Joe Sacco’s job isn’t to write funny cartoons that belong in the Sunday morning paper. His works also aren’t average articles packed with nothing but boring statistics. Sacco may be a journalist, but there’s much more to him than his notepad and pen; he’s a traveler, an artist, and someone who thinks making a difference in the world is important by putting people’s stories out there. According to his Wikipedia page, Sacco had a hard time finding a job with hard-hitting, attention-grabbing pieces that would affect his audience. So instead of working a job where he wasn’t interested in what he was writing about, he decided that trying to make a career out of his passion for cartooning was worth the effort. Combining these two hobbies of
Although those who read this may not be educated on the topic or involved in the war, our entire planet is effected by this conflict. The armed forces, the government officials, the tax payers, the family members of those at war, etc. make up a small portion of the list of individuals effected by this war.

I believe the ultimate reason Sacco chooses to write these serious stories in comic form is so that the audience forms a connection with the characters. The readers are able to put themselves in these people’s shoes when they tell their story, pushing you to feel emotions that you are not used to feeling if you have not been through something as horrific as this war. I believe Sacco’s choice of mixing these two types of journalism and finding a medium between them allows more emotion to come across to the reader. I think this is also the same reason why the New York Times often includes one-frame political comics; they get the point across in a different way that an article wouldn’t, and it makes the topic have a more powerful message. This particular combination allows us to develop a connection with the topic at hand and increases the power of the message during our reading