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Colin and Cilluffo's graphic novel, World Trade Angels, is an illustration of the creation, through language and image, of a new vocabulary and a new imaginaire, after the events of 11 September 2001. No previously existing language is adequate; the authors introduce a new verbal, temporal, and pictorial vocabulary to try to represent the unrepresentable of that day. Significantly, in this work, divisions, grills, grates, bars and squares all multiply until the representation of the entire city is seen as a reproduction of the façade of the towers and a reflection of that façade that no longer exists. And as a synecdoche of that grillwork that quickly becomes a penetrable portcullis or an inescapable set of prison bars, the authors introduce the leit-motiv of a fire escape, but one that leads not to safety but to perdition and repetition. It is this set of figures I explore in this article.