Graphic novelist creates tales of hot spots

The Associated Press, Monday, December 21, 2009, 4:03am (PST)

By MSNEnt

LONDON (AP) -- Fans say graphic novelist Joe Sacco has set new standards for the use of the comic book as a documentary medium. Detractors say his portrayals of the Palestinian conflict are filled with distortion, bias and hyperbole.

One thing is certain — the award-winning author of "Palestine" leaves few readers indifferent.

Sacco's work has more in common with gonzo journalism than your Sunday comic strip: He travels to the world's hot spots from Iraq to Gaza to Sarajevo, immerses himself in the lives of ordinary people, and sets out to depict their harsh realities — in unflinching ink and paper.

One of his biggest supporters is award-winning Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman, who directed the 2008 Golden Globe winning cartoon documentary "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 Speigelman's 'Maus,'" he said in a telephone interview.

"His work quite simply reflects reality."

The American-Maltese 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 — events Sacco said have been "virtually airbrushed from history because they have been ignored by the mainstream media."

Israeli historians dispute these figures.

"It's a big exaggeration," said Meir Pail, a leading Israeli military historian and leftist politician. "There was never a killing of such a degree. Nobody was murdered. I was there. I don't know of any massacre."

Sacco's passion for the Palestinian cause has opened him up to accusations of bias.

Jose Alaniz, from the University of Washington's Department of Comparative Literature, said Sacco uses "all sorts of subtle ways" to manipulate the reader.

"Very often he will pick angles in his art work that favor the perspective of the victim: He'll draw Israeli soldiers or settlers from a low perspective to make them more menacing and towering."

Alaniz also said Sacco draws children "in such a way to make them seem more victimized."

Sacco himself 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," he said.

In "Palestine," which won the 1996 National Book Award, Sacco reported on the lives of West Bank and Gaza inhabitants in the early 1990s. "Safe Area Gorazde," which won the 2001 Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel, describes his experiences in Bosnia in 1995-96.

Sacco has been lauded by Edward Said, the renowned literary scholar and Palestinian rights spokesman, who said in his foreword to "Palestine": "With the exception of one or two novelists and poets, no one has ever rendered this terrible state of affairs better than Joe Sacco."

"Footnotes" — to be released in the United States on Tuesday — sees Sacco's cartoon self, with the now trademark nondescript owlishly bespectacled eyes, plunge into the squalid trash-strewn, raw concrete alleys of Rafah, and its neighboring town of Khan Younis.

Sacco draws crowded narrow streets, full of prying schoolchildren and unemployed men. His desperate characters — fugitives, widows and sheiks — mix long past fact with fiction.

"What I show in the book is that this massacre is just one element of Palestinian history ... and that people are confused about which event, what year they are talking about," he said.

"Palestinians never seem to have had the luxury of digesting one tragedy before the next is upon them."

Sacco said in doing so he is trying to create a balance to what he calls the United States' pro-Israeli bias.

A scene in "Palestine" shows an Israeli woman asking: "Shouldn't you be seeing our side of the story?" Sacco's cartoon self replies: "I've heard nothing but the Israeli side most of my life."

Sacco says he puts himself into his comics because he wants his readers to see and feel what he does.

"I'm not pretending to be the all powerful, all knowing journalist god ... I'm an individual who reacts to people who are sometimes afraid ... On a human level, of course that colors the stories I'm telling."

Folman, who both wrote and directed the 2008 animated documentary film about a 19-year-old Israeli soldier still troubled by nightmares about the Lebanon War, says Sacco has brought something rare to the cartoon genre.

"The way he illustrates says everything about the writing — it's so unique, there is nothing quite like him," he explained.

"I really admire the guy ... And I feel from his work that we share exactly the same opinions about what's happening in the Middle East ... The day will come when I will meet him and hopefully work with him."

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Associated Press Writer Ian Deitch contributed to this story from Jerusalem.