Joe Sacco

Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land tells the story of the Dene around the Mackenzie River Valley, whose livelihoods are threatened by the oil, gas, and diamond industries in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Industrial and economic changes transform the landscape while dividing communities between traditionalists, those who embrace the new systems, and people who remain conflicted but undecided. Elements of the environmental story and its impact on the locals resemble Kate Beaton’s recent show more book, Ducks, though the indigenous perspective sets Paying the Land apart. Sacco interviews members of the Dene in order to bring their words to the world. In addition to the costs of resource exploitation, Sacco recounts how the residential school system represented an institutional effort to destroy First Nations cultures (pg. 121-149).

Like his other graphic novel journalism projects, Sacco acknowledges the observer’s paradox and how his entry into these communities and interviews only capture his own perspective or others’ perspectives filtered through him and the limitations that process involves. He notes that his interviews are another form of extraction similar to the oil industry on Dene land (p. 107). He also acknowledges that processing First Nations’ experiences through a western medium can repeat – albeit on a smaller scale – the cultural genocide of the residential schools and their efforts to force Euro-Canadian culture upon the Dene. Despite these concerns and his somewhat disarming portrayal of himself in a self-deprecating manner reminiscent of R. Crumb or Harvey Pekar, he strives to illuminate stories that might not receive as much attention in the standard press. Sacco concludes with a look at different efforts for decolonization work that members of the Dene are undertaking. The result is the type of work that Sacco’s readers expect and that sheds light on the lingering effects of colonization. show less

An informative and engaging graphic journey through the Serb-Bosnian conflict in former Yugoslavia in the 90's. Sacco's stories of his time in Bosnia, and the stories he relates from others, range from intense and dark to funny and endearing. By the end of the novel, I felt in some ways that I had traveled with him, met the same people and come to know them and their situation.

This is not a conflict or a region I knew much about when I picked up this book. I had some vague memories from show more childhood, and more recently the trials of Slobodan Milošević and Ratko Mladić. Some parts of the left in the United States still hold that much of the ethnic cleansing against Muslims in the region was a myth made to help extend NATO power. Reading Safe Area Goražde gave me more information from someone who traveled there during the conflict, witnessed the damage and heard the stories of people who had witnessed the horror of ethnic cleansing by Serbian militias.

This is a well-illustrated and relatively quick read, I highly recommend it. show less

In one accordion folded page, this graphic novel provides a panoramic view, the black and white drawings vividly expressive as it progresses from the assembly of men, weapons, and supplies to the first shots before a shadow falls on the page as bombardment is returned. While Sacco's drawings require no explanation, Hochschild's descriptive essay provides nightmarish detail recalling the horrors of that day when some 21,000 British soldiers were killed or fatally wounded, a day of the show more greatest bloodshed in Britain's military history before or since. Of the 763 Canadians in the 1st Newfoundland Regiment there were 684 casualties including every officer. He quotes [[Vera Brittain]] who was working as a nurse's aide in London: "The hospital received orders to clear out all convalescents and prepare for a great rush of wounded… We knew that already a tremendous bombardment had begun, for we could feel the vibration of the guns… Hour after hour, as the convalescents departed, we added to the long rows of waiting beds, so sinister in their white expectant emptiness." An exceptional work, heartbreaking even after over 100 years. show less

Joe Sacco spent two months in the Occupied Territories in the winter of 1991-92 as the first intifada was winding down. He interviewed dozens of people, sometimes with a Japanese photojournalist, sometimes alone. He eventually turned his experiences and the interviews into a series of nine documentary graphic works, which are compiled here into one volume. This is not a history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, nor is it a discussion of all the issues. Instead it is the story of a young show more journalist hoping to get a scoop and the testimonies of the people he encounters: conversations with old men at tea shops, families he is introduced to, two Jewish women in Tel Aviv, random people he shares a cab with, an American who teaches in Gaza. He talks with members of Hamas, the PLO, and Fatah, and others who are unaffiliated. It's a messy, confusing situation, and Sacco offers no pat answers or solutions.

The artwork is entirely in black and white, and people are portrayed with large mouths, lips, and teeth. Faces press in giving a sense of immediacy and overcrowding; closeups of boots stomping through mud or hands thrust out authoritatively jump from the page; and grimaces of every sort convey anguish and despair. Every once in a while, however, there will be a one or two page spread of a scene that is drawn with fine detail and is quite beautiful, in contrast with the heavier, bulky style of the rest.

I found Palestine to be moving in ways I didn't expect. I had to stop every few chapters to recoup from the intensity of both words and images. The combination of journalistic reporting and graphics is very powerful. The complete nine-volume series won the 1996 American Book Award, and Edward Said wrote a very insightful introduction to the compilation. show less