Graphic Implosion: Politics, Time, and Value in Post-9/11 Comics

Paul Atkinson and Simon Cooper

Why analyse comic books (including comics, graphic novels, and graphic short
stories) in relation to 9/11? Of course such narratives, with their own distinctive
representational strategies and aesthetic forms, are worth examining as a ”response” in
their own right, but in the case of 9/11 other issues make comic books a compelling case
for study. For instance, the uncanny resemblance between the starkly rendered political
landscape of the “war on terror” and the moral universe of the mainstream comic book.
The Bush Administration’s depiction of a Manichean post 9/11 world of heroes and
villains has sounded at times like a classic comic book scenario. Indeed, if superhero
comics are replete with the logic of the vigilante, this same logic also came to mark the
way the US administration would govern after the attacks on the World Trade Centre. 1
In this sense the generally conservative morality underpinning the comic book universe
was echoed in the 9/11 public rhetoric raising the question: would comic books post 9/11
continue to operate in the same way? Given the degree of self-reflexivity that the genre
had developed, especially since the 1980s, how would comic books react to a world that
seemed increasingly to resemble its own fantasized constructions? The introduction of
an extra-diegetic event into the world of the comic book also entails the convergence of
mythological and historical worlds. Generally serialised comic books (and superhero
comics especially) are predicated upon the exclusion of history in the sense that
characters cannot directly intervene in history. 2 As Umberto Eco observes with respect
to Superman, if the genre incorporates historical events, the narrative risks exhausting
itself due to the limitations imposed by the unchangeable events (123). For comics to
include directly events such as 9/11 involves a shift where the comic universe is linked to
a non-diegetic historical progression that stretches the compatibility of historical and
mythological environments. In a genre predicated upon heroes who consistently save
cities from disaster, how might comics respond to a situation where such heroes failed
or were absent?
In this article we examine the central themes in a number of mainstream comic
3
books, in particular the two volumes of 9-11 Artists Respond and issue 36 of Amazing
1
To take merely one example, just prior to invading Afghanistan, President Bush dismissed questions about
the legality of the invasion with the remark, “I'll let others work out the legalities,” thereby implying that the
“law did not represent principles that ought to frame policy but was something to be gotten around or
manipulated to suit a pre-established aim” (Brown par. 10).
2
A partial exception would be the patriotic Golden Age comic books produced during the Second World
War. Their reactionary fervour and simplified moral universe is reproduced in some of the post 9/11
comics, for example Freedom Three, issue no 1. The cover shows a member of the Freedom Three punching
Bin Laden in the face restaging an old Captain America cover where Captain America (dressed in red, white
and blue) punches Hitler in an identical fashion.
3
The division between mainstream and alternative comics is somewhat arbitrary but for the
purposes of this paper we state that mainstream comics are produced for an adolescent

1
Spider-Man and to a lesser extent the collections A Moment of Silence and Heroes.4 The
first part of the article introduces general themes of memorialisation and representation
in post 9/11 comic books. Using the work of Derrida and others to register the particular
paradoxes and limits to ”marking a date in history,” we explore tensions within comic
books as they attempt to attribute an absolute singularity to an event that marks itself as
”beyond comprehension,” yet whose images of urban destruction are all too familiar to
comic book readers. At the centre of this tension stands the superhero, examined
primarily in a reading of Spider-Man #36, who is unable to intervene directly but allows
for the event to be both registered and incomprehensible though a transcendental act of
“witnessing.” The second part of the article deals largely with the stories collected in
9/11 Artists Respond and explores the tension between the representation of the liberal
ideals of tolerance and diversity and the formal and narrative limitations that work
against them. While many of the stories are concerned with representing the reactions
and responses of “ordinary” New York citizens, and run counter to the generic pursuit
of justice and punishment, we argue that they close down the possibility of difference
and diversity at the same time that they attempt to represent and celebrate such ideals.
This is considered as part of a more widespread “intolerant liberalism,” noted by writers
such as Stanley Fish (2006) and Slavoj Žižek (2002), that marked the political and
cultural context post 9/11.
Despite the differences in terms of their subjects, we argue that these comics are
governed by a similar approach that idealizes the heterogeneous traditions of US culture
and society, but in a way that fails to engage with the significance of contemporary
cultural difference. The superhero comics cannot help but function within a
conservative economy where the superhero figure bears the burden of the suffering of
the community, but does so in a singular voice which stands in for the collective other.
Jarret Lovell argues that many superheroes, such as Superman, are “group servants”
dedicated to upholding the moral values of the community (165). Conversely, many of
the comics focus on the citizens of New York, these stories ought to allow for a range of
perspectives but actually mirror the voice of the superhero. Ultimately both these
discourses, the superhero as transcendent witness and the invocation of a liberal
imaginary, work to frame 9/11 so as to preclude politically and historically embedded
interpretations of these events.

The Superhero as Transcendent Witness to 9/11

In an extended interview with Giovanna Borradori, Jacques Derrida argues that
in an analysis of 9/11 we must first ask what it means to “fait date,” “to mark a date in
history” (85). This is important to the analysis of post 9/11 comic books because so many

readership, by large publishing houses such as Marvel and DC and are generally serialised
superhero narratives. While the stories in the selected comic books stand alone as responses to
9/11 we would still categorise them as mainstream given that the writers and artists are normally
associated with superhero comics or other large print run comics produced by Marvel or DC.
4
We also make brief reference to 9-11 Emergency Relief, which can be classified as non-mainstream
due to its interest in non-fiction autobiographical narrative.

