This GN is about Art Spiegelman's experience on 9/11 and his thoughts there after. He was living in NYC and can remember the day clearly. His daughter was in HS near the base of the towers when they were hit. Frantic he and his wife went to the school and got her out. He discusses the ideas of what may have been the cause of the planes crashing. Spiegelman ran around with chicken little syndrom worring that "the sky is falling" and that the world is coming to an end. A crazy woman that he runs into on his daily route to work has always yelled at him for being a Jew in Russian but after 9/11 she yells at him in English that it is his fault and the Jews doing (the attack on the towers and pentagon).
His original thought for the work was to put it out as a weekly thing, however it took him atleast 5 weeks to create each page and ended up creating a book.
The style of drawing varies greatly throughout the book. I have a hard time saying exactly what catagory it would fall into. Each page seems to be a blend of each.
I really didn't like this GN. To be honest I almost threw it across the room a few times. The only thing that kept me from doing so was closing it and walking away. I am very conservative and it is blatantly obvious that Art Spiegleman is not. But hey I guess to each their own. Aside from his political views the GN was well written and I enjoyed the graphics.
Connections: Art Spiegleman is also the author of Maus I and II and draws himself as a mouse throughout In The Shadow Of No Towers.
The first GN I read was The 9/11 Report (which gets much more of my approval!) and they are connected in the sense of describing what happened on and after 9/11. However, The 9/11 Report is much more factual and this GN was more opinion based.
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1 comment:
When it comes to the art, make a judgment / statement about which it is. You need to be working with the vocabulary here, and yet you avoid doing so.
The majority of this is plot summary, and that is not what I am looking for in the blog posts. What are the big picture issues? How does he represent terrorism, race, global politics, etc? This is just barely scratching the surface as is. If comics are silly/ fun, then why has this one in particular engendered the response in you of throwing it across the room? There is something there that you are skipping over.
Why does the fact that he did MAUS rate mention here? What is the point of the connection?
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