(above:New Yorker’s 24th September 2001 cover by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly: below, Ana Juan’s cover for the New Yorker’s tenth anniversary memorial to 9-11, see their full article and slideshow here)

I’m normally not shy of expressing my opinions, but not today, not today. No opinions, no editorials, no judgements, no political ranting on the events of that awful day and the cascade of awfulness that it gave birth to in its wake. It’s not a day for that. It’s ten years and today isn’t a day for editorials, it’s a day we should simply all stop for a moment and think of those who lost a loved one, in the 9-11 attacks themselves or in the war on terror that followed, whichever nationality, religions, colour or creed they are, be they a villager in an Afghan village or an officer worker in the Twin Towers, they were all part of someone’s family. Every single day those families will feel that gnawing gap where a loved one used to be in their lives and now simply isn’t. No words can really describe the despair that loss causes and on an anniversary date like this that loss will loom so large in their minds and hearts. So no, no opinions today, just a thought, that we should all for a moment try and think positive, kind thoughts to our fellow beings and most especially to those whose souls are aching today for that loved one they will never see or hold again.

(rather than end on such a sad note, let’s end instead by remembering a different image of those now iconic towers, when they were new and still being finished off and Philippe Petit created some magical wonder by setting up a covert tightrope and crossing that awesome span as stunned New Yorkers looked up. Still taken from the documentary Man on Wire)

(art by and (c) Chris Ware, published the New Yorker)

Adrian Tomine’s new New Yorker cover. Two things – first, isn’t it an weird world where something like a comic artist getting a cover of the New Yorker is actually becomming commonplace? Second, I know Tomine probably made more off this than almost every issue of optic Nerve, but isn’t it about time we had some new sequential Tomine? Please?

(Via Between Clark and Hilldale blog)

The New Yorker has yet another delightful comics-inspired cover, this time from the excellent Ivan Brunetti. This put a smile on my face. (via Wim)

Joost Swarte covers The New Yorker. Nice.

(via Wim’s Ephemerist, tip of the hat to Garen Ewing for pointing it out)

(Gaiman Photograph by Eric Ogden from the New Yorker)

Neil Gaiman has a write up/profile in the New Yorker this week by Dana Goodyear. Described as “a lengthy, if also gently sniffy, profile” by the Guardian, it’s essentially a bit of a Gaiman primer although interesting for these little snippets, which delve into a little known detail of his background:

“The pivotal fact of Gaiman’s childhood is one that appears nowhere in his fiction and is periodically removed from his Wikipedia page by the site’s editors. When he was five, his family moved to East Grinstead, the center of English Scientology, where his parents began taking Dianetics classes. His father, a real-estate developer, and his mother, a pharmacist, founded a vitamin shop, G & G Foods, which is still operational. (According to its Web site, it supplies the Human Detoxification Programme, a course of vitamins, supplements, and other alleged purification techniques, which Scientology offers at disaster sites like Chernobyl and Ground Zero.) In the seventies, his father, who died last year, began working in Scientology’s public-relations wing and over time rose high in the organization. Gaiman has two younger sisters, both still active in Scientology; one of them works for the church in Los Angeles, and the other helps run the family businesses.”

“These days, Gaiman tends to avoid questions about his faith, but says he is not a Scientologist. Like Judaism, Scientology is the religion of his family, and he feels some solidarity with them. “I will stand with groups when I feel like they’re being properly persecuted,” he told me.”

More Chris Ware goodness in the New Yorker, this time on the cover (above) and in the form of a 4-page comic (see below, art (c) Chris Ware/New Yorker), Unmasked, inside the November 2nd issue; peek at it on the New Yorker site (via Graham Linehan’s Twitter):

(a scene from Unmasked by Chris Ware, coming in the New Yorker’s November 2nd edition)