This graphic novel doesn't so much cover Sacco's experiences in Sarajevo, as it looks into the life of one of its residents, Neven. Neven is a fixer, a man who connect advises and guides reporters through the war torn city. But when Sarajevo begins to find some stability and peace, this leaves Neven without work.

It's an interesting look at this man's life and how he sees the war and the people involved in it. It has a very news feel to it, which makes sense, because Sacco is a newspaper man. The artwork was gorgeous, with a thin line technique that made it look gritty in all the right ways, but that was also able to accent the cartoonyness of Neven's character at the right moments. However, I didn't really connect with anyone in the book, and maybe that was the point, but it left me cold. ( )

A journalist returns to the Balkans after his time there during the fighting. A little bit too diffuse to be effective - try Safe Area Gorazde instead?

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1141540.ht...

This is, in a sense, a sequel to Sacco's brilliant Safe Area Gorazde, but following just one person, Neven, a Sarajevo Serb, a former fighter on the Bosnian side in the war who Sacco got to know as his "fixer" when he first visited Sarajevo just after the war ended in 1995. (I first went there myself in early 1997, and the city of Sacco's book is definitely the one I knew.)

Anyone who has worked in that sort of environment knows the essential nature of the fixer. Sacco captures it well: but it's not just about Neven's murky past and dubious present, it's also about the dodgy wartime goings on between the "legitimate" government and its bully-boys (and one of the personalities featured in the book was in the news again recently, having apparently committed suicide earlier this month) and the inevitable resulting questions about who is right and who is wrong; and it's also about the effect that Sacco's observation has, not only on the people and situations he is observing, but on Sacco himself.

If there is a weakness in the book, it is perhaps that the casual reader might take Neven's experiences as in some way typical of the Bosnian (or any) war. Neven is a somewhat unusual character. But then again, we are all of us unusual characters, and perhaps Sacco is right to just take a single personality and follow him through the conflict, in his own words and as others reported him. Anyway, well worth reading. ( )

One of the best Sacco comics, partially because of its strong internal structure. This is an example of a book leaving you with a profound ambivalence, and that being a good thing. ( )

The Fixer is another great entry in Joe Sacco's series of comics reportage from the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Although it is clearly not a major work on the level of Safe Area Gorazde, the present volume is nonetheless an important addendum to the larger narrative that Sacco brought home from his trips to the former Yugoslavia.

This time around, the author focuses on his own frustrations in gathering information in post-combat Sarajevo, and his desparate reliance on the unreliable Neven, a colorful if thoroughly shady figure of considerable mystery. While some of Sacco's renderings of human faces can feel stiff and wooden, his meticulous depiction of physical surroundings is breathtaking, and does a remarkable job of bringing the shattered city of Sarajevo to life.

Safe Area Gorazde is still the place to start if you are new to Sacco's work, but The Fixer is a worthy contender if you hunger for more after reading that cornerstone volume. ( )