Tag Archives: immigration

What We Can Learn From Batman About Immigration

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Bryan Young of the comics blog Big Shiny Robot has a piece up at the Huffington Post about lessons we (though he says Conservatives) can learn from Batman concerning illegal immigration.

Citing a line by the villain Clayface in the Neil Gaiman written Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

He died saving the city. No, that’s not true. He saved the city, he died saving me. I said, ‘I’m not worth it.” And he said, ‘Everyone’s worth it.

Young makes his argument that “as long as you’re a person, you’re worth saving, worth protecting, worth welcoming with open arms.”  The biggest issue with this line of thinking is, that even though Batman may defend the city, he still beats the crap out of the people who break the law.  Sure he protects the weak, but he also jails those that break the rules.

I think the better argument to make is to focus on Superman and taking his example.  The ultimate illegal alien, he defends humanity when he could enslave it.  He steps up and defends the his adopted land no matter what.  And for this he’s loved.  Show the love for your adopted nation like Superman, and it’ll defend you in return, like Batman.

Journalist to Take on Immigration Through Comics

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Malta Today has an article about Maltese-born US journalist Joe Sacco.  Sacco is best known for his take on such issues and the Middle East Peace Process and the Bosnian war using the comic book format.  He has turned his attention towards immigration as the topic for an upcoming publication.

In an interview with The Observer (UK), Sacco revealed that he is currently working on “a 48-page comic for the Virginia Quarterly Review about African migrants who attempt to get into Europe via Malta.”

Sacco was born in Hal Kirkop in 1960, but emigrated to Australia as a child and later to the United States.  He is the author of a number of critically acclaimed political comic-books.

Palestine, which was published in 1996, is arguably the most successful of his career. It has been described by leading orientalist Edward Said as:

A political and aesthetic work of extraordinary originality.

Sacco depicted his travels and encounters with Palestinians and several Israelis in Gaza and the West Bank during the mid-1990s.  These interactions make up the strips that is Palestine.  The publication won an American Book Award in 1996 and was serialised as a comic book from 1993 to 2001 and then published in several collections.

Sacco has also won international critical acclaim with his Safe Area Goražde, a similarly pictorial account his experiences in the troubled Balkans during the Bosnian conflict. Safe Area Goražde won the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel in 2001.

Joe Sacco earned a Guggenheim fellowship for his work, which has helped him finance future projects – including his ongoing work on immigration through Malta, as well as a simultaneous project depicting life in Camden, New Jersey – America’s poorest town.

Comic Journalism has become an increasingly popular form of story telling spanning such topics as travels of the authors, personal biographies and recent events such as the 2008 Presidential election.

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