Ten Years Gone

September is such a peaceful month when you think about it. The leaves are changing, the weather is cooling off, kids are settled or settling into school and new programs begin on TV. There's football and the baseball season is winding down. It's just a good month for a lot of things.

September 11th is an important day. It always has been in my family because that's my parents' wedding anniversary. Ten years ago, the world stopped for a while and we all remember where we were and what we were doing and it was a terrible day.

Ten years ago I was trying to break into the comic book industry. As you'll see below, I wasn't nearly good enough but my stories were good and getting better. It was a couple years later that I switched from drawing and writing to just writing, then to just writing prose. I'm still trying to 'break in' but into a different industry than comics.

On the first anniversary of the attacks, I wrote and drew the comic below and I apologize for the crummy scans but I don't have the original pages any more. What I wanted to get across was that even here in Kansas, where the world's greatest superhero was raised, the overwhelming attacks on that day affected us, too, though not as significantly as those on the planes, or in New York City or at the Pentagon. I was most affected by the events on United flight 93. They were ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the face of extraordinary evil. That's true heroism. I don't know that I could ever be that brave. I hope I don't ever have to find out.


Ten years ago, September was just another month to most Americans who either noticed it or didn't. Now everyone knows when September comes.