Friday was a pretty solid day. Panels I attended included:
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
Paramount Pictures (Stardust)
Pitchin' Impossible? (subtitled: A Useful Panel About Entering Hollywood)
(Gaiman talking about Stardust, which looked pretty good.)
Other than panels, I had a day featuring actual swag, something I avoided yesterday. I did a somewhat disjointed Star Wars Miniatures demo at the Wizards of the Coast booth, then went and rolled the die for the best swag so far -- the Attack on Endor set for Star Wars Minis (retails for $20, includes an AT-ST). Other than that, I picked up copies of The Patron Saint of Plagues by Barth Anderson and World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war by Max Brooks (the latter required signing up for a free podcast of the first chapter, which sounds like fun anyway). Today wasn't very purchase heavy, with a $5 copy of Dave Gibbons' War Machine and one other book that I'll post if I like it when I read it.
Many notes on The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation in the extended.
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation was a really solid panel discussing a project I hadn't yet heard about -- a graphic novel adaptation of the report from the 9/11 commission. Panel speakers included one of the creators, Sid Jacobson, Thomas LeBien from publisher Hill & Wang, moderator Calvin Reid from Publishers Weekly, Roger [didn't quite get his last name] -- Burton?] who backed the initial project, and former Senator Slade Gorton, who was a member of the commission.
I'll include some of the question prompts given to panel members and summaries of their responses.
To Thomas LeBien: "Why the 9/11 report?"
He is interested in nonfiction and in topics that can use the graphical format to be more clearly understood than in any other medium. For example, it was possible to put all four planes on a simultaneous timeline (which the creators did).
To Senator Gorton: "Does the book work?"
Generally, the commission has been careful not to endorse documentaries or books. This graphic novel is the exception. The commission has been impressed with the accuracy and thoughtfulness with which the graphic novel summarizes a very long book. This is the first time they've dealt with an offshoot of their report and liked it.
To Sid Jacobson: "What did you try to do?"
They wanted the essence of what was in the rport. They followed the report chapter by chapter, interpreting it to make the core message plain. So many things have been presented as "new news" since the report came out that were already mentioned in the report -- this drove Ernie Colon to suggest the initial idea. The timeline was his first specific inspiration -- for example, by the time both WTC towers had been struck, the fourth plane was just taking off. This is clear when the timelines are run in parallel in the graphic adaptation. This success pushed them to find different graphic ways to show things.
To Thomas LeBien: "What was important to this being right?"
Working with the adaptation as it came in, constantly cross-referencing with the original report. Also, they had to decide which elements to distill down, and which textual elements would be represented visually -- for example, the clothing transition of the hijackers as they radicalized and then joined the hijacking plot.
The editing process was collegial, with no major disputes. They necessarily had to visualize some things for which they lacked visual reference, and this is cued in the imagery by a switch from photorealism to a less realistic style.
"How will the book be disseminated? Will there be a movie?"
Roger replied.
He gave a backstory on the project itself, then noted that they're currently in discussion with Michael Eisner over a possible movie adaptation (a movie adaptation of a graphic novel adaptation of a report).
"What does this mean for comics as a medium for nonfiction?"
Tom gave the first answer.
The "golly gee whiz" attitude toward comics as nonfiction is silly. Comics have been around for a long time, and graphical nonfiction for a long time. In fact, he relies on Sid and Ernie's vast experience with comics to let him know how it's been done -- and often to let him know that something he thinks of as innovative, isn't.
Sid answered next.
Before the advent of Superman really built the industry and made it all superheroes, comics covered a wide range of topics. Parents magazine did sports and biography comics for ten years. Later on, comics were used in World War II-era training manuals and by the unions to tell their stories. The graphic novel today has given new impetus to this long-standing use of comics for nonfiction.
He noted that they're now working on a history of the "war on terror," strictly as a high-level, more-or-less nonanalytical, journalistic view of the topic. I think even sans analysis, a book like this will throw certain trends and acts into sharp relief -- when you can flip thirty pages in either direction and compare years, you can see a lot of patterns that are hard for the average viewer to collect from daily television news.
I'm looking forward to this one.