2
were produced as responses, where the writers and artists felt they must act
immediately to register the historical significance of the event. The event is always
conceived within the framework of a discursive response and not an object in itself. The
form of the event and its significance depend on the nature of the response and the
temporal boundaries erected around it – a national event marking the end of American
innocence, an international event incorporating notions of global capitalism, a
community event, or indeed a media event. If we focus on the media, the event is
shaped by the temporal rhythms of the news as an ongoing spectacle over and above
issues of suffering or the place of the US in a global political context. For Derrida, one of
the defining characteristics of an historical event is that it is “unprecedented” for if it
was prefigured then its status as a historical turning point would be brought into
question - there must be some level of “immediacy”:
“To mark a date in history” presupposes, in any case, that “something”
comes or happens for the first and last time, “something” that we do not
yet really know how to identify, determine, recognize, or analyze but that
should remain from here on in unforgettable: an ineffaceable event in the
shared archive of a universal calendar, that is, a supposedly universal
calendar. (Derrida 86)
In other words, we should question what it means to conceptualise the historical event
as a singularity, which in the case of 9/11 is underpinned by the use of a date in lieu of a
name. The date testifies to a degree of uncertainty as to form and nature of the event
(86), which is in part due to the diffuse form of the attack, dispersed across the country
unlike the locatable Pearl Harbour bombardment. To name an event by a date is to both
separate it from the continuity of history, for this date can be applied to no other event
in a “universal calendar,” as well as to ritualise and memorialise the event in annual
remembrance days. Simon Jenkins in The Guardian calls the media’s response to 9/11
“anniversary journalism” (14). This looking forward to understand the present is a key
feature of many of the comic books but is most notable in Paul Levitz’s graphic story
“Tradition,” where we are transported into the future specified by the exact date
“Sunset, 9/21/11.” A woman and child listen to the mobile phone message of someone
we assume to be the dead husband. This message is framed by another event, the
lighting of the Yahrzeit candle and the two are brought together in the final caption
“Tradition new and old” (Artists Remember 45). In this context, the present event (the
loss of life) requires the invocation of the universal in the phrase “time immemorial”
where the present historical conditions are erased in the name of a “universal calendar.”
This positioning of September 11 in a ”universal calendar” is also a feature of
issue 36 of Amazing Spider-Man written by J. Michael Straczynski but, in contrast to
stories such as “Tradition,” this occurs within the temporal framework of the comic
book series and its universe. The decision to devote an issue to the destruction of the
Twin Towers was not made by the writers but by the publisher who decided this was
one event that required a response. Spider-Man was chosen because it is based in New
York and the then current writer Straczynski was asked to write it. He thought that the
task would be impossible but nevertheless sent a script in only twenty-four hours after

3
he received the request (Yarbrough, par. 6). The structure of the representation in the
issue is guided both by the extra-diegetic decision to respond by the New York based
Marvel Comics and by the requirement to explain adequately the narrative rupture to a
serialised audience. Straczynski’s solution is to situate the event as the beginning of a
new age, and in its singularity separate it from both the serialised narrative and a
concrete socio-political context.
The visual structure of Spider-Man is integral to this process as it isolates the
event through the articulation of a visual space specific to September 11, a narrative
ground zero or year one. The opening page is largely black and contains in its centre the
uncaptioned text, “We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you the
following Special Bulletin” and in the lower corner the captioned text “Longitude 74
degrees, 0 minutes, 23 seconds west. Latitude, 40 degrees, 42 minutes, 51 seconds north
… follow the sound of sirens” (1). This captioned text, which we soon discover to be the
voice of Spider-Man,5 uses the exact coordinates to situate the event in terms of a spatial
absolute. In doing so, the destruction of the towers is construed as a global event rather
than as one specific to a community or to a lived place, such as Canal St. Moreover, the
text registers the event as the point of reference for all other events and Spider-Man in
uttering such words is one of the first to recognise its significance. It is a statement of
presence which serves as the starting point for a larger historical notion of time,
rationalised in terms of abstract dates and calendar times (Ricoeur 154). The spatial
description situates Spider-Man at the event and carries the connotations of
documentary evidence; he is not only present but his statements are important as acts of
reportage. In contrast, the uncaptioned text in conjunction with the black panel sets up
the boundaries of a temporal absolute. Time in comic books is largely indicated by the
sequence of panels and a black panel on the first page prepares the reader for what is
about to be seen, a point before time and the event, broadly interpreted as the ex nihilo of
creation. If the black panel appeared in the middle of a page, it could represent night,
the death of a character or a general pause or break in the narrative, but when placed in
the beginning it separates issue 36 from the Amazing Spider-Man series, the “regularly
scheduled program,” and introduces the event as a singularity. The broadcasting
schedule also serves as a metaphor for the flow of history which is ruptured due to the
magnitude of the event. The artifice of the broadcasting schedule is highlighted by the
lack of further reference in the text and by its contrast with the actual coverage of the
event, where televisions were filled with images of the planes hitting – a relentless
presence rather than an absence.
The opening blank screen gives way, with the turn of the page, to the comic’s
most extraordinary image, a splash page depicting ground zero shortly after the collapse
of the towers (see fig. 1). The burning wreck fills the double-page spread and the dust
frames rather than obscures Spider-Man’s view of the disaster. The artist John Romita Jr
creates an image that is worthy of the event6 in that it pushes the visual limits of the
page and arrests the narrative. The splash page fashions the exceptional event through
5
The major division in comic books is between speech balloons and captioned text with the latter most often
placed in a square box close to the edge of the panel.

