24 August 2006

Move over Batman

Remember when the 9/11 Commission Report came out... it was featured in book store displays and actually made it into the best seller list in 2004.

It was also 600 pages, which is daunting enough when it's a good novel and overwhelming to many readers when staring down that many pages of technical government writing.

But now there's a new way to read the report in a fraction of the original pages and with pictures.

Long time comic book artists Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon have created "The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation." That's right: it's like a 9/11 report comic book

The comic book, news stories like this one in the Washington Post about it say, distills the whole report into about 100 pages and has some useful elements like timelines of the days events that give parallel details about the different hijacked planes and the order of happening that morning.

But it's a comic book (ok, graphic novel) and that means in telling the story of what happened, when planes hit the buildings, the panels are filled with words like "Whooom." Some critics are, of course, saying that perhaps "whooom" is too flippant for planes flying into buildings.

Word Nerd doesn't want to level any opinion about that, but she's glad to see the Oshkosh library has a copy of the graphic novel version or order so she (and other readers) can check it out for themselves.

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