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Underground > Comic Books >

Joe Sacco: Palestine

  
 
grant
14:16 / 03.05.02
A friend of mine (actually, I suppose I should say a Jewish friend of mine, who invited me over for Passover seder), loaned me the collection of Joe Sacco's 12-issue run of "Palestine."

Although it was written in 1992-93, it seems like vital information for anyone who wants to know what the hell is going on in Israel, and why, maybe, some people are so pissed off, they'll ram planes into buildings halfway across the world. Vital information.

The introduction to the collection is written by Edward Said, one of today's most influential academic voices on & from the Middle East.

I'm hip-deep in the book now, but I can already say that it's damn brilliant *just as a comic*. Picture a cross between R. Crumb, Harvey Pekar and, I dunno, Wolf Blitzer? Andrea Poggioli? Think of the best foreign correspondent you know.

Sacco's layouts are great, his semi-caricature style is incredibly evocative, and the stories are told with very little in the way of judgement or propaganda. He talks to people on the street, and then he writes down the stories they tell him. It's all vividly real, textured, lucid.

Totally brillant stuff, and I'd never seen it before. Apparently he does pieces for Time magazine (there's a clipping of one on a more recent trip to Hebron folded up in the book my buddy loaned me).

What else has he done? Why haven't I heard of him before? And why aren't you reading him *right now*?



Here, some references:
The Fantagraphics Joe Sacco page

Sacco's bio

A Columbus Alive interview with Sacco from Jan 2002
“I’ve tried to be as fair as possible,” Sacco said. “But I had Western prejudices and I tried to make that known. You seldom get an honest look at who a journalist is…I want the reader to know my prejudices, and how what I’m presenting is affected by that.”

Sacco’s straightforward foreword lays out his understanding of the conflict, based on his first trip there and 10 years of reflection: “The Palestinian and Israeli people will continue to kill each other in low-level conflict or with shattering violence…until this central fact—Israeli occupation—is addressed as an issue of international law and basic human rights.”


An interview from Italy's "FuCiNeMuTe":
: My art style? Well, there's a couple of cartoonists: the first one would be Will Elder, who used to work with the old Mad comic - before it was a magazine, back in the fifties - 'cause he had a very detailed art style. The next one is probably Robert Crumb, for obvious reasons: I do a lot of etch-work, and what I like about his work the most was how he drew in a very organic way: every object looked like he put some care into it, every object looked like it was alive somehow. I always take my cue from him, I always try the same thing, I try to care about everything I draw.

There's also a few fine artists I'm interested in: one is Pieter Bruegel the Elder - who was a Flemish painter in the fifteen hundreds - because he was able to really draw people in real life. I'm very affected by his work. Then some German expressionists - or German painters anyway - between World War I and World War II, like Otto Dix, Max Ernst... people who try to show what life was really like, trying to get to the sort of grotesque truth: that interested me also.



A review from The Electronic Intifada

Check out the book on amazon.

University at Buffalo's Sacco gallery exhibit, focusing on his second big book, "Safe Area Gorazde." It's about a village in Bosnia.
 
 
sleazenation
14:34 / 03.05.02
Sacco also did a one shot comic called "tales from Bosnia: Soba" chronicaling the life of Soba, a middle-aged rock 'star' attempting to build a career and life for him self out of mthen ashes of the war...

great stuff
 
 
DaveBCooper
15:29 / 03.05.02
And Safe Area Gorazde recently came out in paperback, I believe. Can't comment on its content, as it's waiting to be read.

Enjoyed palestine, but it felt a bit like homework at times. His art seemed to develop as it went on, though - very effective generally.

DBC
 
 
sleazenation
15:39 / 03.05.02
dave B

how do you mean that it felt like home work at times? I felt the exposition fitted quite well into the narative structure of 'short stories' having said that there was ine section about 3/4 of the way through the first volume which ends up as an illustrated text piece- i'd have liked to have seen more effort made to assimilate that into the text... of course such an attempt could be considered jarring next to the 'telling it the way it he saw it' narratives that surround it.
 
 
troy
18:39 / 03.05.02
I've read both Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde. As you say, very informative stuff and very skillful storytelling. I'm glad Joe chose to use sequential art this way. I have to say, though, that Safe Area Gorazde felt way more like homework than Palestine (though Gorazde is probably the more polished of the two).
 
 
troy
18:41 / 03.05.02
Guess I should explain WHY Gorazde feels more like homework to me. It's tighter and denser and more compact. Less room to breathe. Does that make sense?
 
