UXL Graphic Novelists Volume 3.pdf

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.

‘‘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

Born October 2, 1960 (Malta)

Maltese author, illustrator, journalist

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 con-

cerned 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 accen-

tuate 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.

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Best-Known Works

Graphic Novels

Spotlight on the Genius That Is Joe Sacco

(1994).

Palestine: A Nation Occupied (1994).

Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern

Bosnia 1992–95 (2000).

The Fixer: A Story of Sarajevo (2003).

Notes from a Defeatist (2003).

War Junkie (1995).

Palestine: In the Gaza Strip (1996).

War’s End: Profiles from Bosnia (2005).

‘‘Mr. Sacco seeks to make complex political and historical con-

flicts 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 some-

thing about this.’ It’s a very subversive medium, it’s appealing but

what’s in the comic itself could be very hard, even difficult, mate-

rial.’’

Indeed Sacco has used comics to offer up some tremendously

difficult content. Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow noted in the online Jan-

uary 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 first-

hand 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 uneventful. ‘‘A lot of

[underground comic book artists] spent their high school years

feeling alone and alienated,’’ he told Time magazine’s Joel Stein. ‘‘I

had pretty good teen years . . . . I was short and all, but I wasn’t

picked on.’’

Sacco graduated from the University of Oregon in 1981, where

he majored in journalism. ‘‘I took one class in journalism school on

cartoons, but it wasn’t about drawing them so much as looking at

them and appreciating them in some way,’’ he told Howard Price,

in an interview on the Comic Book Resources Web site. ‘‘We had a

couple of exercises where we had to draw some things, but it

wasn’t a drawing class. I’ve never taken any art classes after junior

high school.’’

Creates unique career in journalism

Sacco spent most of the 1980s working primarily as a writer,

editor, and copy editor. Some of his jobs—writing for a journal

published by the National Notary Association, for example—sim-

ply bored and frustrated him. Others—a stint with the magazine

The Comics Journal —were more challenging. In 1983, he published

several romance comics in his native Malta. In 1985 and 1986, he

was one of the publishers and editors of the Portland Permanent

Press, an alternative humor magazine. He also briefly edited Cen-

trifugal Bumble-Puppy, a comics anthology.

Up to this point, Sacco was dissatisfied with the progress of

his journalism career, and he decided to become a full-time

cartoonist. In the late 1980s, he traveled through Europe with

the rock band the Miracle Workers and recorded his experiences

in sketches and words. He began writing and drawing Yahoo, a

comics magazine published between 1988 and 1992. In Yahoo,

Sacco put forth his views on a range of subjects. ‘‘In the Company

of Long Hair’’ recalled his experiences while touring with the

Miracle Workers. In ‘‘When Good Bombs Happen to Bad People,’’

he recounted the history of aerial bombing that targets civilian

populations.

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Joe Sacco

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