About ten minutes ago, having looked up the Wiki entry for Art Spiegelmann's In the Shadow of No Towers, I clicked through (ever think about how there is some odd similarity between a flipbook and surfing the Web?) to the "List of cultural references for 9/11 attacks" Wiki entry, and then clicked through to the link to your site. I'm writing a book about 9/11 and memory, and upon seeing the explanatory video and reading a few of your contributors' brief essays, wondered if my own goal of stimulating reflection hadn't already been better accomplished by your terrific project. I love that you chose such a simple, idiosyncratic medium (we used to love to make flipbooks as kids, back around the time of the JFK assassination – now there's another historical event that needs flipbook reflection!) to provoke thought about this seminal event in world history. I love the flipbook way that I found out about it. Today I am writing an essay about the havoc that comic books have played upon the American imagination, and how America has truly become a cartoon culture, a caricature of the caricatures that a tribe of talented Lower East Side Jewish boys dreamed up during the Depression. I was thinking about Stan Lee and Thor, and DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and had asked myself if Art Spiegelmann worked for either of these outfits. That made me think back to the day (just about a month ago) that I went in to the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, and, after witnessing the orgy of high definition, time-lapse, multi-camera sentimental pornography that is Jim Whittaker's Rebirth, and the other virtual realities crammed in to that little room to engulf visitors with high-toned propaganda, I went in to the gift shop, and was surprised to see that In the Shadow of No Towers was offered there. It is the only one of the hundreds of books and videos that I could see attempts to call into question the imperial escapades that have followed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

So, thanks Art Spiegelmann for bringing your cartooning talents and your love of comic book history and your love of your native city together to create a work that will long outlive every other cultural product hawked in the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, and soon no doubt at the Memorial and the Museum; and thanks Scott Bl8ke for bringing your love for art and for community conversation together to help cut through the black magical hocus pocus done unto our comic book nation and an increasingly comic book world on that dark, halcyon day in 2001.

Dr. Kevin Dann