Art Spiegelman is one of the most revered figures in the last twenty years of "serious" comics. His graphic novel treatment "Maus" won a Pulitzer Prize, and has changed the lives of millions who have read it. He has a strong sense of history, a connection with the past that enabled him to explain the horrors of World War in a cat-and-mouse metaphor, and more importantly, to exorcise his family's own demons at being survivors of the Holocaust.

He revisits these demons in the recently published oversized book "In the Shadow of No Towers." Spiegelman, a New York City resident, was stirred and disturbed by the events of September 11th, 2001. His lingering fears and revived survivor's guilt stirred him to again write and draw comics, this time in a different format, and with a different style and purpose. He's still exorcising personal demons, but he's also sending a message--not to the Nazis of the distant past, but to the Americans of the 21st Century.

Spiegelman explains his motives--both personal and public--in a long introduction titled "The Sky Is Falling!" If you read that introduction it explains the rest of the book, and makes it more readable and enjoyable. The final paragraph is probably the most conscise explanation: "My strips are now a slow-motion diary of what I experienced while seeking some provisional equanimity--though three years later I'm still ready to lose it at the drop of a hat or a dirty bomb. Ii still believe the world is ending, but I concede that it seems to be ending more slowly than I once thought...so I figured I'd make a book."

The rest of the book is really only ten of Spiegelman's strips, but each one is a 17" x 24" masterpiece, crammed with his own thoughts and fears, tributes to past comics pioneers, and his reaction to the new world sparked on that day.

A recurring visual theme in the strips is the glowing skeleton of the South Tower as it collapsed--an image burned into Spiegelman's brain that comes to symbolize his own relationship to the disaster. It slowly fades through the course of the strips, but it's still there years after the attacks.

Spiegelman is using these pages as a therapy for his own neuroses, and on some pages that's more evident than others. He addresses many issues--the move from Americans being appalled at the attacks to becoming jaded at the images on their television screens...his feeling as terrorized by his own government as by Al-Qaida...the failure of the Bush administration to stop Bin Laden and the subsequent diversion to Iraq...he's entering some controversial territory. Spiegelman picks up characters from older (and I mean OLDER) strips, like the Katzenjammer Kids--putting "WTC Tower Hats" on both, and making them recurrent figures in the strips.

He and his own family, wife and children, become characters in the strips, most poignant when they revisit his daughter's school, trying to pick her up in the shadow of the World Trade Center. This strip in particular was interesting, as panels showing him and his wife are interspersed with his mouse character from Maus...and images showing children in gas masks and a "Mars Attacks" trading card from 1962.

As the series progresses past the first anniversary of the attacks, he addresses the new anti-semitism, and the growing divide between the "red states" and "blue states"...and his strips become less coherent and more stream of consciousness. He compares the stench of ash on 9/11 with the stench of ash in the concentration camps, and his own struggle to avoid the "jingoism" of current times.

The last half of the book is reprints from ancient history--the very first comic strips in newspapers. He explains the reason for their being there--some as sources for his own inspiration, some as eerie predictors of our post-9/11 state. These include classic strips like "Hogan's Alley," "The Upside-Downs," "Happy Hooligan," and "Little Nemo in Slumberland"...and there's a second introduction to these strips to place them in the proper context. My personal favorite is the "Little Nemo" piece by Winsor McCay--extraordinary artwork combine with the story to produce a classic work. The images of the tumbling skyscrapers are surely the reason this particular segment was included, but it's done as fantasy instead of horror.

I've read several different "comic book" takes on 9/11...both DC Comics and Marvel Comics produced tributes of sorts to the victims and heroes of that day. This is by far the most personal, and the most disturbing in ways, because it doesn't take the easy answer. By the end of his book, Spiegelman has plumbed the depths of his psyche, and still hasn't found peace. And maybe that's the way it should be. It's an honest, intriguing look into the heart and mind of a New Yorker, and I'm glad I stumbled across it. If you find it, take it and read it. It will be fascinating to revisit this book ten years from now, or twenty, and see what sort of world we're in then--In the Shadow of No Towers.



Recommended: Yes