4
its emphasis on the spectacle rather than narrative movement and because its impact is
dependent on the turn of the page – the borderline between visibility and invisibility - it
is one of the few visual devices in the comic book that can truly deliver the unforeseen
image. This is in marked contrast to the typical process of comic book reading where the
eye roams across the page and glances at the comic’s immediate future in a continuous
process of protension. The visual impact is further emphasised by the long description
of the spatial coordinates on page one which forces the reader to pause before turning
the page. When the page is turned, the viewer stops, and the action is complete, because
the double page spread does not contain the narrative and temporal markers of the
gutter and panel. Time is enclosed within the page as Spider-Man looks in horror at
what is before him and for the reader this extended time of visual contemplation opens
up the space of memorialisation. This is also feature of the many single page spreads in
Heroes, many of which use the diagonal lines of the Twin Towers reinforcements to draw
the eye to the centre of the image. It is only the voice of Spider-Man, discreetly
presented in captions at the foot of the page, that gently directs the reader away from the
image with the wide spacing of the captions ensuring that the eye’s movement across
the page is slow and reverential.
[Insert fig. 1 here].
One of the features of the comic book is the separation between text and image
and in Spider-Man #36 this is manifest as a tension between two modes of representation.
The text accompanying the splash page positions Spider-Man as a witness to the scene
and following the initial exclamation “God” reveals the superhero’s thoughts: “some
things are beyond words. … Beyond comprehension. …Beyond forgiveness” (2-3).
These words mirror Straczynski’s account of writing the comic: “Ever since the events
surrounding the WTC, I have said little because […] I simply didn't have the words and
didn’t know where to look for them” (Yarbrough par. 3). Nevertheless the words came
in the form of Spider-Man’s extended reflection on the events – a grandiose collection of
thoughts resembling the overburdened speeches of Straczynski’s Babylon 5.
Interestingly, it is in speech, not the image, that the comic book invokes the unspeakable
as a supplement to the plenitude of the image, or spectacle. The words, however, seem
out of place in a superhero comic where images of destruction are common (the burnt-
out city, the destroyed planet, the threatened monument, etc.) and within the genre are
certainly not “beyond comprehension.”
In the broader context of New York City, the event was imaginable because, as
John Bird states, New York is one of the world’s most visualisable cities not only due to
its size and monumental architecture but the vast number of films and television series
that use it as a backdrop. Moreover, the possible destruction of New York and the Twin
Towers has been pre-empted in many such texts (86). For Slavoj Žižek, the destruction
of the towers was aestheticised both by the terrorists, who aimed to create a media
event, and by the style of the televised coverage which had much in common with film
6
Øyvind Vågnes argues that in the wake of the attacks, there was a demand for exceptional images that
could do justice to the “exceptionalism” of the event of which the most noteworthy was Julien and Gedeon
Naudet’s documentary 9/11 (61-63).

5
and disaster movies (11). The New York based author Siri Hustvedt concurs with Žižek
and states the attacks conform to the “thrilling spectacle[s]” envisioned by Hollywood
but adds “We could all imagine it. It’s the fact of it that annihilated the fantasy” (par.
11). This theme is explored in a number of the post 9/11 comic books including the story
“The Real Thing” by the veteran New York comic writer and artist Will Eisner, where a
group of Hollywood producers gather in an office close to the Twin Towers. In response
to one suggestion that the Empire State Building should be used as the site of a disaster,
the head of the group states: “Oh, gawd! Not a King Kong thing! We need reality here!
… Special effects stuff, everybody’s got! … What sells in the real thing!” On the
subsequent page the group is rendered silent as they look out the office window at the
burning Twin Towers (Artists Remember 17-18). Eisner returns to this theme with his
story “Reality 9/11” in 9-11: Emergency Relief, where a man covered in dust sits slumped
in his armchair watching Ground Zero on a broken and bleeding television (45).
“Reality” in each of these cases has that particular quality of rendering the viewer silent
and this even serves as the premise for one of the Marvel volumes, A Moment of Silence.
In this collection, the graphic stories are told with images because, according to the
editor, there is too much “meaningless chatter” and it is more “fitting to tell the story of
real heroes with nothing but depictions of their selfless deeds” and to “Judge people by
what they do, not by what they say” (37). In this case it is heroism that is beyond words
and only truly understood in an image. What is interesting in these examples, and there
are many more embodying this theme,7 is that the visual is posited as something that
exceeds representation but only through the negation of another medium – the comic
book image is not-film, not-television, not-“meaningless chatter.” In each case the
representational structure of the comic book is ignored.
In all of the above examples, the real is posited in the narrative structure or in the
editor’s comments but in Spider-Man #36 the real is asserted through the contrast of
word and image, where the comic book shows and then denies the comprehensibility of
what is seen. Jan Baetens argues that comic books must decide whether to show or hide
an object but a written text, through the mechanism of negation, can both negate and
affirm an object in the same utterance and thus invoke the unspeakable or unknowable
(par. 3). In post 9/11 comic books, the text negates and imposes a logic of the
unspeakable on the witnessed and affirmed image of the collapsing towers; the images
are not sufficiently unspeakable as they only serve to reimagine an existing media
spectacle. In Mo Willems’ “Walking the Williamsburg Bridge to Work,” the protagonist
on witnessing the attacks has his inability to speak noted in three speech balloons two of
which contain ellipses and the other the negation “can’t be” (Artists Remember 100-01).
The character is not speaking but the act of not speaking is affirmed through the speech
balloons which means that the incomprehensibility of the event is twice removed from
the image. In short, the incomprehension is made comprehensible on the level of the

7
In Dean Haspiel’s 91101 the protagonist is watching the attacks on television and the subsequent panel
shows him standing “unmediated” before the image of the planes hitting the towers (Emergency 96). The
lack of mediation is highlighted by the lack of panel borders suggesting that the image cannot be contained
by the representational structure of the comic book.

