From the Washington Post:
This weekend, more than 90 syndicated cartoonists will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks through the distilled power of the artfully inked image.
When readers open their Sunday “funnies,” they will see cartoon responses that range from honor to critical anger.
The 9/11 comics tribute, spearheaded by King Features, will include creators from such other top syndicates as Creators, Tribune Media Services and Universal Uclick, and the Washington Post Writers Group. On Sept. 11, all the participating comics will also be viewable at the site www.CartoonistsRemember911.com.
“At a time when the national conversation will be one of remembrance,” King Features comics Editor Brendan Burford told Comic Riffs, “we thought it was appropriate for the cartoonists to join in and give readers something to reflect with.”
To pull back the curtain a bit on this tribute, Comic Riffs asked a sampling of participating cartoonists to share their reactions to commemorating 9/11, as well as their memories of that dark day a decade ago. Here are their thoughts:
DARRIN BELL (“Candorville”):
Ten years ago, on the afternoon of 9/11, I drew an editorial cartoon that caused protests, and became a … national story because it depicted turban-wearing terrorists with a flight manual burning in Hell. The evening of 9/11, I turned to my wife and said, “It’s a good thing Gore didn’t win,” because I wanted blood and I knew Bush would give it to me. I’d spent the previous year drawing cartoons about Bush stealing Florida, yet here I was thanking God Bush was in the White House. He had me.
But then … we invaded the wrong country, started calling each other traitors and started torturing prisoners and mocking the United Nations. We didn’t ask the rich to sacrifice at all.
When King Features asked us to participate in the anniversary project, I spent months trying to come up with an uplifting, forward-looking image. But I realized that’s just not honest, because we didn’t respond to this the way the “Greatest Generation” responded to their [much more perilous] crisis. We fumbled this. We forgot who we were. We did not honor either those who we lost on 9/11, or the heroes who responded to it on our behalf. And while everyone else will probably use the anniversary to honor the victims of 9/11, I thought it was equally important that someone takes a moment to say we have to be introspective, admit our failings and learn from our mistakes.
Ten years ago, when I drew that first cartoon, it was necessary to remind ourselves what was right about America, and to point out that whatever our failings, what they did was inexcusable. Ten years later, it’s time to stop saying “It’s too soon” for introspection.
Read what the other cartoonists have to say at the Washington Post.
View Comments (139)
I avoided all media the days leading up to and the day of 9/11/2011. I knew I couldn't handle watching, hearing, or reading whatever people felt was appropriate to put further on that anniversary, especially since so much of it would be so shallow and inane and the pain was still too deep for me. I wish I hadn't avoided your strip, though, Mr. Bell. I nearly started to cry when I saw the Twin Towers in your art, and I wanted to hug you for writing what you did. Thank you, Mr. Bell. Thank you, thank you.
You're welcome, I'm glad you ended up reading it.
I got around to reading Sunday's comics today. I was blown away by yours.
I saw tons of predictable 9/11 strips. Some just seemed lazy; draw a flag or an all-black panel and don't bother thinking up anything meaningful. I liked Doonesbury's strip though, which made a point and had a punchline. I was surprised how simple and effective Sally Forth's was.
Yours was my favorite though. I watched the news coverage yesterday and felt my blod boil when I saw George W. Bush speaking at Ground Zero about how faith in God will get us through this. I couldn't list all the things that make that an outrage. I wanted to see one protester. One sign. I'd hoped one family member of someone who'd died in the towers would have pointed at Bush and said, "You may not be responsible for this, but you let in the men who were. You fell asleep on your watch."
As a culture, we treat victims strangely, expecting them to just sit there quietly crying with a halo of innocence around them. If they speak out, we consider it impolite. And if anyone blames them for anything, we consider it obscene. All Americans were victims on 9/11, yes, but some of us are not innocent. Some of us did inexcusable things in the time afterwards, and some of us did nothing to stop it.
I am sick of hearing the lie that "We are a stronger nation now, unchanged by what the terrorists did to us." We aren't unchanged. We as a people showed that we would accept any heinous thing in the name of 'protecting' us. We did nothing to stop tax cuts for the rich, torture, subversion of our constitution... We didn't start protesting until Obama threatened us with a public option for health insurance.
Despite sounding like I hate America, I don't. I think we are ahead of the rest of the world in many areas. But in others, we look at the finish line ahead of us, and just sit down and say "That's close enough." I love my country but I hate seeing the potential it wastes. I hate the fact that I so often feel ashamed of it. I feel towards my country the way the child of an alcoholic feels towards their self-destructive parent. That same mixture of love and disappointment.
I hate that I can't love my country wholeheartedly.
Alex, I agree with Darrin that your posting was eloquent. The fact that pure emotion shows through rather than just criticism will enable even those who disagree to accept your position as valid and patriotic.
Thanks very much.
I definitely agree that there's different types of criticism. I really don't want to be the kind of person who just bitches about stuff to get attention. When I complain, it's not about me. It's about me seeing a problem, and wanting to see it get fixed.
Thank you for your eloquent response. You've pretty much summed up my feelings about the entire decade.
O.O
YOU called ME eloquent!? <ascends directly to nirvana>
Seriously, thank you. Both for the compliment and your awesome strip. :)
Chaya's starting to feel like a troll.
