World Famous Comics: Palestine: The Special Edition
Palestine: The Special Edition
By: Joe Sacco Publisher: Fantagraphics Books Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Format: Special Edition Label: Fantagraphics Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 320 Publication Date: November 21, 2007
Product Description: An expanded edition of one of the all-time classic graphic novels.
Joe Sacco's breakthrough novel of graphic journalism is widely hailed as one of the great graphic novels of all-time. Since its original publication in the mid-1990s, it has won an American Book Award (1996), sold over 50,000 copies, been added to university curriculums worldwide, led to a Guggenheim Fellowship for Sacco, and firmly ensconced Sacco in the pantheon of great cartoonists. Despite this, the book has never been published in hardcover. Until now.
Fantagraphics Books is pleased to present, for the first time, the definitive, expanded, hardcover collection of Sacco's landmark of comics journalism. Palestine: The Special Edition is more than a new edition: consider it the "Criterion" Palestine. In addition to the original, 288-page graphic novel and introduction by the late Edward Said, The Special Edition includes a host of unique supplemental material never-before-published, including many of Sacco's original background notes, sketches, photographic reference, and much more. The book also includes a new, introductory interview with Sacco about the making of the book as well as a new cover and design. Palestine: The Special Edition will be a cornerstone of any serious comic collection.
With the Middle East's role in contemporary world politics, Sacco's Palestine has never been more relevant or more valuable to a country desperate to understand this long-running conflict. Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, whose name has since become synonymous with this graphic form of New Journalism.
Sacco's insightful reportage takes place at the front lines, where busy marketplaces are spoiled by shootings and tear gas, soldiers beat civilians with reckless abandon, and roadblocks go up before reporters can leave. Sacco interviewed and encountered prisoners, refugees, protesters, wounded children, farmers who had lost their land, and families who had been torn apart by the Palestinian conflict.
An intense look at the First Intifada Journalist and comic book artist Joe Sacco has been rightly praised for this intense account of his time in the Palestinian territories during the first Intifada. Sacco decided from the start to tell the Palestinian side of the story -- not to aim for the false balance of much of modern journalism. His graphic novel is primarily a series of interviews with Palestinians, some arranged in advance and some on the spur of the moment.
If you enjoyed Art Spiegelman's MAUS books, you'll probably like Sacco's work.
Highly recommended.
Very good (and well-drawn) but not great Still a definite recommendation but slightly long and redundant. It's really one-sided (as intended) and should be taken with some balancing perspective. Artwork and the story-telling are both solid for the most part.
Cartoon Journalism at Its Best Joe Sacco is as good an artist as anyone drawing graphic novels today. What sets him apart is that his novels are not novels: they're journalism, accounts of his travels into grim and unhappy places. Elsewhere he has visited war zones. Here he visits Palestinian refugee camps. He records a series of Palestinians' points of view, doing what he can to portray what they tell him, and portraying what he sees himself.
The book has to work against a perpetual weight of monotony, which Sacco describes as one of the most depressing qualities of life in the camps. As a spectator who can go in and out, he is aware of his special status, but in both text and drawing he comes forth as a modest guy who just happens to draw exceedingly well, and who, lucky for us, has the courage to put himself in places most of us would dread to enter.
Sacco is especially good at drawing scenes. He is master of his medium, using panels of varying sizes to keep the eye moving, or to arrest it with a telling detail or complex panorama. But even better than that, he is marvelous at making human connections, and presenting them with a matter-of-factness that persuades as deeply as any drama can. The book pulsates with all kinds of feeling: fear, hope, anger, suspicion, sorrow, friendship, and more than a little love.
A welcome feature of trhis edition is its description of Sacco's working methods, particularly his use of photographs.
Depressing but true.... Joe Sacco has tried to put a very complex issue in to a comic book which is a challenge by its on and he got it. Although the book is far from objective he is giving a clear and ""kind"" of true view of realty through Palestinians eyes. Except for one comic relief (The joke about the 3 secret agents) there are not much of happy moment in the book which make it some kind depressing and make you thing is this really reality? I think not but then again who am I? Still i would recommend this book for people who are not familiar with the situation and would like to know a bit more about it. I have also bought "Exit wounds" by Rutu Modan as a comic book from the other side of the conflict. It is something totally different but still worth a try. See my review on it under the title.
Cheers.
-S-
An important piece of "comic book journalism" (a history teacher's review) Joe Sacco headed off to to the Palestinian refugee camps with a few bucks in his pocket, a sketchpad, a little training in how to draw comic books, a rarely used camera (film was too expensive) and a curious mind. Sacco interviewed Palestinians and asked them about all sorts of aspects of their lives: jobs, the intifada, women's rights, Land for Peace, and much more. Sacco turned those interviews into this graphic novel (although Sacco does not like that term much - instead he prefers "comic book journalist").
There is no traditional narrative to this book. Sacco does not turn these interviews into a large over-arching history of the Palestininan people. Instead, it is like reading a series of illustrated interviews. This gives the reader the feeling that he or she is there sitting right there with Sacco talking and drinking green tea in the camps. In a way, the story would be better if he had tried to make an illustrated history, but, in the end, I think this is a more powerful presentation. Imagine "based on real events" movie vs. a documentary and you get the idea.
Sacco occassional touches on the topic of who is right and who is wrong in this book. It does carry a pro-Palestinian slant (it was designed to be that way - I have no idea where Sacco's real sympathies lie), but it does not hammer on those issues.
Not a fun book, but an important one. Strongly recommended for anyone interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no matter which side you come down on.
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