His comics are emphatically on the side of the dispossessed and marginalized, but they resist the temptation to render people as one-dimensional heroes and villains.Īs a result, Sacco has become a giant in the comics community and garnered a slew of accolades, including the American Book Award for Palestine (1996), the Ridenhour Book Prize for Footnotes in Gaza (2009), and two Eisners.īy the time The Great War (2013) appeared, Sacco’s cultural prestige was secure.

His meticulous portrayals of people who suffer enormous tragedy - but who end up as mere “footnotes” in Western and colonial histories - are intense. Sacco has spent decades collecting testimony from survivors and witnesses of genocide, war, and other extreme forms of violence. His subject matter is, as he puts it, “ difficult” (which is a self-effacing understatement). “ I guess I’m considered … one of the more serious of the so-called graphic novelists,” Sacco told me in a recent interview, calling his public persona “ a little solemn.” The man coined the term “comics journalism,” and he has produced masterpieces of astonishing depth and complexity. And if anyone has the cultural capital to refute toxic assumptions about the medium, it’s Sacco. The cartoonist most credited with advancing the banner of comics journalism is, of course, Joe Sacco. As a result, the handful of manifestos that defend the genre known as “comics journalism” often end up in a sort-of defensive crouch.ĭan Archer, a self-described “graphic journalist,” renders one such tract and confronts one of the genre’s “detractors.” Their objection to mixing comics with journalism? “Because it’s drawn, therefore subjective!” Meanwhile, other critics lean heavily on the bankrupt (but persistent) cultural cliche that comics are an inherently juvenile medium. But when comics are involved, this hesitancy has historically devolved into open skepticism or hostility. Western culture is, at best, hesitant to grant drawings the authority to tell true stories. The opening panel of “Cartoon Genius,” a story in Sacco’s Notes From A Defeatist (page 10).

Safe Area Goražde by Joe Sacco