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Joe Sacco says he has drawn people more representationally over time because he believes journalistic comics need it—but he has not abandoned cartooning. In a 2024 interview with Arunava Banerjee for Scroll.in, Sacco describes a balance: striving for more faithful depictions while keeping stylization for the movement and expression a still image can make vivid.
Why has Joe Sacco moved toward more representational drawing?
“I mean, over time I’ve drawn more representationally. That’s because I think if my work is going to be journalistic, it needs that,” Sacco told Arunava Banerjee in Scroll.in’s interview, published December 14, 2024. He presents this as his own standard for his work, not a rule for every comics journalist.
He links the shift partly to criticism from people offended by how he had depicted Arabs and Jews. The feedback made him think more carefully about how he represents people. Sacco says drawing the human form representationally remains effortful: he is continually assessing whether he has drawn it correctly.
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That scrutiny has not led him to treat realism as the only valid way to draw. “But I’m glad in a way that I cannot draw totally representationally, because then what’s the point of even drawing at all?” he said. His own author-character remained more stylized in part because that way of drawing himself was habitual and easy.
Why keep stylization in journalistic comics?
For Sacco, stylization can convey something literal realism may not communicate as clearly in a still panel: motion and energy. He points to scenes such as people headbanging or playing air guitar, where a cartoony treatment can make movement legible. His approach is therefore not a simple move from cartooning to realism; it is a choice between modes according to what a scene needs.
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That choice matters in reported work, where drawing is both a way to depict people and a way to shape how a reader encounters them. Sacco’s comments describe his own attempt to handle that responsibility while retaining the expressive possibilities of comics.
How does Sacco combine words and images on a page?
Sacco describes comics as a synthesis of writing and drawing: “To be very simple about it: comics are an amalgamation, and a synthesis or a sort of a compound molecule, of writing and drawing.” He does not treat captions as a separate layer added after the pictures. He prefers words to interact with the artwork, sometimes even obscuring it, rather than sitting in a detached strip above or below an image.
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He plans the words first
His page-making process begins with captions. He writes and cuts them out, arranges them across facing pages to guide the reader’s eye, and then fits the images around that structure. “For me, the first question is: ‘Where am I going to put the words?’ I’m putting the words down first.”
In that arrangement, words and images can work in counterpoint, create irony or emphasis, and direct movement across a page. Lettering is not simply a container for dialogue or information; its placement is part of the visual narrative.
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How does the interview connect to Sacco’s other work?
The conversation ranges beyond one drawing choice. It discusses Palestine, the nine-issue series and later collection, and names Footnotes from Gaza among Sacco’s best-known books. The interview also considers Journalism and the presence of Sacco’s author-character: making himself visible in a scene can complicate the appearance of detached reporting.
In The Great War (2018), Sacco uses a continuous, unfolding image to depict the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Read from left to right, the scene shows time passing and collective movement: troops head to the front, enter trenches and attack; wounded men return, while others move toward hospitals and cemeteries. The work demonstrates how a comics page can represent a sequence and a mass event without relying on conventional panel divisions.
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The interview also mentions his collaborative books: From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend (2002), Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012, with Chris Hedges), and Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale (2018).
Read the full Joe Sacco interview
Arunava Banerjee’s conversation with Sacco covers his early comics and influences as well as representation, lettering, collaboration, and Indian comics. Read it at Scroll.in.
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