I looked it up on Wikipedia, and you are right. I am so sorry. The reason I got off topic before was that I was defending myself when a couple of people called me names. I was a sheep, etc. I should not have done that on Darrin's site. Forgive me? However, I didn't do it to "evoke a response" or get people off topic on purpose.
Ken, what's a troll? Are you talking about the storybook monsters? This must be a tech term. I know about BOTS, so is a troll like a bot? You know I don't usually chat this long. 9-11 really, REALLY affected me. Seriously.
You honor solemn occasions your way, I'll honor them my way. And I chose to honor this occasion by asking Americans to think candidly about how we responded to what happened ten years ago. If you don't want to do that, I understand.
Mr. Bell, I am an Afghanistan war veteran, and you couldn't have possibly offended me more.
Oh, I am remembering why we went into Iraq. Saddam (Sad Dam) was doing things to his own people and had TORTURE CHAMBERS under his palace, etc. We forget those things.
That's not why we went into Iraq.
Did I miss something in the comic? Where did Bell say the war veterans did something wrong? I can't remember where, but I think I remember somewhere where he said you guys were awesome (or some such adjective). Oh, he said invading the wrong country. Actually, that may be right, as the right country was Afghanistan (and I believe, Pakistan, also), no? It wasn't the soldiers' fault for going in and fighting. It was their commander in chief giving faulty directions. You guys did your jobs TOTALLY with admiration, courage, and dedication!!!! In fact, you guys DID find Bin Laden and take him out, right? I am wondering, however, why the war is still going on? What is the objective NOW at this point? Did they explain it to you? What were you told?
Why?
I apologize for taking so long to reply. Instead of using the day as a day to remember the people who died in the attack, and those who died later as a response to them, you decided to rant. Whether the rant was justified is another debate. But I took offense at using the day to air your grievances. It's your right, and it's your strip. I just wanted to let you know how I felt about it.
Thanks for your response. I feel there was no more appropriate a day to point out that all the memorials and all the solemnity in the world can't change that America does not honor those who died in the attack, or those who died later as a response to them, with the actions we've taken.
I think demanding we do better by them is a more appropriate and useful way to honor those we've lost, than simply reminding people that we lost them (after all, nobody who lived through that time needs a reminder;, because we'll never forget).
So on just one day, you couldn't keep it apolitical and honor the occasion, could you? One commenter said you said "what needed to be said." Well a great many other people said it, and said it better than you did, and did not use this solemn anniversary to do so. This strikes me not so much as a statement that "needed to" be made, but rather narcissism in its most tasteless form.
To me, all the strips simply flying a flag, saying "Never Forget", or "Freedom isn't free" (justifying the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and the hundreds of thousands who died there) represent narcissism -- or cowardice for just going along with the flow, or just plain blindness and ignorance.
As criminal as 9/11 was, we should all take a close look at how the U.S. government has used our horror at 9/11 to pull us behind it, supporting its acts which have been many times more criminal (if measured in people killed). The criminal wars still continue, and every official 9/11 commemoration serves to fan the flames.
I for one applaud a little truth-telling on 9/11 rather than mindless flag-waving.
Well, bully for you. I disagree with what you have to say. But that does not mean that I am ignorant, or engaged in "mindless" flag-waving. It is that arrogance -- the self-righteousness of the America-should-be-ashamed-of-itself crowd, that I find off-putting.
And your solution, post-911, would have been what? Navel-gazing? Trying to figure out what we did to make them so gosh-darned mad? Really. What would YOU have done, had you had the power?
There's a wide spectrum of responses between "navel-gazing" and "invading the wrong country."
Thanks for the feedback, everyone.
No, this was not narcissism. It was a Robert Frost re-creation:
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Hmm. I wonder from whom you got the inclination to go off on your own travels even when no one else is taking your path. Must have been someone who was a strong role model? Congratulations on having the courage to do as Robert Frost suggested he did in his poem "The Road Not Taken".
And how, exactly, is this courage? It's not exactly as though Bell is saying something nobody else has said. I am always amused that 'progressives' go around congratulating themselves on 'speaking truth to power,' or some such crap, and pretending that it took a great deal of courage to do so... like they risk being thrown into prison camp or something. Give me a break. "The Road Not Taken"? Don't make me laugh. That road has been "courageously" taken so many times, and by so many people, that's it's recently been six-laned.
Flig, I just re-read the above comment and saw that I overlooked your last description of the road not taken. VERY creative. I am SO chuckling! You're brilliant!
Mr. Bell,
Thank you for this submission. Takes a lot of courage to say what needs to be said. I will be following your strip more regularly!
NewsBusters: Comic Strip Artists Honor Memory of 9/11 Victims, and Then There's 'Candorville' http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2011/09...
Sept. 11, 1974, 2 weeks after the twin towers were built, the Rebbe from Chabad made a speech. He said that the world out there has many terrible events happening, and said let the twin towers be a light to bring goodness into the world. Here is a part of the Chabad editorial:
A decade has passed, with shoe bombers, underwear bombers, and mail bombers attempting to thwart us. Our naivete has vanished, but we have yet to discover security and calm. Our elected officials and public servants dedicate timeless efforts to better our safety. But there is an important contribution of the ordinary citizen of the world.
A world shrouded in darkness calls for a greater intensity of light, brightness that each one of us creates around ourselves.
We were advised to light EXTRA candles on Shabbot to symbolize that we are, in a small way, brightening the world's darker side.