So supremely my kind of book. In The Shadow of No Towers is one of the best explorations of Post-9/11 America I've ever seen, partially because it communicates via pop culture, something I love.

Clearly, after his home city was attacked, Art Spiegelman (the master artist behind Maus) buried himself in familiar media. As a result, this graphic novel is coated in references to comics, including his own, and popular cultural symbols in general.

The biggest downside is that I found the constant art style changes to be a bit exhausting after 20 or so pages. The style is incredibly unpredictable, by choice, and not all of the choices felt as intentional as the others.

It's aged fairly well, with a lot of the concerns raised being even more relevant today. However, it also makes the book seem a bit less clever than it probably was at the time. I doubt railing against George W Bush was as commonplace back then, especially in mainstream literature.

Nowhere near the level of importance as Maus, but the mastery is still there. It's a gigantic book and so expensive, so try and rent or just take a peek at it. It's really worth it. ( )

Graphic novel about twin towers. I found it confusing and would not read again

Art Spielgelman was living in New York near the twin towers on Setember 11 2001. His daughter was attending school right next to them when they fell. This small collection of double-paged full-colour comics documents Spielgelman's response to the shock of the event, and to political events in the USA subsequent to it. It provides some insights into the feelings of New Yorkers at the time. Spiegelman himself writes that he was shocked back into writing comics and smoking, The attack filled him with fear and paranoia. He was angered by the politics of terrorism. He also realised that he loved his city and wouldn't leave it. I found this to be an interesting but strange book, each double spread physically huge but the book itself not long enough for the topic. ( )

Fascinating book - deals with another trauma, after MAUS which is concerned with World War II, this time 9/11 is the central theme. Spiegelman makes interesting connections to his earlier work and other literary works (for example, he talks about the albatross hanging on his neck - this is a reference to Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, I believe). Absolutely a must-read if you're into this sort of books! ( )

This highly underrated work, by the acclaimed author of Maus, can easily be written off as a shallow account of september 11th donning an strange end-cap on comics history. To conceive it as such ignores many of the formal and structural elements Spiegelman employs to add density to what is otherwise a relatively short text.

The size and weight (literal) of this book were no accident. Reading it on my pillow I felt engulfed by it and my arms quickly tired under its mass. Beyond this obvious structural metaphor the book itself is divided into two parts each prefaced by a substantial text introduction.

The first part is a frenetic comic manifestation of the September 11th events as well as the emotional bedlam with which they endued the author. **Spoiler** These pages are peppered with what appear to be non-sequitir shifts in imagery that only become meaningful when one reads the second half of the book **Spoiler Over**

The second half of the book, upon an uncritical reading, seems to be nothing more than a tangentially relevant history of the comic medium. In fact every obscure comic that Spiegelman digs up is apposite not just to the events themselves and his experience of them, **Spoiler** but the imagery resonates directly with the the non-sequitirs from the first half of the book. I find it interesting to that in order to read the second half of the book you must turn it on its side (as if the book itself has fallen over). ( )