SACCO NOT SOCKO :

Murder for Mature Readers: Palestine's Comic Book (Lewis A. Fein, August 20, 2002, Jewish World Review)

Walk into a comic store and childhood memories refresh themselves: muscular displays of heroism by Superman, acrobatic elegance from Spiderman and vigilante justice by Batman. But, between the angular sketches of Captain Marvel or the melodic toughness of Mighty Mouse, exists a more sinister - a purposefully less innocent - comic book -- Joe Sacco's Palestine (only now recently mass marketed among mainstream booksellers as an abridged version of his earlier propaganda).

Yet, Sacco's interpretation is not a legitimate counterpoint to, say, Art Spiegelman's "Maus," the critically acclaimed Holocaust memoir. And, even though Spiegelman himself offers positive reviews for Sacco's work, such praise - praise limited to one's artistic abilities and liberal theology - is beside the point: Spiegelman chronicles history with an artist's precision; Sacco reinvents truthful facts with a denier's deliberate blindness.

Gay characters? Pro-Palestinian? What the heck has happened to comic books? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 20, 2002 6:49 PM