 
spidermoore
22:04 / 03.05.02
I think Palestine is one of the best works ever in the comic book medium. I think that comics as a medium are uniquely qulified for this type of reportage. Simply reading an oral history of the Palestinians would not have nearly the impact that seeing them tell their history from their desolate living rooms has. In his introduction Edward W. Said call Palestine one of the best books ever on the Palestinian's. I had known about the book Palestinre for years but it was sept. 11 that inspired me to finally read it and I found it to be fascinating reading through out. Not a bit like homework
 
 
sleazenation
22:19 / 03.05.02
there genre of documentary comic is, as far as i am aware, quite a narrow catagory at the moment. Inded, the only otherstuff that i am aware of that fits this catagory is joe kuberts fax from sarajevo and alanoore/bill sienkoviz (sp!) brought to light.

So to broaden this thread out a bit- what do people think about documentary comics?
 
 
dlotemp
23:26 / 03.05.02
Joe Sacco has produced a number of pieces for anthologies, notably Yahoo, Drawn & Quarterly, and Zero Zero. He has also done illustrations for Middle Eastern articles in Harper's. WAR JUNKIE is a collection of his earlier work, mostly him recording the tour diary for a rock band, but it features his interest in the Gulf War and WWII in Malta, which prefigures his work in PALESTINE. The band stuff is entertaining but his Malta chronicles are brillaint. I had a chance to meet him 3 years ago at an exhibition of his work and he was a pleasant, humble guy. Very sharp.

I agree that PALESTINE is fantastic and I also feel it is a largely ignored masterwork in the comics field. Yes, it's dense and don't anyone feel quilty because they think it's homework. The book is deftly weaving chunks of information at you from many directions at once, but does it remarkably well. It took me 2 weeks to finish it. Well worth the time. I gave it to a close friend who also said, "Well, I finished those Morrison X-Men first because that Palestine - I mean it's great - but it's heavy."

>>what do people think about documentary comics? <<
Well, not to be smarty but it all depends on the creator doesn't it. A good creator can take a seemingly weak topic and turn it into gold if they use the proper execution. If you mean what do I think of it as a genre, I for one wish more investigative comics were being published. non-fiction comics seem to be slowly rising though. GOLEM'S MIGHT SWING was nominated for a Harvey(?) and someone is publishing a fascinating collection of books about science - TWO-FISTED SCIENCE and DIGNIFYING SCIENCE. Unfortunately, it must be fairly difficult to produce these works because who, meaning publishers, buys them? It's one thing to work on an investigative piece for a newspaper or journal but another to invest the time to actually research, write and then draw it. That's a lot of time, so the topic must have some kind of timeless or universial appeal. The point I wanted to make though was that the audience for such work seems limited, and consequently there are few outlets for it.

Still, I think investigative comics can help to break the imaginative and social ghetto that comic books have been regulated to for some time. So, jump on the wagon gang. The time is ripe for revolution.
 
 
sleazenation
10:32 / 04.05.02
Hmmm Just thinking about my short list of documentary comics above - can't believe i forgot MAUS...

but on the revolution of comics front, hasn't that already happened to a certain extent? I'm not sure how widespred the xxx-for beginners and introducing:xxxx series have been in america but in the UK they are almost ubiquetus. Basically these are cliff notes but borrowing some of the conventions and tropes of comics- hell, even comic artists such as Robert Crumb have done the art for them (the kafka book).

So what do people think of them- are they the bastard child of comics a hybrid form or comics actually carving a place for themselves in mainstream bookshops?
 
 
bastl b
13:05 / 04.05.02
just read safe area gorazde, praise sacco, the man is a comics master! few comics felt so REAL and so intense. the only jabs so far (just finished it one hour ago and it kept me awake the last two nights) is the caricaturing of clinton and the serbs. with clinton´s case I just don´t think it´s necessary to portray him graphically that much as a whimp - referring especially to the scenes with the tv on showing clinton whenever he announced a change in US policies regarding the Balkan war(s), it would have been more effective if the reader would have formed that image in his or her own head while sacco could have sticked to portray clinton more or less just as he was which he seemed to be doing allmost all the time with all people he portrayed throughout the book, just in clinton´s and the serbs case he chose to exaggerate facial expressions. It´s always dangerous if someone uses the natural authority and supposed portrayal of reality which a documentary is believed to convey and expresses their own feelings. I guess it´s okay: in the end everything is just another personal story and reality remains ever elusive, but it´s good to remember tht we don´t have the truth in front of us. also the portrayal of the serbs was rather onedimensional (all brute racists). To better suit my own sensibilities I´d love to have also seen some good serbs (they exist I know it!!) just to get a fuller picture. sometime he did though, but, okay, this book is about gorazde and not about the serbs.

i think sacco argues with his book that military action on the serbs (most likely US-directed) should have happened much sooner. reading the book you´d say YES!! anybody say no? or would there be a nonviolent way out of this? maybe there are situations where having military force is okay, for exampling if all civilians of a town are about to be slaughtered and erased from the face of the earth with nothing to defend themselves.

