Joe Sacco
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Joe Sacco (born 1960) is a Maltese comics artist and journalist.
Born in Malta, Sacco moved to the United States and studied journalism at the University of Oregon, graduating in 1981. He briefly returned to Malta, where he began working as an artist on romance comics. In 1985, while living in Portland, Oregon, he co-edited a monthly comics newspaper, Portland Permanent Press; he was then hired at Fantagraphics Books, where he edited the short-lived comics anthology Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy.
Sacco's first solo series, Yahoo, published from 1988 to 1992, was one of many autobiographical titles appearing in small-press comics at the time, but Sacco's broad range of interests and journalistic instincts were atypical; Yahoo somewhat resembled the free-form ruminations of David Collier and Harvey Pekar, but with a more satirical tone and a less local focus. His subjects included following a rock band's European tour, becoming obsessed with media coverage of the Gulf War, and documenting the daily life of a stripper.
The Gulf War segment of Yahoo drew Sacco into a study of Middle Eastern politics, and he traveled to Israel and the Palestinian territories to research his first long work. Palestine was a collection of short and long pieces, some depicting Sacco's travels and encounters with Palestinians (and several Israelis), and some dramatizing the stories he was told. It was serialized as a comic book from 1993 to 2001 and then published in several collections, the first of which won an American Book Award in 1996.
Sacco next travelled to Sarajevo and Gorazde near the end of the Bosnian War, and produced a series of reports in the same style as Palestine: several short stories, published separately by Fantagraphics, and the graphic novels Safe Area Gorazde and The Fixer. Safe Area Gorazde won the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel in 2001.
He has also contributed short pieces of graphic reportage to a variety of magazines, on subjects ranging from war crimes to blues, and is a frequent illustrator of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. Sacco currently lives in New York City.
Selected bibliography
- 2003: Notes from a Defeatist. [selected stories from Yahoo] Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1560975105
- 2003: The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo. Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1896597602
- 2002: Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995. Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 1560974702
- 2001: Palestine. [collection of entire series] Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 156097432xfr:Joe Sacco