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Bill Collins
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11598
Posted: 31 May 2026 at 6:45am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I had just started an afternoon 2pm-10pm shift at work in
a steel processing factory (We're 5 hours ahead of New
York) and in our bay we had no radio because it was too
noisy. A maintenance fitter who had a radio in his
workshop told us what had happened, and like J.B. we
imagined a light aircraft like a Cessna embedded in one
of the towers. As he learned more, he kept us informed
and the true horror became clear. (Nowadays we'd be
watching it on our phones)
I remember coming home and switching on the tv and being
stunned by the horrific footage. It was like a movie, but
real, was my overbearing thought.

I am a fan of New York based band Dream Theater, and they
had an image on one of their albums of a burning heart
wrapped in barbed wire. For their live version of a
subsequent album called Scenes From A Memory played in
their home city of New York-The Big Apple they had an
image of a burning apple wrapped in barbed wire with a
silhouette of the New York Skyline in the background with
The Two Towers clearly visible, they called the album
Live Scenes From New York. It was released on 9/11/01 and
was hastily withdrawn and a new cover designed. On
Tuesday 9/12/01 a pre-ordered copy of said album was
delivered by mail. I can't begin to explain how weird it
felt to open that package and see that prescient scene on
the cd cover.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136300
Posted: 08 June 2026 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Looking at that MAN OF STEEL page all these years later, it is SO obvious Giordano didn’t ink it.

Thanks a lot, Dick.

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Mike Devlin
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 16 May 2010
Location: Australia
Posts: 289
Posted: 08 June 2026 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Did Dick ink *any* of Man of Steel, JB, in actual fact?
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136300
Posted: 08 June 2026 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

He inked some faces and figures. He did the most on the third issue.

The rest was Frank McLaughlin, which I learned from Frank years later.

(This has got to be some of the weirdest thread drift ever!)

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Mike Devlin
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 16 May 2010
Location: Australia
Posts: 289
Posted: 08 June 2026 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Wow yeah it really is! heh
So Frank does the lion's share of the inking and doesn't even receive a credit? Seems unethical from DC/ DG. 


Edited by Mike Devlin on 08 June 2026 at 6:59pm
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Josh Goldberg
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 25 October 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 2144
Posted: 08 June 2026 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I was in the car listening to Howard Stern on the radio when 9/11 happened.  I, too, assumed that it must have been one of those small personal planes.  Anything else was unimaginable to me.  Then, when the announced the second plane hitting the second tower...I started to wonder if Howard and co were trying to pull a War-of-the-Worlds-type hoax.  Again, it was all so unbelievable to me.  But it sounded so real.  But that's what would make it a convincing hoax.  Finally, it occurred to me to change the station to see if anyone else was reporting this.  If they were, then it wasn't the hoax I suspected.
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8525
Posted: 09 June 2026 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Re the twin towers - I was at work and someone mentioned
that a plane had hit one of the towers. My reaction was to
dispute anyone flying a small plane would fail to see the
buildings. Totally disbelieved it.
Then the report of the second plane, and the whole office
stopped. We had no internet, and no TV. It was all
piecemeal information, and then someone who did have a
laptop with internet access arrived, and he put BBC 1 on
and the situation became clearer.
Horror would be the main reaction as the day progressed.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136300
Posted: 09 June 2026 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Mike Carlin was commuting in from Brooklyn when the first aircraft hit. The train stopped, and he saw the second plane hit from there.
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Ed Fahey
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 07 March 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 284
Posted: 09 June 2026 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

I travelled for a living back then and was on an early morning flight to Chicago from Albany NY on 9/11. Changing planes in Baltimore when it happened and took me 10 hours to drive home in a rental car. All the roads anywhere near NYC were closed it was scary as hell.
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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 350
Posted: 09 June 2026 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

The Twin Towers is one of those rare events where I remember that it happened on a Tuesday, because I was a university student at the time and I had no classes scheduled on Tuesdays. So I was actually asleep when my best friend called me up to tell me an airplane had struck a tower. Like a lot of you here, I too was familiar with the story of when a small plane hit the Empire State Building, so I just assumed that's what it was and went back to sleep.

My bestie called me back 15 or 20 minutes later, and that was the end of my sleep for the day. A girl I was friends with was dating a guy who worked in one of the Towers, who supposedly was above one of the impacts, but managed to get out. It was a really, really hard day for her. 

Edited to add: this is a really poorly written post but I’m going to leave it as is, because it amuses me. In my defense, I’m still teaching 10-12 year olds until the 25th of this month and my brain is in a perpetual state of fried.


Edited by Evan S. Kurtz on 09 June 2026 at 8:06pm
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136300
Posted: 09 June 2026 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

There was a famous urban legend at the time, about a guy who survived by basically “surfing” down thru one of the buildings on a staircase landing.

Only year later I learned it was true!

One image that has stuck with me is of one of the jumpers plummeting earthward in a classic Superman pose. I so hope he did that deliberately!

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