Although LJ’s official word on The 9/11 Report: The Graphic Adaptation will come from longtime Graphic Novel columnist Steve Raiteri in the 9/15 issue, I feel compelled to flesh out the nascent opinion I put forth in Honoring Hope and Grief. In short, I closed the book feeling, dare I say, safer, though that’s not quite the right word. Knowledge can be a burden, especially when it involves the horrific intelligence failings of your government. In theory, I shouldn’t sleep more soundly at night knowing that President Bush and Congress have a precious long way to go before we’re in synch with the innovative terrorists (see the Postscript, a downer if there ever was one). Yet something in me refuses to be shaken up, and I think Eve Ensler hits on it in her forthcoming book, Insecure at Long Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World (Random, review forthcoming). In short, if the most powerful democracy in the world can ignore several warning signs pointing to a massive terrorist attack on home soil—indeed, Jacobson and Colón’s renderings of these signs can be compared to literary crack; you can’t ingest them fast enough; you want more, more, more—then why should I worry? Clearly, no one runs this fractured, crazy world, a strong theme of the book. Another theme: even in the direst circumstances, we can wrest control. See the superhuman efforts of the passengers and crew of United 93, honored in the early pages in simple, almost pastel-toned sketches with smatterings of red for blood. Never, I repeat, never, at any point is this cutting-edge book sensational. If anything, it downplays the horror and beauty of human nature.