6
text and is added to the generically comprehensible image.8 Even if it is accepted that
September 11 was unforeseen or incomprehensible this can only be depicted indirectly
in the comic book.
The conventions used to express the singularity and exceptionalism of September
11, however, are not necessarily specific to the comic book medium but may be derived
from a wider culture of memorialisation. Andreas Huyssen argues that since the 1980s,
there has been a “globalization” of “memory culture” with the Holocaust serving as a
“universal trope” that erases the particular details of a range of traumatic events,
including Kosovo (13-14).9 Barbie Zelizer argues that to bear witness was an integral
feature of General Eisenhower’s opening up of the concentration camps to
photographers. One of the key tropes of this photography was images of people
“bearing witness” to various images from the camps which extended to “people looking
at photographic exhibits of the atrocities” (53). The act of witnessing was transmuted
into a moral act, “the ultimate public response, in that it signified a level of responsibility
on the part of the publics who had until then largely been unresponsive” (Zelizer 53-54).
In the depiction of September 11 there was a reduplication of the many types of
witnessing and this distinguished it from other human atrocities including those in
Rwanda and Cambodia (54). In addition to the lack of actual images of human carnage,
the photographic aesthetic had four main parts, each depicted repeatedly:
the site of the attack – primarily the World Trade Center; people
witnessing the site of the attack; people witnessing the site of the attack
without depiction of the site itself; and people viewing depictions of the
site of the attack (primarily photographs) or taking photographs
themselves. (Zelizer 57)
Some of the first shots were of locals such as fire fighters gazing at the ruins but over the
coming months this came to include a long list of dignitaries bearing witness, each of
which was documented in the papers (60). In the post 9/11 comic books these
conventions are reproduced and in many the act of bearing witness is invested in a
single figure, the superhero, who heroically witnesses on behalf of the whole
population.10 The first third of Spider-Man #36 has the superhero witnessing Ground

8
Derrida talks of the need to understand the event and this involves various practices of “appropriation”
that include “naming” and “recognition.” The truly unforeseeable event will resist such appropriation (90).
There is no model by which to interpret what is seen and it is only through retrospective action that its
meaning stabilises. The question remains, however, at what time does the truly unimaginable become
imaginable?
9
This is not say the events are similar only that some of the same tropes are invoked. Žižek states that the
tendency to place the event of 9/11 in the same category as the Shoah is a mistake due to the fundamental
difference in the structure and motivation underlying the event. In the Shoah, what was important was the
application of bureaucratic procedures, the “banality of evil” spoken of by Hannah Arendt, and the wish to
elude detection, to commit genocide without display unlike the contrived spectacle of the Twin Towers
(136).
10
Although many of the features are derived from Holocaust representations, the act of bearing of witness
has had a significant role in US culture, largely through the “Puritan immigrants” and their “evangelical
metaphors of vision and witness” (Vågnes 63).

7
Zero from a range of vantage points with the captions, similar to a voice-over in film,
stating his inability to understand what he sees. In Heroes, the opening image depicts
the Hulk on his knees weeping while holding a fireman’s cap (1). The Silver Surfer
witnesses a flash on the surface of the earth and a weeping Captain America is
superimposed on the burning New York skyline (3, 7). In 9-11 volume two, Jimmy
Olsen stands looking up to the sky in a state of shock holding his camera but not yet
ready to take a photo (173). On the cover of the same volume, Superman stands with
Krypton reverentially looking up at a large image depicting a range of rescue workers
and all Superman can say is “wow.” In addition to the superhero references, there are
many drawings of the various memorials, fire-fighters weeping and images of people
gazing at the “missing” posters or watching the events on television.
All of these images of bearing witness share a common lineage but those of
superheroes should be distinguished because they represent a departure from the
conventions of the superhero genre. To see superheroes standing solemn before a
disaster is in marked contrast to the usual representations of superheroes intervening in
moments of crisis. The act of witnessing is the only form of action because the
superheroes could not intervene in an event that has already occurred. Mourning and
witnessing become heroic acts where the anguished expressions and muscular stances of
these exceptional figures serving as indexical signs marking out the event in history,
making it truly singular. In this context the superhero is not open to the tragedy, as
something that is truly unforeseeable or beyond words. In one image by Carlos
Pacheco, we see a group of superheroes, including Captain America and Thor, holding
candles with heads bowed. The captioned text by Kurt Busiek reads: “And There Came
a Day. A Day Unlike Any Other … when Earth’s mightiest heroes found themselves
united against a common threat” (Heroes 13). The subsequent text informs us that the
words were originally applied to the Avengers but now can be used to describe the fire-
fighters but there is little doubt, due to their prominence in the image, that it must apply
to the superheroes. In another image, Captain America is weeping on his knees but his
contrapposto stance and the raising of his arms by the fire-fighters transforms his
anguish into a heroic gesture.
In Spider-Man #36, the protagonist and other heroes from the Marvel universe
only act in the form of helping out fire-fighters or small children, but for the most part
they stand defiantly looking at the ruins in a state of mourning. Importantly they do not
speak and it is only Spider-Man who provides the commentary that joins the present act
of witnessing with the trans-historical heroic gesture. The superhero is posited not as a
figure for this one time, attendant on the event, but for all time both as the will of the
people and the personification of an American mythos. When asked by one of the
injured why it happened Spider-Man does not openly reply but his voice over provides
the response: “My God, why? I have seen other worlds, other spaces. I have walked
with Gods and wept with angels. But to my shame I have no answers” (15). The figure
of Spider-Man is projected across the whole of a fictional history, rather than localised as
a citizen of New York, where his role is to indicate the importance of the event. In a

