Looking back on 9/11, ten years later.

[A more clinical and objective view can be found here.]

When I first walked into English class at St. John's University, it was a little before 9am. The professor was one Dr. Robert Forman.  He was always entertaining, and there's something about him that tells you he cares that you learn something in his class.

The first person I saw was my classmate Tony.  I said hello, and he asked, "Did you hear something about a plane running into the World Trade Center?"

And I laughed.  All I could think is what idiot could have missed noticing that there were two rather large buttersticks in the sky right in front of him?

I explained that to Tony.  He agreed, and I gave it no thought at all for the rest of the 90-minute class.

I went from one class to another -- Christian Spirituality and Mysticism, 10:40am, taught by a priest whose name I can't recall right this moment.  He was not only pleasant, but happy.  He was also very Italian, and joked about it often.

When I arrived, the professor wasn't there, and someone came into class saying that classes were canceled.

Huh.  That's odd.

I went to the nearest inter-university phone and called my father -- who was an Assistant Dean at SJU.  I called, told him my class was cancelled, and how are you doing?

"Come to the office."

Ok .... click.

Walking from one building to the other required that I cross from Marillac Hall, past Council and Newman Halls -- a narrow corridor outside that was as well directed as any sidewalk intersection without a traffic stop.

Ironically, it was afforded the best view of the Manhattan skyline that the University had to offer, without going into the university library --- SJU is, for the record, the highest point in Queens.

But, I didn't stop for a second. My pace was quick and even, mainly because there were so few people in my way -- for once.

Though there was one odd bit of business going on at the time, something I found odd even before I made it to my father's office: there were clusters of people with their cell phones out.  After the third such group, I felt like I was in a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

I walked into my father's office at the other side of the library, and before I could even open my mouth, my father said, "Planes have crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.  The twin towers are gone, and the Pentagon is burning."

And I remember this quite clearly, because I had a little red notebook with me at the time ... my first thought was "Didn't Tom Clancy already write this novel?"

My father suggested I go to the library, and observe the skyline.  by the time I got there, the library was locked.  So I walked back to the terrace I had just gone over.

Instead of a skyline, there were ground based storm clouds running from south to north.  I stood there for an unknown length of time, completely focused on it.  I didn't even notice my acquaintance Andy walk up next to me.

"I can't wrap my mind around it," he said.  "I can't believe they're gone."

 If I replied to him, I don't remember.

Image Comics & The Big Lie

The first time I had ever heard of Image Comics, it was in a column by Peter David called But I Digress.  It was all mostly a matter of the strange and wonderously stupid things done in the comic book industry, as well as writing, and structure of stories, and why doesn't anyone ever stay dead already?

What I recalled of Image Comics was that it was art-focused. Essentially, all of the artists decided that they didn't need anything stupid like, oh, writers, for example. Because, after all, writers are just those people who fill in the word bubbles after the artist is done with the pictures, right?

Tell it to Joss Whedon, or JM Straczynski, or Peter David.

Now I digress ....

Anyway, with this background, I read about Image Comics trying to do a Twilight Zone episode.

Okay, goody.  I always like it when people try to imitate better writers. It's worked for some people better than others.

The Twilight Zone episode they wanted to mimic was one of their few hour long episodes, No Time Like the Past. A time traveler named Paul Driscoll tries to stop major events in history from going wrong.

Driscoll tries to evacuate Hiroshima.  The Japanese take one look at this anglo, and throw him in jail.

Driscoll tries to shoot Hitler. He is stopped because an annoying cleaning lady just won't leave him alone, and then becomes suspicious and calls the men in black trench coats on him.

He even tries to stop the Lusitania from being sunk.

At the end of the day, Paul Driscoll says to heck with it all, goes back in time to the old west. He knows a tragedy is about to happen, and tries to stop it ... but by screwing around with events, he is actually the cause of the tragedy.

Okay, great. If a comic book is going to mimic this, then great.  This looks like an interesting idea.  So, what does image comics do?

September 11th, 2001

A Pius Synopsis

The below is basically how the fly leaf of a A Pius Man dustjacket would look like.
*******************************

A Pius Man is a mystery with too many suspects.

In Rome, an old terrorist is blown out the window of a hotel and crash-lands on a car at the gates of the Vatican. A figure in a priest’s robes is seen running from the scene. But the body on the windshield is just the beginning for a team of six unlikely investigators from around the world. Each pair of hands on this case has a past, and a few secrets … and an axe to grind. They don’t want to work together. They don’t want this case.

And one of them just might be the killer.

Is it....

Sean Ryan, an American stuntman turned mercenary and self-described “cleanser of the gene pool”? He’s supposed to be in Rome to train priests in combat, and old habits die hard.

Then there’s Giovanni Figlia, a homicide cop for the Pope who fears only paperwork. He was best known for starting soccer games with bishops in the Borgia gardens … until the corpse landed on the hood of his Jetta.

Could it be a former U.S. Army chaplain who was meeting with the murdered man on a weekly basis? Did the Jesuit priest who’s killed men with his bare hands know that his weekly luncheon date had just murdered a researcher in the Vatican Archives?

And what about Scott "Mossad" Murphy of Israeli intelligence’s “Goyim Brigade”? He and his partner are in the middle of investigating another murder at the Vatican … this one a high-ranking Muslim leader with connections to al Qaeda.

Into this mix comes Maureen McGrail, an Irish Interpol agent with a bitter past with Sean Ryan. She’s working her own murder case, related to the controversial canonization of Pope Pius XII, sometimes known as “Hitler’s Pope.” And guess who Interpol wants to send to Rome … ?

And the final, most distressing suspect is Joshua Kutjok....aka Pope Pius XIII, a right-wing African pope with rumors of blood in his past and the stated goal of turning “Hitler’s Pope” into the “Hero of the Holocaust.” To accomplish this goal, he’s already let terrorists into the Vatican Archives … would he kill a man who stood in his way?

In A Pius Man, six unlikely heroes must work together to unravel a web of intrigue and murder that entwines one of the most controversial figures of the twentieth century. Was Pius XII a Nazi collaborator who deliberately let millions of Jews die? Has the Vatican covered up the truth for more than 60 years? Or has someone perpetrated a decades-long smear campaign? And what will happen to six strangers trying to finally bring the truth to light?