In-depth Written Interview

Insights Beyond the Meet-the-Author Movie

Ernie Col?n, interviewed in his home in Huntington, New York on October 24, 2006.

TEACHINGBOOKS: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation puts into a graphic format the text of the original 9/11 Report, authored by The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. What was your intention in creating this graphic interpretation of that more than 500-page book?

ERNIE COL?N: The terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 was a very complex event. The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation has to do with clarification. People really want to understand that astonishing event, so Sid Jacobson and I tackled a graphic adaptation of The 9/11 Report to clarify it for ourselves and for other people who have had the same fascination with this complicated and important event.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What gave you the idea to create The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation?

ERNIE COL?N: I was reading The 9/11 Report and found it difficult to keep track of the many facts detailed there. It is very well written, but I felt that if I'm having that kind of difficulty ? and I am a good reader ? there must be other people who are having the same difficulty.

I got the idea to do The 9/11 Report graphically when I read an article in The New York Times that said that Ron Howard was going to make a movie out of it, and it suddenly occurred to me that since I was having so much trouble reading the book and keeping all these facts and events and places in mind, that the best way to clarify this was to do it in my trade, in my craft.

So I called up my pal Sid Jacobson, with whom I've worked for many years, and told him my idea. He thought it was a great idea immediately. We got started just about within a day or two. It was one of the fastest ideas-to-project completion that I've ever experienced.

TEACHINGBOOKS: How did the authors of the original 9/11 Report react to your graphic adaptation?

ERNIE COL?N: Our publisher got in touch with Governor Thomas Kean and Representative Lee Hamilton, Chair and Vice Chair of the Commission, and asked them for an introductory note to the book. Tom Keane's first reaction was, "They did what to our report?" But, then he read it and found it accurate, and they both wrote an introduction to The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation. We were honored, and it lent greater legitimacy to our effort.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What approach did you use to illustrate the people in The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation?

ERNIE COL?N: We knew going into it that it was going to be a very difficult project. We faced a challenge in representing the players in this huge drama. Sid and I made sure to keep our own beliefs and politics out of it, because this is not a political tome. It is as much as possible an objective view of what happened that day.

I feel that we're all characters, every one of us on the planet. And in doing any graphic storytelling, what the characters do defines who they are. I don't have to define them or inject my personality into it. They define themselves.

Some of the characters that are involved in the sequence of events are people whose culture is very different from our own. They dress differently; many of them wear very long beards. They wear turbans or different kinds of headgear ? all of it very foreign to Sid and me. When I draw these people, I'm really drawing them as they are. We stayed away from any kind of stereotype, but these characters in this history have to be portrayed exactly as they appear.

Generally speaking, in comic books, fiction is based on good and evil, and there are no gray areas. You have the evildoer and you have the savior. In real life, of course, we have a tremendous gray area in which people act out of beliefs, and that's the most powerful force...

TEACHINGBOOKS: A major facet of The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is the use of a timeline to show the simultaneous occurrences with the four flights.

ERNIE COL?N: The timeline was Sid Jacobson's idea, and directly addressed the difficulty that I was having in keeping track of what happened when on the morning of September 11, 2001. When you have a timeline, you can see at a glance when a certain plane took off and what was happening at the same time elsewhere. You're able to see the juxtaposition of all these events.

The top caption on the timeline reads, "What follows is a timeline showing the simultaneous histories of the four hijacked airplanes as they began and completed their horrendous missions." We have Flight 11 on the top timeline, Flight 175 second, Flight 77 third, and Flight 93 fourth. At 7:59 a.m., the American Airlines Flight 11 took off. From there you go to the next section, and following all four in the timeline, you can see exactly what was happening at

7:59. That's the clarification I needed to understand the events of that morning.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Please describe the collaborative process between you and Sid Jacobson.

ERNIE COL?N: The way Sid and I collaborate is through email and telephone. He occasionally comes to New York from Los Angeles and spends a few days with me, and we put together whatever scenes we're difficulty with. It's a very easy, grit-free collaboration. There's no friction at all. We talk ideas over between us. We come to agreements very quickly. It's a great partnership.

Sid's responsibility is the text. And the graphics are my responsibility. Sid gives me a full script, which means that he describes what the action is and gives me the dialogue, and then I interpret and design what the action is about.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Did your graphic illustration process differ for The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation compared to your previous comic book work?

ERNIE COL?N: The process involved in the graphic adaptation was no different from even the simplest comic book. We were still dealing with actions, sequence, interpretation and design. Here, it just happens to be history.

I am sometimes asked, "How do you tell a story out of historical events?" The fact is, historical events dictate sequential art because it's really a matter of one event following another.

The Commission did all the work. All we did was quote them ? graphically. We followed it word for word. We didn't make up any dialogue; we didn't make up any scenes. It is really The 9/11 Report, very judiciously abridged by Sid Jacobson.

In the illustrations, there is a certain amount of interpretation, because certainly not every event has been photographed or recorded. For example, when I needed to draw an image of a car bomb exploding, I hadn't seen that particular car being blown up. But a car blowing up is simply that.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What criticism has The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation received, and how do you respond to it?

ERNIE COL?N: One of the criticisms that has been leveled at the graphic part of our book is the use of sound effects. We tried to keep those to a minimum, but in sequential art, we have a language of our own, just like movies have a language of their own.