?

reading the book it´s also totally baffling that this horrible shit has happened some hundred kilometers away from my safe western bliss full of party and song in the fucking NINETIES, that after Hitler and WWII people can still be so mindless, hateful and so perverted. also the notions about most serbian neighbours in gorazde, where previous to the war everyone lived peacefully next to each other, all friends or not friends, but much less divided up into their ethnic origins. some years later the very same people (it´s hard to believe) shot and killed and raped each other and burned down each other´s houses.

thinking about that I have to wonder what does it take to flick your switch? when do you give in to sadism, rapism and the beauty of destruction? when everyone else of your relatives and family is caught up and riding high on racial hatred and their own fascist unity what do you do? it´s a hard decision, and..shit I must stop now. later. the question here is: how are we being divided? what do our leaders do to break us up and seperate us? how does that work? what kinds of people let it happen to them and who opposes it? what is my reaction? what should it be?

it´s a great book which touches some very dirty and conflicted issues in my own experience. the way it is done is incredible. i cannot recommend it more.
 
 
Margin Walker
22:30 / 27.09.02
From the "Latest News" section of the Fantagraphics website:
 
SACCO PROFILED ON PBS NEXT MONTH
--------------------------------
PALESTINE and SAFE AREA GORAZDE creator JOE SACCO will be profiled next month on an episode of EGG THE ARTS SHOW, which airs nationally on PBS. Beginning its second season this month, EGG is the only national weekly television show about the visual and performing arts. Sacco will be profiled in the third episode of the new season, which airs Friday, Oct. 4 at 10:30 p.m. in many areas (check yer local listings for day and time in your area, natch). The episode is devoted to the theme of "FREEDOM," and also includes profiles of Iranian filmmaker SHIRIN NESHAT and our friends behind the weekly newspaper sensation, THE ONION. The segment on Sacco includes interviews with several journalists (like the NY TIMES's CHRIS HEDGES), as well as people who appear in SAFE AREA GORAZDE (including must-see footage of Gorazde's Riki playing "Hotel California").

AND IF PBS AIN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YA...
--------------------------------------
The NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW for September 1st, 2002 contained an essay entitled, "No Frigate Like a Book," a third of which is in praise of, yes, JOE SACCO. MARGO JEFFERSON writes:

"Nothing could be farther from this contemplative world [Editor's Note: Jefferson is referring to Abelardo Morell's latest photography collection, A BOOK OF BOOKS] than the cartoonist Joe Sacco's brilliant, excruciating books of war reportage, PALESTINE and SAFE AREA GORAZDE. This is potent territory. I thought I had read diligently about the Serbian war on Bosnia and about Palestinians in camps in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West bank. But I had not felt the facts as I did this time around. This medium will not let us separate actions, faces, bodies or scenes from the words that explain and amplify them. In one panel we see legs, thick boots and an open door. The text reads: "You come to someone's house, you enter through the door, you expect a hallway or a front room. But none of that is here, no roof, no floor even, just sand." It is a refugee camp in Gaza. At that moment, what else would one experience but the physical shock of walking into such a space?

"Sacco draws broadly and boldly. We take in his characters right away: their features and expressions are easy to read; each body has its weight, line and style of moving. (Or of sitting still.) He works in black and white, the main tradition for political cartoons. It allows plenty of variety and subtlety: the different fabrics and patterns of clothes; the movement of dust and wind; the increasing darkness of a winter forest. And he moves through brute warfare - guns, tanks, prison, torture and death - to those private moments we all know (drinking and flirting) and those awful hours people spend in their houses telling tales of loss and watching videos of bombings, shootings and funerals.

"He is never pious, especially about himself. He mocks his own predatory journalistic instincts, his periodic lapses of nerve, even disgust, that privileged people always have in the face of incessant deprivation. The two-volume PALESTINE received an American Book Award in 1996 and appeared as one volume in 2001, the year after SAFE AREA GORAZDE was published. Abelardo Morell writes that he sometimes believes 'books hold all the material of life.' Joe Sacco shows how much that is crucial to our lives a book can hold."
 
  
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