8
subsequent passage, the hero’s voice accompanies a series of images heroically
portraying ordinary citizens:
In such days as these are heroes born. Not heroes such as ourselves. The
true heroes of the Twenty-First century. You, the human being singular.
You, who are nobler than you know and stronger than you think. You
the heroes of this moment chosen out of history. (Spider-Man #36 20)
Spider-Man must stand outside history, looking on the “universal calendar,” in order to
recognise fully the exceptionalism of the present. This relegation of the superhero to
history’s witness provides a false testimony because it adds nothing to what the readers
have already witnessed in photographs or on television. What it does do is obliquely
answer the question asked in many of the comic books, including Spider-Man #36,
“Where were you! How could you let this happen?” (4).11 In other words, where were
the Gods when we needed them - a question that has been asked repeatedly in relation
to many of the world’s worst tragedies. This question cannot be answered sufficiently
due to the separation of the fictional and non-fictional worlds but, in the guise of
history’s witness, the superheroes can still be seen to act through projecting themselves
beyond the present as both universal memory and a universal will. Post 9/11 comics
direct the reader away from speculation on what “what will happen,” through a
redefinition of what has already happened. In Spider-Man #36, it is all about situating
the hero relative to the event, putting him in place, rather than describing his role in
changing events. When Spider-Man states: “You cannot see us for the dust, but we are
here … You cannot hear us for the cries, but we are here” (8), the voice renders the
heroes non-present but in conjunction with the images, makes them omnipresent. There
is both a negation and an affirmation, for the mythological heroes are always here but
are never here in the sense that they can act upon the present or change an event. The
superheroes are shrouded by the dust and viewed only by a few and are, consequently,
largely invisible at Ground Zero.
In most of the post 9/11 superhero comics, the extra-diegetic space of Ground
Zero is incorporated into the diegetic space of the comic with the effect of eliding the
difference between the two worlds. Richard Reynolds argues that historical continuity,
both in the sense of chronological story development and its relationship with non-
diegetic historical events, is generally subordinate to the “metatextual structural
continuity” in which the character’s actions remain consistent with the unity of the
mythological universe (45). The “reality” of the fictional universe depends on its
consistency and even in these comics incorporating the events of 9/11 continuity remains
paramount. One way of ensuring this continuity is restricting the focus of the superhero
comic books to interaction with anonymous figures, the general heroes and victims who
occupy the site in popular mythology. There are certainly no instances of Superman or
Spider-Man chatting with George Bush or Mayor Giuliani about the present destruction
or future courses of action. This limitation is clearly examined in Steven T. Seagle’s
11
This division is often played out from the position of the comic book reader. Danny Donovan’s story
“Fiction is Better than Reality” the protagonist states that he supported his fictional heroes as they suffered
many tragedies and crises but asks “I was there. Why weren’t they?” (Emergency 20).

9
story (art by Duncan Rouleau and Aaron Sowd) “Unreal” where Superman reflects on
his various abilities – “I can defy the laws of gravity. I can ignore the principles of
physics” (Artists Remember 15) – with each statement accompanied by an image of the
hero in action. These heroic claims, however, are followed by the lament “But
unfortunately … the one thing I can not do … is break free from the fictional pages
where I live and breathe … become real during times of crisis” (16). The image zooms
out to reveal a young boy reading the comic while a fire-fighter carries him from the
burning wreckage of the Twin Towers - an impossibility. The fictional Superman salutes
the fire-fighter with the words “a world fortunately protected by heroes of its own” (16).
In this example and many others, the fictional and non-fictional worlds are joined in the
figure of the hero with numerous images depicting the superheroes passing the baton to
the new heroes, the rescue workers. The most typical image of this type is J. Scott
Campbell and Hi-Fi’s image of various Marvel figures lifting up the arms of the rescue
workers in a gesture of respect (Heroes 23). There is a celebration of the moment of
transformation when real life heroes must replace those of the mythic universe, the
comic book writers’ ultimate homage. In a page by Tim Sale, a young boy dressed in a
Superman t-shirt runs into a phone booth and emerges wearing an FDNY t-shirt (9-
11vol2 70). The transformation is complete with the readers also accepting the
movement from the mythic figure of the superhero to the localised fire-fighter. Marvel
tried to cash in on this shift in cultural value with a serialised comic about rescue
workers called The Call Of Duty but it was not very popular and remained in print only
for a couple of years.

