An intrepid JOE SHEPPARD grills award-winning comic journalist Joe Sacco, guest of the Writers & Readers Week at the New Zealand International Arts Festival 2006.


JOE SACCO has reported on some of the heaviest armed conflicts in recent years, most famously the First Intifada in the Palestinian territories and the sieges of Gorazde and Sarajevo in Bosnia. Iraq? You bet: three weeks embedded with the US Marines. This guy’s seen it all alright, but right now he’s about as far away from a war as you can get, sitting on a small, tasselled couch outside the bar of the Museum Hotel in little old Wellington.

As one of the guests for the 2006 International Arts Festival Writers and Readers Week, he is excited about meeting high-profile drawcard and fellow War Zone panellist Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent for The Independent, who has also looked down the civilian end of the barrel in wartime.

“Yeah, I’m definitely looking forward to meeting Robert Fisk. There’s always a little trepidation meeting someone whose work you really admire, because I’ve met people whose work I really admire and it doesn’t necessarily translate into good rapport. But I’ll always admire his work.”

Ditto for Joe: I’ll always admire his comic books – plus he happens to be a very nice guy! Affable and articulate, polite and precise, he’s as good as giving interviews as he is at conducting them, and it’s easy to see how he managed to get so many interesting and damaged souls to open up to a stranger from the West. But what had he done with the magic glasses he usually draws on himself – the ones that admit no light? And where had he put those huge rubbery things on his face that look like they could be lips?

Physical jokes aside, this handsome and well-proportioned face has a lot to say about the difficulties in representing any scene that actually happened, especially when you’re drawing it months later. Sacco refers to his work as “comics journalism” for short, because his interviewing process is exactly the same as any other careful journalist. However, he often relies on other resources – books, the web – to get visual details he might not have seen, such as military uniforms, which, he confesses, “isn’t strictly journalistic”. He defends this approach against the more conventional prose text of most newspapers, simply because it takes the reader’s imagination to come up those details otherwise. I know I’d trust Sacco’s sketchbook over my imagination any day when conjuring up images of what the Jabalia refugee camp looks like.


But what about photos? Yeah, why draw all these pictures man, when you get the real scoop and nothing else from a couple of photos? Well, he explains, photographers crop their images. Every picture in the newspaper has been dramatised in some way or selected over another, less relevant, picture. Moreover, a photo can’t capture an atmosphere the way a drawing can, and no matter how hard you try, it would be difficult to take a snapshot of Tito or Arafat anymore, let alone pose them like GI Joe figures.

All of Sacco’s books involve this important quest for The Truth or one man’s version of it, but nowhere are such problems more clearly highlighted than in his 2003 book, The Fixer. Essentially a tour guide for a war zone, a fixer can shape how a reporter sees the war politically, and he often literally chooses where to take him. Sacco struggled to believe Neven, his fixer in Sarajevo, because he heard many Bosnians discredit his stories. In fact, Aleksandar Hemon, also here for Writers and Readers Week recently added a piece to the puzzle. “He knows Neven,” Sacco says. “And he said, ‘Yeah, that guy’s a pathological liar.’ They used to play soccer together, they were on a radio station together. We also talked about how there was a truth in the way that [Neven] was kind of crazy, mad, brave, at certain points. You can’t cancel that out with his lies – he doesn’t need to tell lies.”

Paradoxically, by questioning his sources and bringing elements of doubt to his stories, Sacco comes off as even more trustworthy. “Yes,” he said, “I am trying to demystify what journalists do, on some level, and show how journalists rely on people that might not be reliable, and how I can be sort of duped, and find something that makes me stand back.”

So even though he’s only as fallible as his sources, credit has to be given to Sacco for being so scrupulous and conscientious when considering whom he should interview – and whom he should believe. “Ultimately, I trust my eyes. When I sat with Israeli officials – spokespeople – and they tell me in the town of Rafah [in the Gaza Strip], maybe they’ve destroyed fifty dwellings, mostly shacks for goats, and then I see with my own eyes that it’s hundreds of houses people live in, I trust my eyes. I don’t trust those spokespeople.”

One key advantage of drawing comics, he says, is that illiterate people or foreigners who have little grasp of English can immediately understand his work, and easily come to trust him. The Palestinians have their own history of cartooning – Sacco cites Naj Al Ali as an example – and when people see illustrations of the Gaza Strip or a refugee camp, they can really respond to that.

