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Responding in Ink: Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and 9/11
Responding in Ink: Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and 9/11 explores how comic book and graphic novel artists joined the 9/11 response. It delves into the use of the World Trade Center as a target for fictional attacks before 9/11, as well as the multi-decade response to the terrorist attacks through the lens of comics and graphic novels.
On view through February 2028.
About the Exhibition
Comic books were among the first mass media works of fiction to respond to 9/11. Some, published within months of the attacks, raised money for charity. Creators touched on the emotions of the attacks, creating memoirs, reflections, books commemorating anniversaries, and educational works.
Cover of Wonder Woman Vol. 35, No. 225
1976, DC Comics (formerly known as National Periodical Publications, Inc.)
Cover by Ernie Chan
© DC. All Rights Reserved.
Pre-9/11 comic book supervillains made New York City's Twin Towers a frequent focus of dastardly plots and a compelling backdrop for larger-than-life battles.
There are approximately 50 works displayed, including covers, pages, and original art from comic books and graphic novels stretching from the early 1970s through the decades after 9/11.
Comic book and graphic novel creators responded to the attacks of September 11, 2001 in myriad ways. Responding in Ink explores some of these works of art, from the raw emotion and focus on first responders in the weeks immediately following 9/11, to the books that attempted to explain, educate, and memorialize that would come in the decades to follow.
Objects on View
Big Apple Diaries
2021, Roaring Brook Press
Alyssa Bermudez
Alyssa Bermudez was a middle school student in New York City on 9/11. Her father worked in the World Trade Center, and her mother worked nearby. Both survived the attacks. In 2013, Bermudez was taking a comic class and decided to use her middle school diary “entries as examples to explore something further.” One of those deeper explorations was 9/11, which she said, “was the first time I saw the world differently. Everything that mattered before became smaller and it felt like we had to grow up overnight.” In 2021, she published Big Apple Diaries, her graphic memoir.
Inked page from The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 2, No. 36
2001, Marvel Comics
J. Michael Straczynski (author), John Romita, Jr. (artist), Scott Hanna (inker), Avalon's Dan Kemp (colorist), Comicraft's Wes 'n' Rich (letterers)
© Marvel
Issue 36 of The Amazing Spider-Man was produced in just a few weeks, arriving on shelves by the end of 2001. One of Marvel's efforts to address the 9/11 attacks, the comic book highlighted the heroism of emergency responders.
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Special Thanks to DC and Marvel.
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