From Superhero to Citizen: the Cultural Contradictions of a Liberal

Response
In the change of narrative focus from the superhero to the fire-fighter the figure
of the child remains. The child stands on the threshold of two ways of viewing the
world, looking to the past with the weight of history and looking to the future with hope
(Nyberg 182). If the child chooses not to look back, they are tied to a present that is
wholly innocent, a liberal imaginary, that is yet to feel the force of anti-liberal sentiment.
This is a liberalism of innocence rather than reasoned tolerance, ethical judgement or
celebrated difference. There is no understanding of diversity or difference because the
past is occluded and all that remains is a present governed by good intentions.
The tropes of revenge and violence, normally endemic to the superhero comic
were often avoided in responses to 9/11, in their considered attempts to both incorporate
and memorialise 9/11 as a singular event. The limited agency of the superhero figure
provides a means of mythologizing 9/11 and rendering it, at least within this cultural
sphere, as unanalysable, and disconnected from politics and history. However, many of
the graphic stories in the mainstream collections represent 9/11 not so much in terms of
an epic passivity but through a series of little narratives incorporating the perspectives
of New York citizens. This section explores how other mainstream comic book writers
respond to 9/11 through a contradictory liberal imaginary and outside the framework of
the superhero. Such an imaginary invokes the ideals of tolerance, diversity and

10
difference, but only at a superficial level, and indeed often reduces the radical potential
of such difference. In particular the 9-11 – Artists Respond anthology contains many
stories that avoid themes normally central to the genre and in their place it is possible to
identify several features common to most of the contributions, in particular, a tension
between an appeal to openness at a thematic level and a closing down of difference at a
formal level. Firstly, many of the stories resort to allegorical modes and restage Biblical
narratives such as the “Fall,” and the “Tower of Babel.” In one story there is a
reworking of an Aesop’s fable, while in another an alien intelligence visits a traumatized
nation and inspires its citizens to adopt the values of tolerance, love for country, world
peace and so on. Secondly, many stories appeal to the values of pluralism and
multiculturalism but in a highly specific way that works to close down, rather than
promote difference. Thirdly, the protagonists of these graphic stories are predominantly
children, whose acts of witnessing construct a particular spectator position that prevents
political reflection on the events.
In Artists Respond the multicultural composition of New York is repeatedly
alluded to – whether in the form of children of various ethnicities witnessing the
burning towers, stories of the background of 9/11 victims and survivors, images of
Middle Eastern shopkeepers handing out sweets to children, or in fire-fighters rescuing
victims from different racial backgrounds. This invocation of diversity is, however,
often undercut through the use of allegorical frameworks. By alluding to Biblical stories,
Aesop’s fables, and science-fiction utopias, the narratives in Artists Respond elide the
historical specificity of cultural difference. If 9/11 can be framed in terms of a
metaphoric and Biblically-derived cycle of drought and renewal as told by Mira
Freedman in “Jeremiah 17“ (Artists Respond 112-13) or the US can be personified as a
humble elephant (Artists Remember 177-80), or if rescue workers hoist a flag on top of a
pile of rubble in a pose identical to the iconic image of soldiers at Iwo Jima (Maleev, 9-
11vol1 144) then the act of interpretation, of understanding, is to a degree foreclosed
because it has already been pre-empted. In relying on allegorical modes of storytelling
these narratives work to limit the possibilities of difference by asking us to see one thing
as the repetition of another (Murray 16). In this context, the allegory works to suppress
historical and political differences, the causal framework underpinning an event, in
order to point out similarities. The similarities are rarely structural but instead refer to
the importance of the events in popular and local cultural memory. Iwo Jima is chosen
because of its nationalist resonance rather than other, more appropriate examples, such
as the attempt to destroy the British Houses of Parliament by Guy Fawkes. There is also
a visual resonance that allows for the easy substitution of types, a fabled elephant for the
nation, and fire-fighters for soldiers. The connotations of one are mapped onto the other
without a process of negotiation, explanation or analysis. This is the dehistoricisation of
time through pastiche which relies on a connotative force of a visual and popular
imaginary to mark the place of the event in history rather than relying on the grand
gesture of a heroic figure.
In contrast are those graphic stories which work metonymically rather than
metaphorically. In metonymy, one sign is substituted for another based on contiguity or

