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We’ve had books, documentaries and movies about 9/11 – this week we got the comic book. Is the most defining moment of a generation in danger of becoming just another franchise with a Happy Meal tie-in on the horizon? Or are we in many ways still struggling to understand what happened that day? And does a comic book help us achieve that?

Actually, “The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation” seeks simply to be the illustrated version of the official 9/11 commission report, which became a best-seller when released in 2004. But this graphic book has spurred plenty of discussion over its worth. Written by Sid Jacobson (of Richie Rich fame) and illustrated by Ernie Colon (who drew Casper), it hit bookstores this week. Here’s a USA Today take on it:

Neither author nor illustrator calls the work a comic book, even if it uses a comic-book format, including sound effects: R-RUMBLE when the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses, or BLAMM! when American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon.

It pictures scenes aboard the doomed planes and towers. But, Jacobson says, "it's not a dramatization," unlike the movies World Trade Center and United 93. "It's the story of an investigation. ... It's graphic journalism."

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