Deploying an array of comic book devices, from silhouettes and cinematic
close-ups to splash pages, timelines, and a restrained use of color, the creators
transformed the report of the 9/11 Commission (National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks upon the United States) into a visually appealing text. His goal as an artist,
Colón later remembered, was to “make everything look as neutral as possible . . .
you have to make the image work on the page but you also have to be true to the
historical record.”5 In this context, the “historical record” was the report itself, and
the graphic adaptation was accordingly boxed in by the self-imposed limitations of
the commission’s own research agenda. But Jacobson and Colon kept their partnership
going. Their subsequent collaboration, a work of “graphic journalism” on the
war on terror, did not find as many buyers, but it offered a carefully researched,
factually grounded, and relentless critique of U.S. foreign policy under the Bush
administration.6