8 votes

Reporting, illustrated

2 comments

  1. [2]
    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    I find comic journalism compelling because I feel like it humanizes its subjects in a different way than print. I haven't read as much of the genre as I'd like to, but it's something I very much...

    I find comic journalism compelling because I feel like it humanizes its subjects in a different way than print. I haven't read as much of the genre as I'd like to, but it's something I very much enjoy. Here are some scattered and unsolicited recommendations in case anyone else is interested and itching for a new read:

    Joe Sacco is mentioned in the article and has several books of comic journalism. I've only read Safe Area Goražde, but it's very good.

    The Photographer by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, and Frederic Lemercier is another good one. This book chronicles the efforts of a Doctors Without Borders team as they travel into Afghanistan in the 1980s. The comic mixes real photos with drawn images.

    Sarah Glidden's Rolling Blackouts is also good, and is explicitly a work about comics journalism told through comics journalism. Glidden visits the Middle East to report on what's going on there and, in the process, considers much about the role of journalists.

    Finally, there's Kazuto Tatsuta's Ichi-F, which is about the cleanup efforts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant after its disaster in 2011. The book is billed as a memoir, but it crosses the line enough into journalism for me to include it here.

    4 votes
    1. cfabbro
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Some more related recommendations, off the top of my head: The Nib is a great place to find comic based journalism, and two of my favorites artists from there that are worth checking out are Tom...

      Some more related recommendations, off the top of my head:

      Graphic novels that I would also classify as being similar to comic based journalism:

      • Maus, which is loosely biographical and based on the artist's father, who was a holocaust survivor
      • Showa: A History of Japan, a manga that covers ~1925-1990
      • American Splendor: Unsung Hero, about the Vietnam War, told through the eyes of an American soldier
      • Jonathan Fetter-Vorm also has a bunch of great US history related ones:
      • Palestine, about a Westerner visiting the West Bank/Gaza Strip in the early 90s
      • Persepolis, autobiography about growing up in revolutionary Iran. It was also made into an animated movie too

      And speaking of animated movies:

      • Waltz with Bashir, about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, told through the eyes of some Israeli soldiers
      • Grave of the Fireflies <warning, this movie will destroy you emotionally>, about an orphaned boy and his sister trying to survive in Japan during WWII
      • Loving Vincent, about Vincent van Gogh

      edit: Oh yeah, and @Sahasrahla recommended a graphic novel to me in another recent topic, that I suspect might qualify as well, called The Cartoon History of the Universe.

      3 votes