Joe Sacco

Joe Sacco was born in Malta on October 2, 1960. At the age of one, he moved with his family to Australia, where he spent his childhood until 1972, when they moved to Los Angeles. He began his journalism career working on the Sunset High School newspaper in Beaverton, Oregon. While journalism was his primary focus, this was also the period in which he developed his penchant for humor and satire. He graduated from Sunset High in 1978.

Sacco earned his B.A. in journalism from the University of Oregon in 1981 in three years. He was greatly frustrated with the journalist work that he found at the time, later saying, “[I couldn’t find] a job writing very hard-hitting, interesting pieces that would really make some sort of difference.” After being briefly employed by the journal of the National Notary Association, a job which he found “exceedingly, exceedingly boring,” and several factories, he returned to Malta, his journalist hopes forgotten. “…I sort of decided to forget it and just go the other route, which was basically take my hobby, which has been cartooning, and see if I could make a living out of that,” he later told the BBC.

Books in order of publication:

1993: Palestine: A Nation Occupied. Fantagraphics Books.  (collects Palestine #1–5)

1996: Palestine: In the Gaza Strip. Fantagraphics Books (collects Palestine #4–9)

1997: War Junkie. Fantagraphics Books. 

2000: Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992–1995. Fantagraphics Books. 

2001: Palestine. Fantagraphics Books.  (collects Palestine #1–9) (expanded edition in 2007)

2003: The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo. Drawn & Quarterly Books. 

2003: Notes from a Defeatist. Fantagraphics Books.  (collects Yahoo #1–6)

2005: War’s End: Profiles from Bosnia 1995–96. Drawn & Quarterly. 

2006: But I Like It. Fantagraphics Books. 

2009: Footnotes in Gaza. Metropolitan Books,  Jonathan Cape

2012: Journalism. Metropolitan Books, 

2013: The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme. W. W. Norton & Company. 

2014: Bumf Vol. 1: I Buggered the Kaiser. Fantagraphics Books. 

2020: Paying the Land. Henry Holt and Co.