Joe Sacco + Parallel Universes

     Joe Sacco likes to call himself a "comics journalist" and takes pride in a genre of journalistic storytelling that he has helped to shape and define over the last decade. "It's a visual world and people respond to visuals," he says in a recent interview with the magazine, Mother Jones. He continues: "For me, one advantage of comic journalism is that I can depict the past, which is hard to do if you're a photographer or filmmaker. History can make you realize that the present is just one layer of a story."

     The point is well proven in his groundbreaking book, "Palestine" (Fantagraphics Books, 2001), which ambitiously sets out to uncover and disentangle the social, political, religious, not to mention historical, layers that criss-cross the Holy Land.  Furthermore, the entire book (a narrative account of his 2-month visit to Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories in the winter of 1991-92) is rendered visually along with textual backup. Sacco might be the first to admit that some of the images in the book have a cartoonish quality to them. In theory, you might think that this would undercut the seriousness of the book's subject-matter. But, in practice, the reader gradually becomes more and more drawn into the book's visually compelling style and story-line. Eventually, we find ourselves inside the story (even, perhaps, inside individual storyboard frames), caring for the characters that Sacco interviews, caring for their precarious existence, caring for the future of their children's children. In fact, it seems that Sacco--along with other contemporary "graphic novelists, notably Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi--have helped to blur the boundaries between "pop culture" comics books and highbrow literature in healthy and beneficial ways.

     But this is not the only gap that Sacco is interested in bridging.

     Half way through "Palestine," he finds himself interviewing a character called Ghassan in Jerusalem. Two weeks earlier, Ghassan ( a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem) had been arrested by the Israeli police "for reasons of national security" and thrown into a jail where he was blindfolded, physically tortured, and verbally abused for 10 days. Eventually, no evidence was brought against him and he was released. Ghassan's horrific experiences in jail are painstakingly recorded over 10 pages of graphic imagery that remain faithful to Ghassan's torturous ordeal. As the torture increases and as Ghassan's humanity is increasingly demeaned, the storyboard frames get smaller and smaller as if he is about to be altogether extinguished. After his release from jail, the frames increase in size again until the very last frame of the chapter ( covering half a page) where the bustling life of a "normal" Jerusalem street-scene is depicted (p. 113). Ghassan has literally disappeared into this scene and is now nowhere to be seen. It's as if his extraordinary story of torture and suffering has once again been swallowed up ordinary normality--the daily routines that keep us on an even keel as we go about the civilized business of making a living.

     Sacco's genius is to show his readers--graphically, visually, imaginatively--what happens when you peel away the layers of "normality" that we are used to seeing on the surface. What other stories are waiting to be told, he seems to ask. What should I reveal that has been hitherto hidden or suppressed, he seems to say.

     This is the art of depicting "parallel universes."

     Sacco writes: "Make no mistake, everywhere you go, not just in Marvel Comics, there's parallel universes....Here? On the surface streets: traffic, couples in love, falfael-to-go, tourists in jogging suits licking stamps for postcards.....And over the wall behind closed doors, other things: people strapped to chairs, sleep deprivation, the smell of piss...other things happening for "reasons of national security..." (p.102).

     The job of a good comics journalist, then, is to visually recreate scenes that, for one reason or another, have previously been regarded as "off-limits." It is a daunting task, but one that Sacco continues to pursue with honest integrity, not to mention considerable artistic skill. 

     As I was watching Anderson Cooper's live report from the Israel-Lebanon border on CNN last night, I wondered how Sacco might use the concept of "parallel universes" in response to TV coverage of the latest conflagration there. Cooper, dressed in his fashionable bullet-proof jacket and sporting his trademark gravitas look, gave the viewing audience a tour of  an Israeli batallion's artillery and firepower, occasionally turning to an Israeli soldier and commander for further insight as to how the weapons are used to maximum effect.  Certainly, there is no doubting Anderson Cooper's bravery, nor his journalistic integrity.  But it occurred to me that there was a parallel story that also needed to be told here. What happens when these impressive-looking weapons seek out and then destroy their targets? Would Anderson Cooper be brave enough to embed himself in a Lebanese home that is about to be hit by one of these shells, let alone a bunker-busting bomb or a Patriot missile?  If he were, then I think he would be serving a crucially important service to us all, reminding us that far away from the front-lines where Israeli artillery is amassed, hundreds of civilians have died and continue to die in the most awful, brutal, painful, hopeless manner.

     It's a tragic story but I doubt CNN will be rendering it in all its graphic horror any time soon. Instead, we might have to wait for a comics journalist like Joe Sacco to do it justice with his trademark visual approach.