U.x.l - Graphic Novelists

U•X•L Graphic Novelists U•X•L Graphic Novelists S-W Volume 3 Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast Sarah Hermsen, Project Editor Joe Sacco. Fantagraphics Books. Joe Sacco Born October 2, 1960 (Malta) Maltese author, illustrator, journalist ‘‘The main benefit [to comics] is that you can make your subject very accessible. You open the book and suddenly you’re in the place.’’ Joe Sacco is one of the leading proponents of the union between comic book art and journalism. His central theme is war, which he spotlights in his graphic novels. He is not concerned with combat heroics. Instead, he recounts the plights and fates of individuals caught up in the chaos of battle. He explores the personalities of those responsible for instigating war, but primarily he focuses on war’s survivors, and how they get on with their lives while processing their memories of combat and killing. Sacco’s drawings are in black and white, which serves to accentuate the grim tone of his subject matter. Often appearing in his work is his own image, observing the activities around him. He draws himself with oversized lips and vacant eyes. More often than not, he looks bewildered or scared. 439 Best-Known Works Graphic Novels Spotlight on the Genius That Is Joe Sacco (1994). Palestine: A Nation Occupied (1994). War Junkie (1995). Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992–95 (2000). The Fixer: A Story of Sarajevo (2003). Notes from a Defeatist (2003). War’s End: Profiles from Bosnia (2005). Palestine: In the Gaza Strip (1996). ‘‘Mr. Sacco seeks to make complex political and historical conflicts understandable to a mass audience,’’ observed Robert K. Elder, writing in the New York Times in 2000. Sacco explained to the Guardian the qualities comics offer: ‘‘The main benefit is that you can make your subject very accessible. You open the book and suddenly you’re in the place. Maybe there’s also a guilty pleasure as people think back to their childhood days reading comics and they think, ‘This might be fun, it might be an easy way to learn something about this.’ It’s a very subversive medium, it’s appealing but what’s in the comic itself could be very hard, even difficult, material.’’ Indeed Sacco has used comics to offer up some tremendously difficult content. Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow noted in the online January Magazine in 2003, ‘‘Like Art Spiegelman before him, Sacco uses comics to deliver familiar content in an unfamiliar form, disarming us of our numbness to images of war and privation. Visual novelty aside, Sacco’s focus—preferring the anecdotal to the panoramic [specific tales versus wider scope]—excavates details that seldom make it to the news or the history books.’’ Added Dave Gilson, writing in Mother Jones in 2005, ‘‘By presenting his firsthand reporting from hot spots like Gaza, Sarajevo, and Iraq in gritty black-and-white comics, Sacco has won over serious fans of comics and nonfiction alike . . . Sacco’s work is often called ‘comic journalism,’ but that label doesn’t fully capture how he’s managed to simultaneously blend and defy both genres.’’ Early years form artistic sensibility Joe Sacco was born on October 2, 1960, in Malta. His father was an engineer, and his mother was a teacher. He began drawing at age six, and throughout his childhood viewed art as a hobby. He 440 U X L Graphic Novelists was, however, fascinated by life and survival in war zones, with his interest sparked by his parents’ reminiscences of the bombing of Malta during World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan). In the early 1970s, Sacco and his parents came to the United States. They settled first in Los Angeles, and then relocated to Portland, Oregon. His adolescence was unev