Attack aftermath finds its way into the funny pages

A boy spends hours in front of a television set watching news coverage about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. People are donating blood. Soldiers cry in front of a flag at half-staff.

Those images have become all too common in the real world. But they are also now appearing in the parallel universe of the comics pages, as cartoonists grapple with how -- or if -- they should address the subject.

“Comics distill life into little vignettes of wit, insight, absurdity or pathos and make us laugh and think about ourselves and our world,” said Bill Amend, creator of “Fox Trot.” “Right now is a hard time to laugh in America, and I think comics have an important job to do as we seek to return to some semblance of normalcy.”

But some cartoonists, such as “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams, say it’s inappropriate for their work to touch on terrorism.

“I think some people have a responsibility to restore normal spirits,” Adams said. “I feel I’m more in that crowd.”

Others say they will indirectly address the attack with nuance and a new measure of introspection. “I think we’re all struggling with the appropriate response,” said Brian Walker, one of the cartoonists behind “Hi & Lois.” “There aren’t a lot of easy answers.”

One strip that is already directly addressing the Sept. 11 attack is “Boondocks.” “I ultimately made the decision to deal with it because I feel that’s why I got in cartooning in the first place, to address these issues,” said creator Aaron McGruder. “For me, the way the media was covering (the attacks) and the way the politicians were acting seemed fair enough game.”

Likening some of the news coverage to “propaganda,” McGruder said it’s important to him to have people confront the issues surrounding the attack even while he acknowledges that some may take offense.

“I don’t think I’ve said anything that people haven’t said already,” he said. “Saying it satirically and on the comics pages might be too much for people. ... But I think if there’s an incident that’s worth ruining your career over, this is it. I’m always afraid I’ll regret not having said something, small as my voice may be.”

In this week’s “Fox Trot,” which follows the lives of a five-member family, Roger Fox decides to give blood despite a phobia about needles. His younger son, Jason, comes to admire him for it.

Taking a positive angle

Amend said he was looking for a positive angle to address the terrorist strike.

“I’ve made a point to establish that this cartoon family lives in the same world we all do,” Amend said. “It’s exaggerated, but it has the same movies and video games and buggy computer operating systems. This attack was too big an event to avoid if I wanted to maintain my fictional family’s credibility as a mirror of our own. Plus, there was the simple reality that it was all I could think about.”

Daily comics referring to the attack or its aftermath are only starting to appear now because strips are done weeks and sometimes months in advance of when they run. Because of that, a number of comics were altered or postponed because they contained jokes that once seemed innocuous but became inappropriate in the wake of the attacks.

Scott Adams reportedly has delayed strips that show Dilbert creating his own airline. “I don’t know how far we are pushing it out,” Adams told the Dow Jones News Service. “It might just have to go away.”

Last week, newspapers ran repeats of “Doonesbury” because the original strips criticized President Bush, which creator Garry Trudeau said in a statement would have been “clearly unsuitable for publication during a time of national crisis.”

Next week, Trudeau said he will have some of the characters “grapple with their loss of innocence and faith, and try to reattach meaning to lives that suddenly seem purposeless.” He also said he’s weighing such ideas of having B.D. get called up by the National Guard again, as he was during the Gulf War, and “at the suggestion of a reader, exploring the fate of Mike’s former co-workers at his old ad agency, which was located, improbably, at the World Trade Center.”

Time element is key

Trudeau and other cartoonists said one challenge is time. Because of long deadlines, it becomes difficult to address specific events because they may have ebbed from the public consciousness by the time the strip runs. And a sudden escalation or resolution of the conflict could make any strips about the terrorist attacks or their aftermath outdated, inappropriate, offensive.

Some of them are dealing with that by working on broad and timeless themes. Mort Walker, creator of “Beetle Bailey,” said he has drawn a strip that shows Beetle and Sgt. Snorkel crying near a flag at half-staff. But he said he didn’t think he’ll do much more on the subject. “It’s pretty hard when you’re trying to entertain people to bring in something like this,” he said.

Brian Walker, Mort’s son, said he is considering a strip to run around Christmas that would have Hi and Lois talking about how low-key their family celebration seems and mentioning that everybody is praying for peace.

Michael Kilian, a staff reporter for the Chicago Tribune and writer of “Dick Tracy,” said a group of “environmental terrorists” slated for an upcoming story line will be downsized to “environmental vandals.” He plans to talk with his partner, Dick Locher, about a story line in which the square-jawed flatfoot tries to bring to justice a group of radical terrorists led by a figure similar to Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the attacks.

Channeling anger

“We really do want to tackle this issue in a tasteful way to channel our anger and Dick Tracy’s anger because they are obviously the worst criminals he would have encountered,” Kilian said.

“Funky Winkerbean” is one of the few daily strips that uses the words “World Trade Center,” as one of the characters, a television reporter, is airing stories about the aftermath. Creator Tom Batiuk said he would be derelict if he didn’t address it.

“The comics that don’t touch on it, there’s a disconnect,” he said. “It’s kind of jarring.”

Nicole Hollander, who draws “Sylvia,” said she wants to address the issue in her strips, but has not figured out a way to do so.

“I feel very frustrated,” she said. “But I just don’t know at this moment what direction to take. I think many people are very frozen and the events seem to have overshadowed all our other concerns. ... No idea seems good enough right now.”