The flipside of this accountability are the nerves that come when Sacco shows his book to someone that’s in it. He explains: “I want to feel that they are the ones who say, ‘Yes, this feels real to me. This is a good book.’” (Of course, he laughs, a good review is always nice too.) But oh boy, there must be some paramilitary pirates out there, crazy-mad about the way they come out looking in a certain comic book? “Even Neven, the fixer, I was very worried about his reaction,” he said. “He was kind of delighted, in a way. His only comment was: ‘Did I really try to get that much money out of you?’” It might seem strange, but Sacco suggests, “The funny thing about comics is that people like to be depicted as cartoon characters.”


I get the feeling that the most important review Sacco received was from Edin, Sacco’s generous host during his stay in the bleak town of Gorazde, the Bosnian enclave that the UN tried to forget about. Did Edin like Safe Area Gorazde? “He did,” says Sacco, and he shoots back a beam of happiness. I discover that Edin defended his Masters thesis (he had to wait four years to do so, because of the war), that he’s built his own house in Sarajevo, and has kept on moving, whatever heavy rocks life might roll his way. And I realise that for every story that makes it into the published copy of a Sacco special, there must be dozens locked away in that head, and I can begin to see some of the satisfaction that he must get from hanging out with some of the world’s most indomitable spirits.

But before I get too misty-eyed, I gotta get this guy’s take on politics! International turmoil! The clash of civilisations! Like most international journalists worth their salt, Sacco is a wealth of knowledge on politics, and I wanted a quick gaze into his crystal ball. What’s going to happen in the Balkans and in Jerusalem?

Lumière: What was your initial reaction when you heard the news on Sunday about Milosevic?

Sacco: Disappointment. I have no love for the man and I wish that there would have been a complete trial – not just about what he did, but also for the criminal court itself. I think it would have been a very important milestone for them and it seems like the rug was pulled from under them, in a certain way. And also, if you like, it would have been a good thing if there had been a verdict handed down that would have had some sort of official stamp on what happened. It’s not as if history’s going to judge him well. They’re not. And when it comes down to it, Goering committed suicide before he got a verdict. But I covered the war crimes tribunal a few years ago, I was there for a couple of weeks, I sat in on some trials. And there was one Serb there [Slavko Dokmanovic], who was the mayor of Vukovar, and he ended up committing suicide a day or two before the verdict was read, and so they didn’t open the verdict. And I don’t see the point of that at all. This should be open to the public. My problem with Milosevic’s death is that, now, that many more Serbs are going to say, “There was a conspiracy” – Serb Nationalists, of course – or he’ll develop a mythological stature, I think. And that’s too bad.

Lumière: Do you think Hamas can [get the Palestinian house in order]?

Sacco: I think they’re going to do a better job than Fatah. I’m not a fan of Hamas, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I know a lot of people think they have some integrity – they feed [people], they have schools, they have clinics and things like that. And also people feel if they negotiate – I was told two years ago when I was there that Hamas will deal. Islamic Jihad won’t deal. Hamas is pragmatic. And let’s see, maybe they’ll moderate, or whatever you want to call it, and start to play a political game that I hope will be effective for the Palestinian people. I don’t think they’re going to roll over and just start making stupid concessions like the Arafat made and Fatah made for Oslo and other accords.

Lumière: But will Israel deal with Hamas?

Sacco: I think they’ll deal with Hamas maybe on some level that we don’t know about. To me the question is, “Will Israel provoke Hamas to create incidents?” There the other question too, it’s not one-way.

Good to know! Now there’s just one more question (come on brother, admit you were waiting for that tenuous New Zealand connection!): tell me, what on earth is a reference to Christchurch, New Zealand doing on page 14 of a book about the Palestinian struggle? Now I’ve been to Christchurch, and it didn’t seem like a welcome place for any ethnic minority! And now Sacco’s busted, because he’s laughing and looking sheepish, and if this was a comic book there would be drops of sweat on his brow, but there’s really nothing to it: “Well, actually, if I’m not mistaken, I did meet someone from Christchurch, New Zealand, who had converted to Judaism, and was thinking of moving [to Israel], just some young woman from Christchurch, and I don’t even think she was in Christchurch when she did it, she just got so involved in it, and she [went there], and then she was thinking about staying.”

At a Glance...
Name: Joe Sacco
Age: 45
Star Sign: Stop
Place of Birth: Malta
Currently Living in: Portland, Oregon
Favourite Movie Director: Sergio Leone
Last Good Comic Read: My own
Best Karaoke Song: Midnight Rambler
Sports Hero: Phar Lap
Most Fun Had With Clothes On: Getting ready to take them off
The Next US President Will Be: God save us
When I Was a Child I Wanted To Be: a priest

Joe Sheppard interviewed Joe Sacco on 14 March, 2006.

» Comics, Seriously: Joe Sacco @ NZ International Arts Festival