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Joe Sacco

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Joe Sacco (Template:IPAc-en; born October 2, 1960) is a Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist. He is credited as the first artist to practice rigorous, investigative journalism using the comics form, also referred to as comics journalism. His groundbreaking work documenting Palestinian life in the Occupied Territories was awarded the National Book Award in 1996 and was compiled in the graphic narrative Palestine (2001).<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His other notable monographs include Footnotes in Gaza (2009) which won a Ridenhour Book Prize.<ref name=":0" /> Other notable works include Safe Area Goražde (2000) and The Fixer (2003) on the Bosnian War. In 2020, Sacco released Template:Visible anchor, published by Henry Holt and Company.<ref name=Steinhauser>Steinhauer, Jillian. "The Outsider: Joe Sacco's comics journalism," Template:Webarchive The Nation (Dec. 28, 2020).</ref>

BiographyEdit

Sacco was born in Malta<ref name=Steinhauser /> on October 2, 1960.<ref name="drawnquarter">Drawn & Quarterly (2004). Joe Sacco: Biography Template:Webarchive. Retrieved April 24, 2006.</ref><ref>Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith (eds.), Icons of the American Comic Book, Vol. 1, ABC-CLIO, 2013, p. 638</ref> His father Leonard was an engineer and his mother Carmen was a teacher.<ref name="guardian">Duncan Campbell (October 23, 2003). 'I do comics, not graphic novels'. The Guardian. Retrieved April 26, 2006.</ref> At the age of one, he moved with his family to Melbourne, Australia,<ref name="readyourselfraw">Read Yourself RAW. Profile: Joe Sacco Template:Webarchive. Retrieved April 25, 2006.</ref><ref name=Steinhauser /> where he spent his childhood until 1972, when they moved to Los Angeles.<ref name="drawnquarter"/><ref name=Steinhauser /> He began his journalism career working on the Sunset High School newspaper in Beaverton, Oregon.<ref name="OPB-2012">Template:Cite news</ref> While journalism was his primary focus, this was also the period of time in which he developed his penchant for humor and satire. He graduated from Sunset High in 1978.

Sacco earned his BA in journalism from the University of Oregon in 1981 in three years. He was greatly frustrated with the journalist work that he found at the time, later saying, "[I couldn't find] a job writing very hard-hitting, interesting pieces that would really make some sort of difference."<ref name="readyourselfraw"/> After being briefly employed by the journal of the National Notary Association, a job which he found "exceedingly, exceedingly boring,"<ref name="guardian"/> and several factories, he returned to Malta, his journalist hopes forgotten. "...I sort of decided to forget it and just go the other route, which was basically take my hobby, which has been cartooning, and see if I could make a living out of that," he later told the BBC.<ref name="BBC">Ben Arnold (August 27, 2004). Telephone interview with Joe Sacco Template:Webarchive (.ram file, source: Interview with Joe Sacco Template:Webarchive). BBC. Retrieved April 26, 2006.</ref>

He began working for a local publisher writing guidebooks.<ref name="readyourselfraw"/> Returning to his fondness for comics, he wrote a Maltese romance comic<ref name=Steinhauser /> named Imħabba Vera ("True Love"), one of the first art-comics in the Maltese language. "Because Malta has no history of comics, comics weren't considered something for kids," he told The Village Voice. "In one case, for example, the girl got pregnant and she went to Holland for an abortion. Malta is a Catholic country where, at the time, not even divorce was allowed. It was unusual, but it's not like anyone raised a stink about it, because they had no way of judging whether this was appropriate material for comics or not."<ref name="villagevoice">Hillary Chute (July 19, 2005). Stand Up Comics Template:Webarchive. The Village Voice. Retrieved April 26, 2006.</ref>

