He wanted to get away from the war, from violence and no more drawing Kalashnikovs. And at least the last one was spared Joe Sacco in Canada. However, the Maltese-American comic artist encountered violence again when he was there with the indigenous Dene people in 2015 and was researching for a report in a French magazine. The report became a book with “We belong to the country”. Last year, Joe Sacco received the Geschwister-Scholl-Prize in Munich for this. That means: Not really, because the award ceremony was unfortunately canceled due to Corona. As further turbulence, critical voices soon followed, saying that Sacco did not deserve the award at all. Not for “we belong to the country”. And above all not because of his earlier comic reports “Palestine” and “Gaza”.
The critic? The view of the Israel-Palestine conflict in Sacco’s comics is “propagandistically distorted”. At least that’s what the Academics for Peace in the Middle East wrote in an open letter of protest last October. And in “We Belong to the Country” the “choice of Canadian natives” as a subject is “commendable” but intellectually not “particularly courageous”. You can see it that way and argue about it. And there was also the question of whether that would happen this year. Because for this year Munich Book Show Joe Sacco was able to make up for his visit. He was a guest in the library of the Literaturhaus to speak with his laudator, the journalist Andreas Platthaus, about “We belong to the country” and his work as a comic reporter.
He always introduces himself as a character in his comics
That turned out to be very informative and entertaining. Because Sacco proved to be a humorous, self-deprecating conversationalist despite the serious issues. There were no critical voices, and no protests beforehand. On the contrary, Andreas Platthaus emphasized Sacco’s strengths again and again right at the beginning and afterwards. The artist, who was born in Malta and lives in Portland, did not invent comic reports. But he raised it to a “new level”. And that has a lot to do with the subjectivity in it. Really objective? Sacco admitted that you couldn’t be that as a reporter. That’s why he always brings himself into his comics as a character. And with that, just like with his drawings, he signals: This is my own, personal view.
But the quotes were always right. They were meticulously researched, says Sacco, who studied journalism. Drawing was more of a youth hobby that he only returned to professionally because he couldn’t find a job after graduating. And so he now drew rock posters and record covers, lived in Berlin for a while and worked for Fantagraphics Books. In the early 1990s, he traveled to Israel and Palestine because he felt Palestinians were only portrayed as “terrorists” on US television. He had thought of a travelogue. But this turned into a reportage published in nine issues by Fantagraphics, which came out as a book in 2001 under the title “Palestine”. And which, together with his book about Bosnia, established his reputation as a comic reporter.
Last year Joe Sacco received the Geschwister-Scholl-Prize in Munich for “We belong to the country”.
(Photo: dpa/dpa)
How does he act as a reporter? At first he reads a lot, but in the end that makes up a maximum of ten percent of his stories. Because everything is always different on site. It gets more complicated when you talk to people. In order to find access to these, it usually takes “leaders”, local people who people trust. And who also appear as characters in the comics. In “We Belong to the Country” that’s environmental activist Shauna Morgan. He took her to visit members of the Dene in north-west Canada, who do not see their land as property, but on the contrary see themselves as “debtors”. And who now have to watch the government exploit the country.
Like Morgan, many Dene members are against it. But some also hoped to get jobs from the gold and oil exploitation. Because they lived in a “western system”. And that’s where things get complicated again. A complex topic will also be dealt with in Sacco’s next book, in which he wants to approach the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India in just 150 pages. And then? Would he like to deal with the role of liberation theologies in Central America at some point, but first his book about the Rolling Stones complete. Sacco has been at it for more than ten years. He promises it will be “philosophical” and “satirical.” And he says with a laugh: The Stones are actually “irrelevant” to the book, he only uses them as a “selling point”. And drawing it is a “pure pleasure”.