When we see two lovers kiss in a movie, and Rachmaninoff's symphony comes up in the background, we never question that because it's a part of the language of film and we're accustomed to it. My craft has its own language: balloons, panels, captions, continuity, sequential panels...and part of that language is sound effects. To do sequential art without sound effects is like having a movie without music or dialogue. It doesn't make sense.

The other criticism has been the idea that we would do a "comic book" about so serious a subject. But I point out that Art Spiegelman's Maus was based on the Holocaust, and it won a Pulitzer Prize. It had a huge audience, and not only was it a comic book representation, but he chose mice and cats in a very cartoon style to represent parts of the Holocaust. And yet the power of that presentation is unquestionable.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is not what people assume when they hear the term "comic book" ? they expect some sort of disrespect or a "dumbing down" of the Report. This is just not the case.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Whom do you think should read The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation?

ERNIE COL?N: We think the audience for The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is everybody. We think most readers will be younger, from any really intelligent and perceptive nine-or ten-year-old, up into teenage years, and certainly into adulthood.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is not an end in itself. Reading our graphic presentation of 9/11 should be a starting point for anyone ? young adults, children, or adults ? to take whatever understanding and clarification the book brings to them and utilize that to read other books, and to investigate further this incredible event.

The Commission has stated that their purpose, among other things, was to have people act on the information, and Sid and I are hoping that we're helping with that goal.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Please share your thoughts on what goes into reading a work of sequential art or graphic continuity ? be it this book or comics.

ERNIE COL?N: Graphic novels or any graphic continuity should be read as you read any other book. Graphic continuity is only another way of telling a story or reporting an event, nothing more or less.

Go back to your childhood, and realize that the language of graphic continuity or of comic books or graphic novels is instantly recognizable by most people. A tremendous percentage of people have had some experience with comic books or the Sunday funny pages.

There are balloons where the speech takes place. One panel follows another, telling a story in continuity of time and events. There are captions in a little box explaining what's going on. This language of comics, of continuity, is really available to everyone. All readers have to do is take one glance, and it'll bring them back to their childhood.

TEACHINGBOOKS: How do you, as someone who creates works of graphic continuity, assure that the piece is readable?

ERNIE COL?N: In reading graphic continuity, the essential is the left to right, top to bottom, which is part of our culture. In any well-designed continuity, however imaginatively the page is designed, that concept has to be true of reading left to right, top to bottom.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Please talk about the terminology used to describe your craft.

ERNIE COL?N: The term "comic book" is one that we're stuck with in our industry. The term brings to mind superheroes, Archie, and even Casper the Friendly Ghost. That's unfortunate, and I'm hoping that someone will come up with a better term. None of the other terms that have been used, "graphic continuity" and so on, have the same ring as "comic books."

What was done for The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is actually not unique in that other cartoonists and illustrators have done something very similar. The difference between their work and ours is that most so-called "graphic novels" have to do with personal memoir or fiction. Ours is graphic history.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What is the history behind graphic continuity as a form of communication?

ERNIE COL?N: Graphic continuity goes back to caveman days, because the cave people who drew on their walls were essentially doing a continuity of the hunt. The very people who took part in that hunt were looking at those graphics and reliving their experience.

That also takes place in Egyptian hieroglyphics. They were telling a story, some of them very complex.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Did you always want to be a cartoonist?

ERNIE COL?N: I decided to be a cartoonist when I was six years old. I didn't want to do anything else. I drew in all the margins of my schoolbooks, to the chagrin of my teachers.

At my first art job, I drew Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich for 25 years. I went on to superheroes, science fiction, fantasy, and I've been at it for more than 45 years. It's my life's work.

Every cartoonist that I have ever spoken to or met is a frustrated movie maker. I am a huge movie person and have been since I was a boy in Puerto Rico, where my grandfather owned three movie houses. I was able to get in free to all of them. My love of movies continues, and doing comic books or sequential art is very much like doing movies.

TEACHINGBOOKS:Please describe a typical workday.

ERNIE COL?N: The first thing I do is check my e-mail. After that, I really just get right to work. I pick up a pencil, a ballpoint pen or a mechanical pen and start drawing. I draw on a sheet of paper and scan it into the computer.

And in the computer I color, letter, put panel lines around the drawing, and design the page. The traditional way of doing comic books was to draw on a large sheet of paper, bristle board, and design the page there. I have never been comfortable with that. I find that designing on the computer is essential and the best way to go for me.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What other projects are you involved in?

ERNIE COL?N: I contributed some doodles to Comicworks, a Web-based comic book company. I call them "doodle movies" ? they consist of my drawing stories without planning them ahead of time, just doing a scene and then following the scene with another and another. Comicworks prints continuity and sequential material, comic books and comic characters on the Web.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What do you want most for today's students?

ERNIE COL?N: What I would like for students to do is to find ways to just keep reading ? not simply to pick up a book, but to expose themselves to many ideas about reading, whether it's film, graphic novels... Anything at all that will stimulate reading, I think is absolutely essential. Reading for me is everything. Reading is a way into the world, the universe and ideas.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What message do you want to impart to teachers?

ERNIE COL?N: I want very much for teachers to understand how important graphics are to young people. I know that Sid joins me in this.

We're the most graphically, visually oriented society in the history of this planet. Television, cameras, photographs, drawings, illustrations, magazines, sequential art ? they are all very, very valuable teaching tools and should be used liberally to get across ideas, history and complex subjects in every schoolroom in this country.

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