Eventually returning to the United States, by 1985 Sacco had founded a satirical, alternative comics magazine called Portland Permanent Press in Portland, Oregon.<ref name=Steinhauser /> When the magazine folded fifteen months later, he took a job at The Comics Journal as the staff news writer.<ref name="comicsjournal">Gary Groth (October 4, 2001). Joe Sacco, Frontline Journalist: Why Sacco went to Gorazde Template:Webarchive. The Comics Journal (a magazine owned and operated by Fantagraphics Books). Retrieved April 26, 2006.</ref> This job provided the opportunity for him to create and edit another satire: the comics anthology Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy<ref name="fantagraphics">Fantagraphics Books. Joe Sacco Template:Webarchive. Retrieved April 25, 2006.</ref><ref name=Steinhauser /> (a name he took from an overcomplicated children's toy in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World), published by The Comics JournalTemplate:'s parent company Fantagraphics Books. But Sacco was more interested in traveling. In 1988, he left the U.S. again to travel across Europe, a trip which he chronicled in his autobiographical comic Yahoo (also published by Fantagraphics).<ref name="fantagraphics"/> The trip led him towards the ongoing Gulf War (his obsession with which he talks about in Yahoo #2), and in 1991 he found himself nearby to research the work he would eventually publish as Palestine, a documentary graphic novel, which gathers testimonies of survivors of war and trauma.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The Gulf War segment of Yahoo drew Sacco into a study of Middle Eastern politics, and he traveled to the Occupied Palestinian territories to research his first long work. Palestine came about as a landmark of journalism and the art form of comics. It was based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s. Palestine is a major work of political and historical nonfiction and is described as an essential reading. Palestine won the American Book Award in 1996<ref name=Steinhauser /> and sold more than 30,000 copies in the UK.<ref name="palestine">Eyeglass in Gaza Template:Webarchive Interview in The Guardian.</ref>

Sacco next travelled to Sarajevo and Goražde near the end of the Bosnian War, and produced a series of reports in the same style as Palestine: the comics Safe Area Goražde, The Fixer, and the stories collected in War's End; the financing for which was aided by his winning of the Guggenheim Fellowship in April 2001.<ref name="fantagraphics"/><ref name="guggenheim">Guggenheim Foundation 2001 Fellows Page, Guggenheim Foundation (2001) Template:Webarchive. Retrieved October 7, 2006.</ref> Safe Area Goražde won the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel in 2001.

File:Joe Sacco Iraq.jpg
Sacco in Iraq in 2005 with the 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines inside the Haditha Dam

He has also contributed short pieces of graphic reportage to a variety of magazines, on subjects ranging from war crimes to blues, and was a frequent illustrator of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. In 2005 he wrote and drew two eight-page comics depicting events in Iraq published in The Guardian. He also contributed a 16-page piece in April 2007's issue of Harper's Magazine, entitled "Down! Up! You're in the Iraqi Army Now". In 2009, his Footnotes in Gaza was published, which investigates two forgotten massacres that took place in Khan Younis and Rafah in November 1956.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In June 2012, a book on poverty in the United States, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, co-written with journalist Chris Hedges, was published.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His latest work is Paying the Land (2020) discussing climate change and the indigenous Dene community of Northwest Canada, who, he says, were subject to cultural genocide by means of compulsory residential schooling, treaties, and capitalism.

As of 2006, Sacco lives in Portland, Oregon.<ref name="fantagraphics"/>

AwardsEdit

In addition to his 1996 American Book Award, and 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, Sacco's Safe Area Goražde brought him a Time magazine "Best Comic of 2000" award,<ref name="heraldscotland.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> followed by the 2001 Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel,<ref name="comic-con.org-awards-2000s">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and 2001 Eagle Award for Best Original Graphic Novel,<ref name="hahnlibrary.net-eagle">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and 2001 Harvey Award nomination for Best Writer and Best Graphic Album of Original Work.

The Palestine collection won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

His Footnotes in Gaza was nominated for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Graphic Novel award.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It received the 2010 Ridenhour Book Prize and the<ref>"Joe Sacco: 2010 Recipient of The Ridenhour Book Prize," Template:Webarchive Ridenhour website. Retrieved August 26, 2011.</ref> 2012 Oregon Book Award.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2014, his graphic novel collection Journalism received the Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award in 2014 from the Oregon Book Awards.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Joe Sacco was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature (Honoris Causa) by the University of Malta on November 17, 2023.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

BibliographyEdit

Comic booksEdit

SoloEdit

EditorEdit

  • 1987–1988: Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy. Fantagraphics Books
  • 1987: Honk!. Fantagraphics Books

Comics journalism storiesEdit

BooksEdit

SoloEdit

As illustratorEdit

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

NotesEdit

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SourcesEdit

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Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

Comics by Sacco

Biographies

Interviews

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