Oliver Chin provides an educational twist on 9-11 commentary with his Nine of One.
Randy:
Don and I have covered a variety of comics in our tenure as reviewers, including the post-9-11 benefit books from various companies, but Nine of One still stands out as something quite different from what we've seen before.
Don:
I think what sets this book apart isn't the subject matter, but Chin's odd but interesting approach in the storytelling and narration. This is what self-publishing was made for: so experimental, new voices could be heard.
Nine of One: A Window to the World #1
written & illustrated by Oliver Chin
Don:
A history teacher in California realizes that in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, there's no point in sticking to his lesson plan. So he comes up with an idea to engage his students, whose minds, understandably, aren't on education. He tells them to interview a stranger about the effect the attacks had on him or her, and the result was a collection of culturally and emotionally diverse reactions.
Randy:
September 11th had quite an effect on me, not only because I'm an American but because I had lived in New York about two years prior, and reading any comic or news story related to that day still awakens a bit of anger and sadness in me. The anger gets even more strong when I realize how President Bush, John Ashcroft and others have used this tragedy to advance their own political agenda and worse, how many Americans are falling right in line with what they're selling. So it's always good to get a reminder that there are sane, balanced voices out there talking about those events and their ramifications, and Nine of One provides that.
Don:
Randy and I share some perspective on the event... I was working with him in New York during his stint there as well. But I have a different tack on the whole thing as well: I'm not American. The crumbling of the World Trade Center towers affected me, sure, but anger wasn't among the emotions I experienced. My perspective was how the attacks threatened to change the world, in small ways and in significant ones. But there was still a slight distance from the whole thing for me, overall. Here, Chin bridges that distance with an informed awareness of both American reactions and broader world views.
Randy:
I can't say this is a perfect book. Chin's art and design style here doesn't really seem to fit the comic-book medium all that well, with stiff and posed panels, inconsistent lettering that jumps all over the page and then page upon page of text. The use of the medium is clumsy at best, and I honestly think this would have worked better as a strictly text piece or maybe text alongside actual photographs.
Don:
I don't agree. There is a disjointed approach here, yes, but it struck me as being purposeful. The narration is a flowing entity, shifting from one voice to another to another, throughout the whole issue, and that unusual approach is reflected in the artwork and layout as well. In a way, it reminded me of the unconventional approach one finds in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. The artwork boasts a simple, almost crude look at times, but at others, it's richly detailed and captures a poewrful sense of realism..
Randy:
While I'm not sure comics is the best medium for the story, however, the book is rescued by Chin's writing. The stories jump from history of other countries to the history of America to the focus on a group of California high school students, and though there's nothing you'd call characterization or plot, there is a central focus that makes it quite clear what Nine of One is all about. It's about the ramifications of 9-11 not on the world stage, but on a smaller scale, how it affects these students and the people they know, or the people they didn't know before their assignment.
Quite honestly, I'm not sure whether this is all entirely created by Chin or whether there are in fact high schoolers at James Madison who contributed the text pieces that fill out the last half of the book. Either way, those text pieces (and occasionally comic pages) are the strong point of the book, with real individual voices and takes on what happened on September 11th, before and after, and what should happen. The stories, some focused on the larger events that caused Afghanistan to become home to the Taliban and some focused on the smaller effects it has on their own families, give a real sense of the change that 9-11 created in just about everyone. Clearly, there's a lot to be said here, and Chin has found an interesting and engaging way of saying it.
Don:
One might argue that the material here is a bit dated, that we're emotionally removed from the events of 9-11. But Code Orange alerts and duct-tape sellouts at Home Depot make it clear just how important it is to keep the notions in mind... but not as a justification. Yes, more than 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001, but the real victim was America's defining sense of personal freedom. Expressing unpopular ideas and protesting against government were once symbols of what it is to be American, but now, those notions are considered by some who claim to be patriots as being wholly un-American and bordering on treason. Chin's work here offers a more balanced perspective.
Randy:
For what it's worth, Don, expressing unpopular ideas and protesting against government are still symbols of what it is to be American, as the protests throughout the country over the past few weeks have shown. Despite what George W. Bush or Condoleezza Rice may have to say on the matter, books like Nine of One and other forms of balanced, intelligent examination of the after-effects of 9-11 are still to be found in America.
For more information about Nine of One, visit
