This is how “The Big Lie” works. First you begin with a premise that has a certain degree of plausibility. Then, you find an ally whose background suggests that perhaps he’s an “expert” in the area in which you intend to perpetuate your lie. Then out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating that data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded individuals will eventually pick up your mantra and start writing about it as well.
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11 Image Comics published a one-shot comicbook entitled The Big Lie — written and drawn by comic’s veteran, Rick Veitch, Gary Erskine (inks), with Thomas Yeates (cover), Dominic Reagan (color), and Annie Parkhouse (letters). According to the publisher, The Big Lie will be a series of one-shot/stand-alone comics that will serve as conversation pieces for many comic fans and non-comic fans alike. The intention of the comic is to explore very real and often politically-charged questions in traditional comic book format. The first issue of The Big Lie was published in honor of the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
Rick Veitch, the celebrated author of Brat Pack, wants you to think about things. Specifically, he wants readers to think about the events of September 11th. Rather than just being some rambling wing-nut preachy screed, The Big Lie is actually a very articulately-told time travel story that features a physicist named Sandra who travels back in time to just prior to the attack on the Twin Towers in order to save her husband from perishing in the World Trade Center buildings.
She had originally hoped to arrive five days before the attack but a miscalculation causes her to arrive at the towers just an hour before the first plane hits. We learn that her husband works for a risk management agency in Tower One, only when she arrives, he and his co-workers — quit naturally — don’t believe her. Sandra desperately pleads with her husband and his co-workers, showing them a video clip of the attack on her iPad. As can be expected, they chalk it up to Hollywood CGI magic. The clock relentlessly ticks down as Sandra desperately attempts to convince the people in the room of the truth of her words.
Ultimately, time travel and intense drama aren’t the only literary hallmarks utilized in the pages of The Big Lie; Veitch and company also tap a familiar comicbook storytelling device in the form of American icon Uncle Sam, who becomes the story’s narrator, it’s “Uncle Creepy” if you will, and helps move the story forward. As the story plays out, each detail about the events leading up to 9/11 are discussed in a clear-headed fashion, and presented with the members of the risk-management team verifying all of the details.
Ultimately, the story follows the route of most classic comicbooks time-travel stories, with the events winding up just the way you expect them to, with the knowledge of the truth of the warning, but that knowledge arriving too late to effect change.
Needless to say, some of the rhetoric espoused in the book seems to play into Truther rants that have the government capitulating with the Terrorists (even perhaps setting on their tasks, in order to set off some sinister agenda against the citizens of the United States. Still, the underlying point of this comic is to get the reader to look at the events of that day through a different lens, and to question what they have been told by government and sanctioned media sources. To that end, the story succeeds in its endeavor. Sure it is easy to accept what we’ve been told — it is also easy to accept the “facts” of this comic, still the message is clear — question everything, and then make up their own mind.
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