11
association and this has the capacity to destabilise the sign because the sign is never
fixed within any given context. In the case of 9/11 this process shifts the focus away
from the meaning of the event, in itself, to an exploration of context. In Artists Respond
the main example of metonymical narrative is Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s “This
is Information” (185-90). 12 The narrative differs substantially in both form and content
because it works through association rather than linear progression, the series of even
panels across each page give no priority to any particular image or idea (thus avoiding
the trap of fetishization or overdetermination). The narrative moves across different
times and places and is one of the only treatments of 9/11 to go outside of New York -
moving to the UK and Europe, to the painting of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, to
the medieval crusades, to Afghanistan. This historical movement also serves to critique
the claims of singularity because 9/11 is relativised among a collection of important
historical events - it no longer stands alone in time immemorial. The narrative moves
through its associative techniques from history to politics to mythology and back again
and the meaning slips from the private to the public, from the Crusades to the war on
terror, from suffering to humour. Moore and Gebbie are also the only writers in the
collection to reflexively comment on the implication of “comic book morality” (189) in
the war on terror – drawing Bin Laden (a figure almost entirely absent from other
contributions) as a Bond villain.13 In fact the final panel of the story contains one of the
most powerful images drawn in response to 9/11 – as the hand of a survivor reaches
within the rubble to grasp a seemingly alive hand of a dead victim. This powerful
image of connection with the dead, coming as it does at the end of a whole series of
interpretative possibilities, suggests that we honour the dead and ourselves by not
foreclosing on the meaning of 9/11, by thinking through other wars and struggles in
history, and by working through the significance of events at a number of levels, rather
than remaining fixed within a single perspective.
Outside of the opposition between history and myth, other stories attempt to
depict the ideals of difference and pluralism more directly but usually in the form of an
idealised present. These stories involve images of a cross-section of New York citizens
depicted as either witnesses to the WTC attacks, victims of them, or part of the larger
background that led to the current greatness of America. For example, part of a story by
Brian McDonald and Brian O’Connell (Artists Respond 100) depicts a scene of ethnically
diverse faces floating in space staring back at the viewer with blank expressions. This
disembodied representation of ethnic diversity is drawn against an evenly spaced white
background and connotes a bland and unthreatening form of difference – one robbed
not only of bodies and ground, but also of history and agency. The image suspends
these abstract figures, that stand for our diversity and tolerance, in an eternal present

12
Another exception would be the image by Dave McKean in Artists Respond vol. 1 50-1, which,
in its depiction of the twin towers as stone figures with hands clasped to their ears, is both highly
evocative and open to a number of possible readings.
13
Space precludes a detailed reading of “This is Information,” but it is worth noting that while
the narrative constantly shifts interpretative perspectives and emotional register, this does not
undermine its depiction of the horror and tragedy of 9/11.

12
where they do nothing and ask nothing from us except provide an easily consumed
form of multiculturalism. They can only represent the nation as a collective – a unitary
image and an image of unity – and, consequently, they are deprived of the right to
speak, that is, to speak differently.
A very similar image forms the subject of Eric Powel’s contribution (Artists
Respond 7). Here a series of ethnically diverse and disembodied subjects solemnly gaze
out from beneath an American flag while a lone fire-fighter looks on, effectively
cementing the familiar dichotomy of multicultural passivity and singular heroic activity
in the form of the ubiquitous rescue worker. Other examples include the untitled story
by Steve Niles and Paul Lee, where subjects from diverse ethnic backgrounds are shown
in almost identical postures, first witnessing the attacks, then being rescued and
comforted (Artists Respond 155-8). Peter Pachoumis provides a similar collection of
diverse and disembodied faces gazing above at the destruction (Artists Respond 66). In
”Ground Zero: A dream I had on Sep 9, 2001” Al Davison depicts a cross-section of
children who emerge from various scenes of destruction and chaos to gather in a circle
and witness a giant flowering tree emerge from the urban ruin (Artists Respond 188-9).
The children’s universality and sameness-in-difference is revealed though drawing them
within equally-spaced frames and wearing similar expressions. The final scene, where
the children gather around the tree reduces them to abstract figures forming part of a
circle, their own stories and contexts are subsumed within this new symbolic
universalism. In the joyous and naïve world of the children there is no past only an
ahistorical understanding of the principles of liberalism.
This invocation of abstract difference connects with a wider cultural context,
which Stanley Fish calls the “liberal religion.” Fish argues that contemporary Western
culture is one where” everything is permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously.”
This kind of hollow pluralism functions as a new morality, “the morality of a
withdrawal from morality in any strong insistent form.” Tolerance is possible only to
the extent that one is not forced to take the other seriously. When the other reacts in a
way that confronts the liberal subject directly - say in the case of riots following the
publication of cartoons in Denmark depicting the prophet as a terrorist – one finds
instead an aggressive intolerance toward the other. Thus, tolerance is only possible if it
costs the self nothing. The “others” depicted in Artists Respond as disembodied faces,
passive witnesses or victims are figures that the reader does not have to confront fully.
This “thinned out” ideal of tolerance can be connected to other political struggles
over the memorialisation of 9/11. Part of the cultural component of Ground Zero was a
new museum called the “International Freedom Centre” – which would tell the story of
struggles for freedom at other times and in other cultures. This met with widespread
resistance from particular lobby groups and some families of victims who felt that such a
display diluted the message of the Ground Zero memorial. Political pressure was put
on the Governor who agreed to scrap the project – “oblivious to the irony of censoring a
monument to freedom” (Goldberger par. 3). As Fish observes, the gesture towards
liberal tolerance under contemporary conditions all too often masks a deeper
intolerance. The disembodied heads and decontextualised subjects of the multicultural

