Tag Archives: joe sacco

Fantagraphics to Publish Requiem For Gaza, New Investigative Graphic Journalism by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco

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Requiem for Gaza

In the spring of 2025 the cartoonist Joe Sacco, author of Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, and Chris Hedges, the former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, traveled to Cairo where they interviewed 29 Palestinian families who had recently left Gaza. In Requiem for Gaza, they use the experience and stories of these families to detail the crucible of the genocide, the loss of homes and communities, the appalling death toll among friends and loved ones, the constant displacement, the terror of indiscriminate killing, the hunger and deprivation, the obliteration of all that was known and familiar, and the struggle to cope with the callous indifference of a world that continues to supply Israel with weapons despite its wholesale destruction of Gaza and mass slaughter.

Requiem for Gaza, like their New York Times best seller Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, combines comics and single images drawn by Sacco within the narrative written by Hedges. Hedges’ vivid prose and Sacco’s visceral images complement each other and together paint a portrait of dignity and suffering under genocide. The collective power of the individual stories that chronicle the first day of the genocide, the forced evacuation of homes, the targeted assassinations, the false hopes engendered by ceasefires, the dislocation and alienation of exile, the brutal killing and hasty burial of family members, and the humiliation of living under tarps without clean food and water bring every aspect of the genocide to life. Set against this horror are stories of self-sacrifice and compassion that show how Palestinians not only clung to their humanity, but morally triumphed over their killers.

Requiem For Gaza will be available wherever books are sold as a hardcover graphic novel (ISBN: 979-8-8750-0272-4) as well as a digital edition, in October 2026, for a list price of $24.99.

The Once and Future Riot is an interesting read but feels rather scattered in its approach

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Compared to other episodes of lethal Indian communal violence, the clashes in Uttar Pradesh in 2013, the Muzaffarnagar Riot, were a relatively small-scale affair—some scores of people were killed and several tens of thousands displaced. It had happened before and will probably happen again: Hindus and Muslims, armed with guns and swords, riled up by vitriolic rhetoric and a tangle of accusations, turn on one another. The truth fragments along religious lines, both in the lead-up to the rampage and in its bloody aftermath.

In The Once and Future Riot, Joe Sacco immerses himself in Uttar Pradesh, speaking to government officials, political leaders, village chiefs, and especially the victims, who were mostly landless peasants, in a quest to understand this riot as an archetype of political violence. In the process, he probes the role of savagery in a democracy; the power of crowds, rather than leaders, to influence the course of events; the collision of competing narratives; and the accounts that perpetrators construct to explain away their participation in bloodshed.

Story: Joe Sacco
Art: Joe Sacco

Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.

Bookshop
Amazon

Metropolitan Books provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
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Joe Sacco’s War on Gaza is an interesting mix of political cartoons and graphic journalism

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Published in installments on The Comics Journal’s website, War on Gaza is a series of comics and single-panel illustrations that lay bare the naked immorality of the “war” itself and its dire and tragic consequences. Employing his trademark combination of honesty, compassion, and dark humor, Joe Sacco’s War on Gaza is an uncompromising critique of Israel’s genocide and the complicity of President Joe Biden and the United States.

Story: Joe Sacco
Art: Joe Sacco

Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook.

Bookshop
Amazon
Kindle

This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, we’ll receive a percentage of the sale. Graphic Policy does purchase items from this site. Making purchases through these links helps support the site

Around the Tubes

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It’s been a pretty quiet weekend so far, but while you were out enjoying it, here’s the news you might have missed.

Around the Blogs:

Archcomix – Audio from the Joe Sacco Comics Journalism Panel @Stanford, 6/5/11 – I don’t always agree with what he has to say, but the man is a pioneer in comics journalism.

Bleeding Cool – Thor Press Kit Causes Terrorist Alert – A lot less causes terror alerts here in DC.

Color Lines – Where is Our Culture’s Racial Subconscious? In Comic Books – An interesting article on race and comic books.

Bleeding Cool – With Only 407 of 6000 Comics Sold So Far, Gary Dahlberg’s Collection Tops $1.38 Million – Pretty sure my collection would bring in about $1.38.

