BACK OFF. This was written in commemoration for those who had a hard time dealing with the tragedy, not for you to criticize. The artists and comics who made these works did so as a way to understand and as a way to vent. I am sorry, but if you are going to criticize a creative effort to release you have no compassion. Some stories are disturbing, but the whole event was and has been disturbing. I am sure someone is going to think I am waving my flag a little to wildly, but you know what I am just calling it as I see it. Until you spent the day watching from your window as the towers fell down and smoked up the whole city to tell them how to do there job!
Rating: 2
Summary: This is really very disappointing
Comment: There are a few really compelling stories here - mostly the ones that focus on the victims and the rescue workers. But there is also, sadly, a great deal of garbage.
There's actually a fair amount of America bashing here. Some stories are patriotic, but, for the most part, the people holding or displaying American flags are protrayed as ignorant bigots.
Now, the artists and writers have every right to express their views. If that sort of thing is your cup of tea, I suspect you'll regard the more anti-American stories as provocative and stimulating. To me, they seemed like more of the same tired cliches I used to hear all the time before 9-11.
There's also a fair amount of the mushy-headedness about Islam which seems popular in this country these days. ...
The worst stories were those that tried to make some sort of political point. In one, an alien shows up and explains why we are all doomed if we don't adopt the Democratic party platform. (I'm really sort of neutral on abortion, but I always have to shake my head when someone starts preaching about the need to take care of the poor, the weak, the children, the elderly, the fish, the birds, the dung beetles, and then insists, even by omission, that destroying a human fetus is just fine.)
I guess what I'm trying to say is a lot of this felt very contrived. The more powerful stories and pictures were the ones where the author/artist was writing/drawing from the heart. The worst were the ones were the author was "moralizing," for a lack of a better word.
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Title: 9-11: September 11th, 2001 (Stories to Remember, Volume 1) by Will Eisner, P. Craig Russell, John McCrae, Eric Powell, Jon J. Muth, David Chelsea, Eric Drooker, Kevin Nowlan, Paul Sloboda, Paul Chadwick ISBN: 1563898810 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: 9-11: Emergency Relief by Jeff Mason, Will Eisner, Harvey Pekar, Ted Rall, Jeff Smith, James Kochalka, Josh Neufeld, Nick Bertozzi, Dean Haspiel, Joyce Brabner ISBN: 1891867121 Publisher: Alternative Comics Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Palestine by Joe Sacco, Edward Said ISBN: 156097432X Publisher: Fantagraphics Books Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean ISBN: 0380977788 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 02 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.99 |
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Title: Persepolis : The Story of a Childhood by MARJANE SATRAPI ISBN: 0375422307 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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