A couple of years ago, at the urging of Najati, I read Joe Sacco’s account of life in the Palestinian state, aptly entitled “Palestine”. Sacco is an award-winning journalist, which is kind of odd because his medium is not newspaper or television or even radio, but rather the graphic novel. “Comm-ick books” you might say, but if you’d give over an hour or two to read “Palestine,” you’d think differently. “Palestine” details the day-to-day struggles of the ordinary people in the Palestinian state in the early 1990′s (before the most recent intifada) with unusual detail — gritty, gruesome, and often comic.

This time, he has published a short 8-page report from Iraq alongside American troops, entitled
Complacency Kills (32meg PDF). Again, he manages to detail the real-life details of war and its effects on the average person with stark detail and wry humor. Well worth the read.

If you are interested in any of Sacco’s stuff, I highly suggest good ol’ Fantagraphics. Also, here is a good interview with Joe Sacco.

“Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.” — Harvey Pekar.