Around the Tubes Reviews:

Fangoria – Hellraiser Masterpieces Vol. 1

Inside Pulse – Wolves

Martin’s View – Comic Books of the Week (5/11/11) part 3

Joe Sacco at the Portland Art Museum Sunday

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Joe SaccoRenowned comic’s journalist Joe Sacco and Portland-based writer, publisher, and bookseller Chloe Eudaly will be appearing the Portland Art Museum this Sunday August 1 to discuss comics and journalism.

This program is offered in conjunction with the exhibition The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis, on view through September 19.

What: Joe Sacco and Chloe Eudaly in Conversation
When: Sunday, August 1, 2 p.m.
Where: Portland Art Museum, Whitsell Auditorium
Ticketing: $5 Museum members, $12 non-members. Tickets available at portlandartmuseum.org or at the Museum’s box office.

Controversy Over Footnotes in Gaza

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We figured that Joe Sacco’s latest graphic noverl Footnotes in Gaza would have it’s detractors.  But the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has issue has issues not only with Sacco’s work but also the New York Times review of the graphic novel.

CAMERA accuses both Sacco and reviewer Patrick Cockburn of anti-Israel bias and “antagonism towards Israel.”  They go on to question the Times’s stance since it both ok’ed the review and Cockburn’s writing of it.

Sacco has admitted his sympathy for Palestinians and his attempt to show their side of the issue.  CAMERA doesn’t quite make the case of Cockburns’ bias (only poor writing).  CAMERA then goes onto praising the Wall Street Journal’s review as more balanced.

From their website CAMERA is described as:

Founded in 1982, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America is a media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA fosters rigorous reporting, while educating news consumers about Middle East issues and the role of the media. Because public opinion ultimately shapes public policy, distorted news coverage that misleads the public can be detrimental to sound policymaking. A non-partisan organization, CAMERA takes no position with regard to American or Israeli political issues or with regard to ultimate solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As we’re fairly new to Sacco’s work we have all of his graphic novels on order or in our hands to read and will be providing our review of both his work on issues in the Middle East as well as his coverage of the Bosnian war.

Footnotes in Gaza

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Maltese-born US journalist Joe Sacco is a graphic novelist we’ve covered in the past.  He covers real world issues in graphic novel form, a new form of gonzo-journalism.

Sacco depicted his travels and encounters with Palestinians and several Israelis in Gaza and the West Bank during the mid-1990s in his appropriately named Palestine.  Footnotes from GazaThe graphic novel won numerous awards.  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.  That also won awards.

The artist’s latest book, Footnotes in Gaza, chronicles two episodes in 1956 in which a U.N. report filed Dec. 15, 1956 says a total of 386 civilians were shot dead by Israeli soldiers.  Sacco said the events have been “virtually airbrushed from history because they have been ignored by the mainstream media.”

Israeli historians dispute the events claiming the totals are exaggerations.  Meir Pail, a leading Israeli military historian and leftist politician has said:

It’s a big exaggeration.  There was never a killing of such a degree. Nobody was murdered. I was there. I don’t know of any massacre.

Sacco’s has been accused of a bias for the Palestinian cause.  Jose Alaniz, from the University of Washington’s Department of Comparative Literature says Sacco uses techniques to manipulate the readers such as angling Israeli soldiers in certain ways in the artwork.

Sacco at least admits he takes sides:

I don’t believe in objectivity as it’s practiced in American journalism. I’m not anti-Israeli … It’s just I very much believe in getting across the Palestinian point of view.

Sacco has his admirers too.  Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman, who directed the 2008 Golden Globe winning cartoon ocumentary Waltz for Bashir.

Whenever I’m asked about animation that influences me, I would say it’s more graphic novels. A tremendous influence on me has been Sacco’s ‘Palestine,’ his work on Bosnia and then Art peigelman’s ‘Maus,'” he said in a telephone interview.

His work quite simply reflects reality.

We’ll have a review of numerous works by Sacco in the upcoming weeks.

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.