Monthly Archive for July, 2010

ONE

As he draws himself in his comics panels, Joe Sacco wears large-rimmed round glasses— but behind the lenses there are no eyes. In real life,however, those eyes are searching and penetrating, a camera lens-like witness to the world rendered in his graphic art. Joe Sacco, as a cartoon character, with his buzz cut, full lips and missing eyes, looks to be the quintessential nerd, a “Where’s Waldo” figure wandering into the chaotic, violent world of his narratives.

Joe Sacco, a self-portrait.

As befits a man who has spent large chunks of his life traveling in non-touristy areas of the world, often hellholes of war and ethnic conflict, Sacco was born in a country that is itself a crossroads of multiculturalism and religious and political strife. Malta, located in the Mediterranean south of Sicily, has been a linchpin of Western Christian civilization even as it was also an outpost of Islamic culture. Born in Malta on October 2, 1960, Sacco’s family moved to Australia while he was still an infant, then to Los Angeles when he was twelve, again to Beaverton, Oregon where he graduated from Sunset High School. He received a BA in only three years from the University of Oregon, majoring in journalism. Sacco cites Michael Herr’s Vietnam War book Dispatches as a major influence in this choice of journalism as career path.

Continue reading ‘Eyeless in Gaza: Joe Sacco and Reportage Comics’

This past Memorial Day dozens of American flags flanked the perimeter of the G.A.R. Cemetery next to historic U.S. highway 66, on the northern edge of Miami, Oklahoma. American flags whipping in the prairie breeze are a common sight in this part of the country on the day that celebrates the dead of our nation’s far-flung and seeming never-ending military ventures. I was at the cemetery to honor the grave of a World War II Pacific Theater veteran, Jesse Orville Ray. He was known to his friends, as well as to the national media that had discovered him late in life, as “Hoppy,” a nickname that had stuck to him since his childhood obsession with cowboy movies, especially those of Hopalong Cassidy. Hoppy’s grave is in a newer section of the cemetery; the headstone sits flush to the ground. He rests next to wife Rita Lou who passed on October 1,1995.

Continue reading ‘Last Man Standing in Toxic Town: Part Three’