Customer Reviews

Palestine: The Special Edition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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 this edition is its description of Sacco's working methods, particularly his use of photographs.

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.

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.

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-

Along with all other books that need to have special editions such as The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale this wonderful dialouge between man and history, between artist and struggle and between activist and history calls for a special edition. And who better to bring it than the creative team of Sacco, Vanzetti and Said. A wonderful book that has few parrellels in the world of cartoon, drawing, and activism in dealing with the sadness and sorrow of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how it affects the children.

More of Sacco's single-minded obsession with placing all of the blame on the Israelis for the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This book has nothing to do with a genuine search for historical truth and everything to do with anti-Israel bias.

Sacco's use of crude pictures to tell a one-sided story of Jewish evil will, no doubt, remind some readers of similarly crude anti-Semitic graphics employed by the Nazis and indeed, by the Palestinians themselves. We need not linger on this obvious comparison to dismiss Sacco's comic books as the nastiest sort of polemic that sheds little light on either the origins of the current conflict or the nature of war. At a time when anti-Israel invective and Jew-hatred is on the rise around the world, the publication of works like this only encourages more hate; it does nothing to disseminate it.