Sacco's Palestine

by Peter Ryan

A comic-book is not where most people would expect to find deep and provocative commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Joe Sacco's graphic novel "Palestine," however, has succeeded where many other books by Western authors have failed-he has managed, through a combination of words and images, to humanize the every day struggles of ordinary Palestinians and Israelis.

Sacco's comic-book exploration of this political hot topic has earned him notable achievement awards, literary praise and attention from prominent Middle East scholars. Edward Said gives Sacco particularly high praise: "With the exception of one or two novelists or poets, no one has ever rendered this terrible state of affairs better than Joe Sacco."

“Palestine” is basically a travel memoir depicting the two months that Sacco spent among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Unfalteringly self-critical in his words and images, Sacco portrays himself as a neurotic and almost goofy looking cartoon character (in the illustration style of Robert Crumb) who begins his journey, like all first-time visitors to the region, somewhat naïve and biased. Though Sacco’s characters are cartoonish, his backdrops (cars, houses, landscapes) are precise and realistic—and the stories he describes are nothing like what you find on Saturday morning cartoons.

Sacco illustrates interviews he conducted with Palestinian feminists, attacked by Hamas; he tells the story of a Palestinian imprisoned and tortured for 19 days without trial in an Israeli jail; he interviews three Palestinians who spent years in a prison camp—in fact, the whole book is comprised of these tiny fragments of stories: a woman that Sacco meets on a bus, a protest he witnesses in the streets or a man he has a conversation with in the open market. Some story segments go on for the length of a chapter, others last only through the length of a single page. Sacco’s ability to capture everyday events and images serves to provide the reader with the impression that they themselves are traveling through this region and having conversations with Palestinians and Israelis.

Visually, Sacco’s slanted panels and illustrations serve to liven up the storyline and speed up the narrative pace at key points in the story, but, if I offered any criticism at all, it would be that he sometimes bogs down the narrative with too much text, slowing down the otherwise fast-paced narrative. Just as filmmakers can crowd their movies with too much unnecessary dialogue, so too comic book creators can fill their pages with too much unnecessary text, cluttering the images when the visuals could have served just as easily to communicate the message or the feeling of the moment.

Sacco has earned a reputation over the years as being the world’s first “comic-book journalist,” creating intensely moving images and narratives about political situations in other parts of the world, like Kosovo and Bosnia. His work in the comic-book field is revolutionary not just for his style of writing and artistry but for his choice of topics—though comic-books like Maus have delved into historical subjects and autobiography, no other comic book artist (to my knowledge) has attempted to chronicle contemporary political conflicts. Perhaps Mr. Sacco will turn his attention to occupied Iraq or Afghanistan. Or perhaps we will find a comic-book on the shelves soon revealing the day-to-day struggles of Liberians. Whatever Joe Sacco turns his attentions to next, I think we can all look forward to hearing more from him very soon.