From their SoHo loft ten blocks away , on September 11 , 2001 , Mouly and Spiegelman witnessed the first plane of the terrorist attacks crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center . Four blocks from the towers , daughter Nadja attended Stuyvesant High School . After collecting her , and son Dashiell from the United Nations International School further away , they returned home to telephone messages urging Mouly to get to the '' New Yorker '' offices to get to work on a 9-11-themed cover . Mouly put together a cover in two black inks of different density — a black cover overlaid with a black silhouette of the two towers . Mouly gave credit for the cover to Spiegelman , who had suggested the silhouette to Mouly 's idea of an all-black cover
terrorist attacks
September 11 attacks
Françoise Mouly