Joe Sacco
✓ Source-basedrisingMaltese-American cartoonist and journalist; pioneer of the Non-Fiction Graphic Novel (b. 1960)
Joe Sacco 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.
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Photos 2
In their own words 4
Some people have told me that hiding my eyes makes it easier for them to put themselves in my shoes, so I've kind of stuck with it.
On choosing to draw himself with a blank look in “Eyeless in Gaza” in The Guardian (2009 Nov 21)
With Footnotes, I want people to appreciate the lost molecules of conflict: the details and sideshows that only exist until the people who remember them die.
On what he hoped to achieve with his work Footnotes in “Eyeless in Gaza” in The Guardian (2009 Nov 21)
What I try to do with my images is just give the reader a real feel for a place…It's very visceral. You open the page, and you are right there in the moment.
On what he aimed for with his book The Great War in “A Panorama Of Devastation: Drawing Of WWI Battle Spans 24 Feet” in NPR (2013 Nov 10)
Awards 10
Connected to Joe 6
About this person
Joe Sacco 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 work documenting Palestinian life in Gaza and the West Bank was awarded the National Book Award in 1996 and was compiled in the graphic narrative Palestine (2001). His other notable monographs include Footnotes in Gaza (2009) which won a Ridenhour Book Prize, Safe Area Goražde (2000) and The Fixer (2003) on the Bosnian War, Paying the Land (2020), The War on Gaza (2024), and The Once and Future Riot (2025).
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