I really don't want to write about what happened last week.

I'm no good at writing this kind of thing. I'm hopeless at sentiment. I've got no special insights and no personal perspective to offer. I don't know anyone involved. I've never even been to New York. My reaction is the same as everyone else's, and other people already said it far better than I ever could. Calling it an atrocity is nowhere near enough. That's a word I use in bad reviews. But there aren't any words left that still carry that kind of power.

Besides which, Ninth Art is a comics site, and this is a column about comics. But the usual arguments are on hold this week. As I write this, normal squabbling seems to be resuming, and it's almost a welcome sight. Even so, there's only one subject dominating everything and it seems ridiculous to write about anything else. And it's not as though I've been thinking of anything else, either.

I realise that it is inherently obscene to take something like this, and write about the comics aspect. In the face of the slaughter of thousands and the looming possibility of war on Afghanistan, comics are utterly inconsequential by comparison. Even so... it's Ninth Art. We do comics. That's why you came here, right?

But let's not sell ourselves short. Of course comics are irrelevant in comparison with New York and Washington. Everything is. But comics do matter. They're an industry, not just a hobby. They put food on the table for thousands of people. There are retailers, creators, distributors and publishers out there for whom comics are genuinely and legitimately important.

Comics do matter. They're an industry ... and an artform. And, as we never tire of telling one another, comics are an artform. If the arts serve any purpose at all, surely part of that is to help make sense of events like these. To explore what on earth can lead human beings to do such things to one another. The arts are how society talks to itself. Right now, there is a lot of talking to be done.

So where do we go from here?

Several of this week's comics were talked about as having ominous similarities to the World Trade Center. That Superman story with the twin towers on fire. Garth Ennis' Punisher foiling an evil scheme to crash a 747 into an EU government meeting. And so on. But in fact, you could find something along those lines in virtually every week's delivery of comics for the last few years. The Ennis story is admittedly unusually close, but barely a week goes by without some landmark being demolished or some city being smashed up. It's a stock device to show off how powerful the characters are.

This didn't start with THE AUTHORITY. On the contrary - THE AUTHORITY could only have worked precisely because the whole "mass property destruction" device had been run into the ground. It relied on us seeing the demolition of entire cities and just cooing over the artwork. Like the Hollywood action films that influenced it, it's basically a work of nihilism that gives us the vicarious thrill of seeing our civilisation destroyed. Which, of course, could never happen in real life. The superheroics and the idealistic principles are nothing but a framing device for the annihilation. In short, the book relies on us finding mass destruction and death entertaining in its own right.

That won't work for a while. These tired old images have taken on a renewed and hideous power. There can be no throwaway devastation any more. The widescreen style is over for now. Not because of a need for sensitivity, but because it simply can't entertain an audience who can't put out of their mind the implications of what they're seeing.

You can't call yourself an artform and not address something like this. It will return in time. Everything is assimilated in the end. The Titanic, Pearl Harbor, even Hiroshima (the Japanese make a lot of films about their cities being destroyed). Eventually, the power of the image will fade and it will become part of the mainstream vocabulary again. But not for a while to come.

In some sense, though, comics will have to address recent events. You can't call yourself an artform and not address something like this. I'm not talking about the charity projects currently in the works. Those are fine, well-motivated pieces of work, but they're part of the mourning process and only the first stage in really coming to grips with this.

The next stage, and the key one, is to try to understand it. I believe that the arts have a role to play here. Understanding the human condition is what the arts do best. And we have to address the question: what could possibly motivate people to do this? Quite literally, what were they thinking?

Some will say that no further explanation is needed other than that they are evil. I disagree. Evil is a label, not an explanation. Some will say that these acts cannot be explained. But they can. If we are prepared to look hard enough into why people would engage in suicidal acts of mass murder, then I believe we will find answers. We won't like them. They will tell us things about humanity that we don't want to hear. But it is better that we hear them.

Some will say we don't need an explanation because we're going to kill the bastards anyway. Maybe so. But terrorism is driven by social forces. And if you don't understand the causes, and you don't deal with the causes, then it doesn't matter how many you kill, because more will take their place. You cannot beat it if you don't understand it. Surely that is reason enough to try.

The arts can help us understand what has happened and what needs to be done. Some will say it's too early to try and understand. But with coalitions being put together and innocent Muslims being threatened in the streets, it has to be now or it'll be too late. I do not think that we stand on the verge of World War III. But the USSR spent years trying without success to control Afghanistan. And I do fear that we are facing a second Vietnam.

Some will say that this is none of my business. I have no answer to that.

And none of this will bring people back to life.

But I believe that this is what comics, and all the arts, can do. They can help us to understand - to understand the people behind this, to understand what has happened, and to understand what needs to be done to stop it happening again. This is not about knowledge for its own sake. Knowledge is power. It saves lives. In the long run, it is the best way to save lives.

The arts are how society speaks to itself. Comics can be part of that. At times like this, it is important that they are asking the right questions.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.