Joe Sacco discusses the humanity of war criminals, ordinary soldiers, and journalists.
Interview by Kristian Williams


Joe Sacco has spent the last fifteen years writing serious journalism in comic book form. With the publication of Palestine in 1995, he earned his place next to Art Spiegelman on the list of People Who Make Comics Respectable. Since then, his work has largely focused on the war in Bosnia, first in Safe Area Gorazde (2000) and then in The Fixer (2003). More recently, War's End (2005), profiles two very different figures from the Bosnian conflict -- Neboisa Seric Soba, an artist, rock musician, and rank-and-file soldier defending Sarajevo; and Radovan Karadzic, a Serbian leader indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity.

I met up with Sacco in southeast Portland, where he lives.

Q: What do you want your readers to take away from the implicit comparison between the two people profiled in War's End?

Sacco: Wheh. That's a hard question. I want them to put themselves in the shoes of someone like Soba. I think the average American reader could relate generally very well to someone like Soba. The average American reader is not going to relate very well to a Palestinian in a refugee camp.

Q: What do you think makes the difference?

Sacco: The difference is familiarity. You know, here you have someone who's interested in rock and roll, who has the same kind of basic wants as we have as far as that goes -- sort of being a local big shot, impressing girls, things like that. It's often very difficult to put a reader in the shoes of a Palestinian because a refugee camp is very unfamiliar. And the reader might acknowledge that what's going on in a refugee camp is terrible, but they don't have a direct connection to it. So I think with someone like Soba, I mean, I just want the reader to be in that person's shoes and feel something for that situation.

As far as Karadzic goes, in part, I'm trying to be reflective about my own look at the war, and how I felt about the war -- sort of that shock, when you finally come across someone you really have demonized in your head. And while he might be worth all that demonization, you know he's just flesh and blood. I mean, you have to see the humanity in each of them in some ways -- or, in the case of Karadzic, you knock him down to the human level, being so ordinary, going about his ordinary tasks. I want to bring down that leader and war criminal to a level where we can see him, which to me makes it scarier somehow. Because he is a human being. He's not a monster -- or, he might do monstrous acts, but we've got to recognize that this guy's just an ordinary guy at some level.

Q: You seemed almost disappointed in actually encountering him. And it reminded me very much of Hannah Arendt's observations in her book about Adolph Eichmann. Did you have that in mind?

Sacco: No. I've never read that particular book. But, I mean, the phrase "banality of evil" -- just that phrase -- sums it up so well. That's what you see. But it was also about my response to that person. It's a let down, in a way. In some ways, you want to see fangs on him.

Q: It just occurred to me that, in the course of that story, you're probably in more frames than he is. Why did you decide to foreground yourself so much in a story like that?

Sacco: Well, [the story is] about a lot of different things. It's also about journalists. And I'm trying to put a couple journalists in the spotlight for a while. It's at the end that I come to the forefront. Even though I am in every picture, it's sort of in a non-speaking role until the end.

You do what's appropriate for the story. In Palestine it was appropriate for me to be a central character because I was the only thread tying a lot of unconnected episodes together. And in the Gorazde book, there're just stronger characters, and I can stand back. It really depends on what you try to do with the story.

But definitely with comics, if you're telling about your own experiences, you cannot not draw yourself -- You have to draw yourself, because you're trying to draw your experiences. It's very difficult to leave out that symbol of the personal pronoun.

Q: Even aside from the difference between comics and straight prose, how does your style of storytelling compare with the kind of thing you were taught in journalism school?

Sacco: It's quite different. I didn't do [it] in the way we were told to, where you try to act like you're a bug on the wall -- the objective-style journalism that American journalists are so proud of themselves for. In the end, that just seems very phoney to me. Especially when you're talking about very hot issues, like Palestine or Bosnia. I mean, journalists -- all of them have an opinion, there's simply no doubt about it. The important thing, I've found, is to be honest and fair [about] what you're seeing, and to be clear that you have a point of view.

I think maybe that's where I differ from the way a lot of American journalists do it. Because they always pretend that they're not just fair and honest, but also objective. That they have no opinion -- or, if they have an opinion, that it's completely removed from their stories. And I think if you go into any certain situations as an American, as a Western, reporter, you have prejudices going in, whether you know it or not. You certainly do.

Q: I heard you've been traveling to Iraq.

Sacco: I was in Iraq for the Guardian, and I was embedded with marines, a reserve unit from Texas.

I thought it would be good for me, just personally, almost as a journalistic challenge. Okay, let's see: Lets see the military, let's see what they're like, let's see if I have preconceived ideas that will be borne out or not.

What I found though, is that it's a tight unit and you're the outsider, and there are all kinds of secrets. Just like if you're in a refugee camp, there are all kinds of secrets you'll never be privy to. I don't know if you've read The Fixer, but that's the same kind of idea. The average twelve-year-old Sarajevan boy knows more about what happened with the war lords than I will ever know from asking a million different questions. You know, you never get to that level. I mean, you can, actually -- but you have to be a real specialist.

So what struck me about being with the marines is that -- even though I thought that speaking English would be my "in" to really understanding their thoughts -- really what it came to was, there were people I didn't meet just because they didn't really want me to meet them, or they don't want me to know what their roles really were there. So, okay, they want me there, but they don't want me sniffing up the wrong tree.

You realize you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

Q: Did you see anything in Iraq that surprised you?

Sacco: Not really. Except, I found a lot more thoughtful people than I would have given credit for before I went. I think maybe that surprised me. There were [marines] there who, on or off the record, would really question what they were doing and especially how they were going about doing it. If not the why, more the how, usually -- but still very thoughtful.

I mean, I only saw one unit. I can't talk about other units that might be a lot harder on the Iraqi population, but I felt the people I was with -- and it might have to do with the fact that I was there -- they seemed careful of what they were doing, not ready to fire. I saw three bullets fired the whole time I was there, and that was warning shots.

Q: What are you working on now?

Sacco: I'm working on a long book about Rafah, a refugee camp and town right adjacent to the Egyptian border in the Gaza strip -- and about an incident that took place in 1956. It's historical on some level but it's also about what was going on at the time [of my trip].

You know, what I'm doing has to be historical on some level because the whole situation in Gaza has changed in the last few months. So most of the book is based on what happened two years ago, and then what happened in 1956. I think it's still worth recording.

I'm also trying as much as possible to work on some more Iraq stories, because I think it's important to get them out now.

Q: Any plans for a cameo on The OC?

Sacco: [Laughs.] You know, someone contacted me and said, 'Hey, congratulations on your name-check on The OC.' I'd never even heard of The OC. The TV in my house gets used for movies -- if that.


Kristian Williams has written about comics and cartooning for some unlikely publications, including the Progressive, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Cuny Advocate, and the "Is it a book?" website. He is also the author of American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination (South End Press, 2006), and of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America (with a second edition forthcoming, also from South End).

Joe Sacco's PALESTINE, THE FIXER, and SAFE AREA GORAZDE are available at Amazon.