13
community celebrated in Artist’s Respond may invoke the other, but their
representational strategies reveal an other that one can all too easily assimilate. For
Peter Brooker such strategies “reaffirm an assimilative American national imaginary”
where liberal values work to homogenise difference in the name of tolerance and
freedom (17). Another version of such an “imaginary” occurs in the one-page story by
Pat Moriarty (Artists Respond 58) where a giant if somewhat beleaguered figure of Uncle
Sam kneels and prays, asking “Dear God, Allah, Supreme Spaceman, Great Pumpkin,
whoever you are – please stop the cycle of hatred,” while behind him stand two
opposing pro- and anti- US groups holding placards. The manner in which the
mythologized figure of Uncle Sam towers over the more (perhaps “too”) human figures
in the background is indicative of how a universalising impulse, wrapped in national
iconography, is derived at the expense of more worldly politics. Like Spider-Man, the
iconic Uncle Sam is placed in the omniscient realm of the Gods and outside of history
with its transient squabbles and differences in opinion.
Behind nearly all of these graphic stories lies a disavowal of politics or history. The fable
allows for one form of disavowal, the invocation of a universal-but-thin
multiculturalism provides another. A third form, perhaps the most widespread within
the two volume collection, involves the predominance of stories about children.
Children form part of a more general trope of innocence. They are depicted as victims,
witnessing but uncomprehending, even wielding model planes, unaware of their role in
the mass-destruction they are watching. In an image by Patrick Zircher, Derek Fridolfs
and Hi-Fi, two schoolgirls in a classroom hold hands as they witness the burning of the
towers on a television screen. The innocence of their bond is all that is needed to protect
them from the lessons of history (Heroes 12). Significantly their backs are turned to
preclude the possibility of any individualised response as the focal point remains fixed
on the televised event. Children are often shown in the absence of parents, who might
invoke a more worldly connection to events. In a story by Robert Kirkman and Tony
Moore the only adult figure appears on television, as distant and as abstract as the
burning towers that one child cannot help but witness (Artists Respond 164). In figure 2
we see groups of children with their backs turned to the WTC playing games, unaware
of the destruction behind them. The lone child who is witness, shares an awareness and
spectator position with the reader. This identification allows a strategy of disavowal to
come into play. Just as the question “why did this happen to us?” remained
unanswerable after 9/11, so too the tension between knowledge and innocence is
subsumed within this figure of the single child and our connection to her and her gaze.
It allows the reader to be both innocent and knowing at the same time by adopting the
position of the lone child who witnesses as an adult. One can share an adult’s horror of
the degree of mass-suffering, while retaining a child’s innocence with respect to issues of
causation and explanation.
[Insert fig. 2]
The centrality of the child-figure to many of these stories invokes a passive witness to
suffering and as such resonates with the passivity of the civilian population at large,
compelled to watch the events of 9/11 repeatedly on television. Here one might also

14
recall President Bush's appeal to citizens to "shop, fly, and spend" at the outset of the
War on Terror, a supplication that contrasts sharply with the more conventional rallying
of the citizenry around a war effort - asking for civic support and individual sacrifice.
Like the cultural response more generally, and in a similar way to Spider-Man #36,
agency within these comics remains within the limited sphere of the new “heroes” – the
fire-fighters and rescue workers frozen within an idealized tableaux. For instance Rob
Haynes, Tim Townsend and David Self depict Captain America on his knees overcome
by grief and it is only a child wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with “I ♥ NY” that can
restore him to purpose (Heroes 19). Agency outside of the heroic remains generally a
taboo subject for 9/11, for example, one thinks of the search for the ‘falling man’ – a
search where the very idea of suicide was rejected by the man’s family as an
inappropriate kind of agency (Singer). If these narratives are unable to register the
complexities of 9/11, this is hardly a limitation of the genre. In appealing to multicultural
difference that is both in its form and content predicated upon the refusal of difference,
these little narratives reflect wider cultural pathologies. In their recourse to
myth/allegory and the figure of the child/hero – such stories steadfastly refuse the
political. In this sense they form precursors to the “gritty realist films” United 93 and
WTC which emphasize a narrow field of action and heroism at the expense of any wider
examination or contextualization of the events of 9/11.

Conclusion
This article has examined how mainstream comics were mythologised events of
9/11 through a series of narrative and representative strategies. The creation of the
superhero figure as transcendent witness and the invocation of a liberal imaginary
worked to frame 9/11 in ways that precluded political and historically embedded
interpretations. By standing outside of time, the superhero’s meta-commentary and
heroic gestures perform, due to their already exceptional status, a form of vicarious
mourning and interpretation for a largely passive public. The superhero figure
performs a conservative incorporation of 9/11 and in this sense can be compared to
President Bush, whose own acts of witnessing and memorialising dominated the
newscape immediately after 9/11. By contrast the less epic stories in volumes such as
Artists Respond, focus on the public and “ordinary” citizens, and invoke an ideal of
pluralism and tolerance. However, in their use of myths, fables, children and reified
images of multiculturalism, such stories end up reducing the voices of the public to a
largely singular perspective. Ultimately, the liberal collective and Spider-Man’s share an
extremely limited form of articulation. Passivity and inaction applies to children,
multiculturalism as much as it does to the world of heroes.
If politics is largely excluded from these comic book narratives, it is still possible
to trace broad divisions between two forms of mythologizing. There is a difference
between standing above history in the world of the Gods, the certainty of conservatism
often aligned with the American nation, and the idealised present of liberalism and the
eternal good will. If the superhero as witness is transhistorical, the liberal ideal is
always present as an imaginary that precedes the corruption of historical and religious

15
intolerance. The liberal individual can never aspire to the godly and instead must find
value in the innocence of the child or the unthreatening multicultural collective. We
have seen that these comic books have had to respond to an anomalous situation,
particularly in the relationship between serialisation and the event, but rather than
provide a critical response they have managed to domesticate the events of 9/11 within
their own formal and mythological structures. It remains to be seen whether, with the
passing of time and the increasing reflexivity of the genre, mainstream comic books will
be able to go beyond these limited frameworks, perhaps adopting the formal
innovativeness of works like Moore and Gebbie, which open up, rather than close off
interpretative possibility.

16
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