"Journalism" by Joe Sacco

Joe Sacco doesn’t make it easy for anyone.  

He doesn’t make it easy for himself. In an era when printed media is dying, and news stories have to travel at the speed of light just to make a dent in public perception, he has chosen to become a cartoon journalist.  Not only is that an uphill career path, but he is determined to tell the stories of the under-recognized refugees and victims of wars and national conflicts. So, he travels to some of the most dangerous spots on Earth, sometimes accompanied by bodyguards, to sketch a woman’s story of how her daughter was killed in a rocket attack on their house.

He also makes it tough on the reader. These stories aren’t pretty. For example, it is hard to grasp the silver lining in a situation where a man in a Chechnyan refugee camp has to build his own mud hut because Russian army soldiers have stolen his tent in a ploy to make him leave the camp.

And he probably makes it difficult for the subjects of his stories, who have to relive the worst days of their lives as they re-tell their stories to Sacco: an Eritrean refugee who survived a war and a trip across the desert of northern Africa only to meet injustice in Malta, a woman who cries when she sees Sacco's bodyguards, worrying they are Russian thugs, and the man who loses all hope as he recounts how Israeli Defense Forces bulldozed his home.

Yes, these stories are not easy reading, but valuable.  And when Sacco takes the time and effort to compose these people and their stories into the comics we see in his book “Journalism,” it magnifies the details of their stories to have more impact than a photograph or news article.  Reading this book brings out the full power that comics, as image and narrative combined into a linear story, can have on an audience.

“Journalism” is a series of articles compiled from work done between 1998 and 2010, and it shows Sacco’s artistic style grow from a journeyman to a master.  Each story stands as an example for his attention to detail -- a fully rendered a military checkpoint complete with sandbags, razorwire and radio antennae - a refugee camp with laundry, water pipes and crumbling buildings -- a Bosnian street, shelled until the houses are collapsing, but with people still on their way to work.  But Sacco’s real art is as his subjects evolve beyond mere caricatures to become living people. Yet he always insists on introducing a slightly cartoonish version of himself as the narrator, so we never lose focus of who’s telling the story, and who’s recording it.

Sacco mentions this himself in the preface.

“Objectivity...I have no trouble with the word itself, if it simply means approaching a story without any preconceived ideas at all. The problem is I don’t think most journalists approach a story that has any importance in that way. I certainly can’t…” 

He continues, “I’ve picked the stories I wanted to tell, and by those selections my own sympathies should be clear. I chiefly concern myself with those who seldom get a hearing.”

Each comic section has accompanying text providing insight into why Sacco wrote the piece, who might have hired him for the job, and adding his personal retrospectives of the work.  He’s honest, and you can get a sense from his voice what drives him to create these massive comic documentaries.

“Journalism” shows what journalism could be doing better: bringing the small, humanizing details to life, making people more connected rather than more disenfranchised, and telling the stories of those people who don’t have the voice to tell their own. Sacco doesn’t make thing easy for anyone, but hopefully some of his stories will make things better for some.

One of the sections in "Journalism," titled "The Palestinian Territories," was expanded into his book Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel. "Gaza" won the 2012 Oregon Book Award in the category of best "Graphic Literature" and it has been announced that the book is in development to become a film.  

Joe Sacco doesn't appear to have a website, nor is he on twitter.