[Servalan]

Alissa Torres, Forensikerin und Sicherheitstechnikerin. Als sie im siebten Monat schwanger gewesen ist, hat sie ihren Ehemann durch die Attentate von 9/11 verloren. Ihr Trauma hat sie in der Graphic Novel American Widow (Random House / Villard Books 2008) verarbeitet:

In the meantime, American Widow is a new American graphic novel which focuses on one victim of the 9/11 attacks, Luis Eduardo Torres, or Eddie, the Colombian-born husband of Alissa Torres. She was seven and a half months pregnant at the time. Eddie had only started a new job in the World Trade Centre on Monday the 10th, and when the time came, he jumped. Somehow, to find an outlet and perhaps some catharsis, his widow Alissa wanted to convey her experiences and feelings through writing. She chose to do so through comics, but how does a total novice set about doing this? Initially she wrote out her script "in Microsoft word using text boxes for the panels. In each box I wrote descriptions of what I thought should go in them along with dialogue and thought ballons." She had planned on telling it from her perspective but without actually appearing in it herself, until N. Christopher Crouch, a School of Visual Arts professor, insisted that it wouldn’t work without her in it. Alissa revised her script still further, re-envisioning the images, how many panels per page and what images and words belonged in each. She also "spent a lot of time doodling and found that I was very good at - and enjoyed - conceptualising the artwork. Too bad I wasn’t very good at drawing."
The next crucial step was for her to find the right artist. Not easy, and it took a long time. Alissa wanted a woman to draw it: "It’s hard to articulate the difference between a man’s and a woman’s work but I knew that a female artist was what the project needed." Eventually, she discovered New York Times illustrator Sungyoon Choi and from her first samples knew that she was right for the project. "Some comic art is cluttered, making it a battle to get through each page, but Choi’s work was very succinct with a lot of white space and great composition. And it was extremely heartfelt."
A bond developed between the two women as they worked closely and intensely, meeting often and revising and improving each new set of pages as they took shape. Sungyoon helped Alissa make those tough but vital decisions, "where to cut art, what to condense and what to expand." Alissa has nothing but thanks and praise for the illustrator: "This book had been my therapeutic anchor for so many years and I am grateful to have found someone who was not only creative and who could endure this labour intensive project, but also someone I trust on a purely emotional level." And now that long gestation and collaborative process are over and this September 9th Alissa’s graphic memoir is finally published as American Widow.